Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul is holding two campaign events in Iowa today and later this month his son, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, will make a two-day swing through the state as the campaign tries to build momentum for the Iowa GOP’s Straw Poll in Ames on August 13th.
“We both believe strongly that the constitution is the law of the land and should be followed,” Senator Paul said this past April during an interview with Radio Iowa.
Ron Paul is considered by some to be a sort of godfather of the Tea Party movement and the younger Paul wrote a book about the Tea Party.
“In my primary in Kentucky, I think the other side made a mistake of not going and meeting with the Tea Parties,” Rand Paul said. “I think there won’t be any 2012 contender who will make the mistake of not going to the Tea Party.”
The elder Paul argues the growing concerns about the national debt show the entire country, not just the Tea Party movement, is starting to embrace his cornerstone issues.
“I’ll read an article and it’ll say ‘Ron Paul is taking this seriously…He’s moved to the mainstream.’ And none of us think of it that way. We think the mainstream has moved to us,” Ron Paul said, laughing. “But we don’t care, either way, just so we’re with the people and I think more so than ever before.”
Paul predicted the president and congressional leaders will do “exactly the opposite of what they should do” about the national debt.
“The handwriting’s on the wall and it should have shocked them and it hasn’t,” Paul said. “And they’re going to try to paper it over to the best of their ability and, you know, just hide from it and if they can tide it over, they will.”
The government is swimming in debt, according to Paul, and he said the country is “fast approaching a financial crisis.” Paul, who is a Texas congressman, made his comments last week during a wide-ranging interview with Radio Iowa, and he suggested the “whole thing is coming together” in his third campaign for the White House.
“I’ve been more successful than I ever thought I would be,” Paul said.
Paul held a town hall meeting this morning in Marshalltown and he’ll appear at a similar event in Cedar Falls at noon.
