Let's Us and Them Fight

If you're dependent on government money to make your life comfortable, you're going to feel pain. If you are an American who believes that you can stand on your own two feet, this is going to be a renaissance.
New Hampshire State Representative Seth Cohn - (R) Merrimack

This is the problem that political candidates for office have once they become popular - anyone who claims to espouse your philosophy (in this case, Representative Ron Paul's) can stand up and spout off about it on national radio. And they can often do so in ways that are singularly divisive. I suspect that if you asked Representative Paul about his views on this, he'd be somewhat more conciliatory. After all, if he wins the Republican nomination, he has to run in the general election, and telling the nation that anyone who depends on the government that their lives are about to start sucking will earn him no end of defections to the Democrats (or simply staying home), after all, when a natural disaster strikes, telling people "well, you should either have insurance or enough cash on hand to rebuild from the ground up" is unlikely to be a winner.

But this is part of American politics, especially during primary season, and one that's unlikely to go away any time soon. Pitting "us versus them" (while being somewhat vague about just who "us" and "them" are) is always a sure-fire vote getter. Nevermind that if it's done poorly, it gets just as many, if not more, votes for the other side.