Ron Paul

Ron Paul

Ronald Ernest "Ron" Paul (born August 20, 1935) is an American physician, author, and politician who has been serving as the U.S. Representative for Texas's 14th congressional district, which includes Galveston, since 1997. He is a three-time candidate for President of the United States, as a Libertarian in 1988 and as a Republican in 2008 and 2012. He is a member of the Libertarian Party and Republican Party. He holds libertarian views and is a critic of American foreign, domestic, and monetary policies, including the military–industrial complex, the War on Drugs, and the Federal Reserve.

A native of the Pittsburgh suburb of Green Tree, Pennsylvania, Paul is a graduate of Gettysburg College and Duke University School of Medicine, where he earned his medical degree. He served as a medical officer in the United States Air Force from 1963 until 1968. He worked as an obstetrician-gynecologist from the 1960s to the 1980s, delivering more than 4,000 babies. He became the first Representative in history to serve concurrently with a child in the Senate when his son Rand Paul was elected to the United States Senate for Kentucky in 2010.

As well as publicizing the ideas of Austrian Economists such as Murray Rothbard, Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig Von Mises during his political campaigns, Paul has also been an active writer on the topics of political and economic theory. In addition to contributing economic literature to the Ludwig von Mises Institute, he has written many books, beginning with The Case for Gold (1982) and including Liberty Defined (2011), End The Fed (2009), The Revolution: A Manifesto (2008), Pillars of Prosperity (2008), and A Foreign Policy of Freedom (2007).

Paul has been characterized as the "intellectual godfather" of the Tea Party movement. On July 12, 2011, Paul announced that he would forgo seeking another term in Congress in order to focus on his presidential bid. On May 14, 2012, Paul announced that he would not be competing in any other Presidential primaries, but that he would still compete for delegates in states where the primary elections have already been held. At the 2012 Republican National Convention, Paul received the second most votes from the attending delegates.