Barack Obama or Ron Paul?

So I'm a progressive liberal, (if you can't tell). I've been supporting Barack Obama in the Democratic primary. He's been preaching change, and has a record to show that he believes what he is talking about, and will do something about it (unlike Hillary who will continue the status quo). And he's been speaking out against war and how to deal peaceably with the world.

I'm also pessimistic about our government. I've known for quite some time that our government is broken. We have a corporate controlled (fascist) government, run largely by the military-industrial complex. We spend something like 60-70% of our annual federal budget on defense. At the same time Bush is pouring billions of our yet-to-be-collected dollars into wars in the middle east while our national needs aren't being met. We have bridges collapsing and health care for poor kids being vetoed.

I've long felt that our federal government needs to be dismantled and rebuilt from the foundation up. The foundation laid out by our founding father's was a good one. It's what we've built on top of it that needs be torn down. And soon!

And that's where Ron Paul comes in to play. I know that he is a Libertarian at heart, meaning he believes in freedom and liberty over government control. That extends to everything, even those government programs like helping to provide healthcare to poor kids. While I think that having those types of programs is good for this country, I think that my feelings for what is right with our government is being far overshadowed by what is wrong with our government. And so the idea of having a president who works to cut down our government, however he can, is appealing to me. I just want to be sure the first programs he focuses on cutting are not social ones, but military ones.

Ron Paul has said that the US needs to pull all of its forces from abroad, and focus on ourselves. If we eliminate the need to police the world, like he says, then our needs to spend billions on the military drops. That's the military-industrial complex being slashed, which is a great thing!

After Ron Paul has had 4 or 8 years of hacking our federal government to iddy-biddy pieces, then we can refocus on building it again. Once the bloat is gone, we can build those programs that we feel we need for our society, not ones our military industries say we need. Not ones that corporate interests say we need. Ones we actually need. That's the point where the Democrats should be in control.

So it's coming time that I have to decide. Obama is still my Democrat. But Ron Paul is only slightly behind him on my list of favorites. And I only have a short time before I must change my voter registration to "Decline to State" in order to vote for Ron Paul. Otherwise I'm locked in to Obama. What to do....