Tag Archives: Ron Paul

No, Rand Paul Should Not Skip the Presidential Campaign…

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I never liked Ron Paul. His positions were sound, and I found myself in agreement with many of them. But somehow he just rubbed me the wrong way. He seemed too snarky to be statesmanlike, his past was unsavory at best, and he had a tendency to use leftist arguments that I found frankly offensive. But if he had won the nom, would I have voted for him over Obama? You damn betcha.

When Rand Paul first got into a snit with the iron-jawed Rachel Maddow (I speak out of envy. My chin is comparatively weak), I dumped all over Paul in a post called, politely, “Rand Paul is not a Bigot, Just a Dumb Libertarian.” Which is to say, I mostly dumped all over Libertarians, for their positively Progressive ability to hunt-down heretics. If I were writing that post today, I would probably write it differently.

Because as it turned out, Rand Paul did not suffer from his encounter with Rachel Maddow. And his insistence on speaking to first principles may have been just the natural consequence of the qualities about him that I do like. I still don’t think it was smart, because debating the Civil Rights Act is a non-starter, especially when the Affordable Care Act is a rather more pressing concern. But whatever.

As forceful, unapologetic advocates for liberty come, Paul is among the best of them, and he stated bluntly what everyone should be screaming from the hilltops, which is that Hillary Clinton is a preening gasbag unfit to represent the United States to the penguins in Antartica.

So I must disagree with Matt K. Lewis of the Daily Caller, who seems to insinuate that this

Rand Paul fellow is just too gosh-darned spooky-seeming to run for President.

The 2016 elections are a long way off, but it’s not too early to ask this question: Is Rand Paul really the best messenger for 21st century conservatism — in this political environment — with so much at stake?

Yeah, I think it is too early. Because it got asked several million times over the course of the last election, all in service of nominating a squeaky-clean Rockefellerite who — in case you missed it — just got beat to a shivering pulp by the most unpopular two-term President in our lifetime. We thought we had Jimmy Carter on our hands, yet for some reason we decided to run Thomas Dewey against him. So yeah, Lewis, too soon.

I’m not speaking as a Rand Paul advocate — I’m not even sure I would vote for him in a primary right now. But I’m damned certain I want the chance to make up my own mind on the subject. And this craven self-censoring of our own candidates, based on what the Left might do, is inane. Whoever we nominate will be called a racist. Whoever we nominate will be called dumb. Whoever we nominate will be called an atavistic honky (or Uncle Tom, if he should happen to be not-white), unlearned in how “real Americans” live.

Rand Paul knows this, and responds to it with an assured “go to hell, you fascist goon.” More of that, please.

UPDATE: Rand Paul asks John Kerry “Why is it okay to Bomb Libya without Congressional authorization, but not Cambodia?”

That’s just satisfying, that’s all that is…

Dan Rhiel has had enough.

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For conservatives, I’m a might tired of the weenies who prance around on the Internet as if they’re spoiling for a fight, then when someone with a little fight in them comes along, they start sounding like pussified Republicans. Oh, God, no, we can’t have that go on!!

This argument makes him rather late to Jeff Goldstein’s party, but still. Heh.

For myself, Santorum or Gingrich would be fine as nominees. Romney would be a clothespin vote, and I’m working myself to the position that Ron Paul, daffy ideas and all, would be too.

Read the Whole Thing.

The Republican Party Returneth, Like a Dog, Unto its Own Vomit. But it Doesn’t Matter.

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Stacy McCain links this damning comparison of the 2012 primary election to the 2008 primary election.

I’m thinking of a Republican primary. It starts with a candidate (John McCain/Mitt Romney) who ran once before, came in second place, and won over the party’s elite class without winning over its base. Other candidates, understandably unwilling to accept this, line up: An under-funded social conservative (Mike Huckabee/Rick Santorum), an elder statesman who’s walked to the altar three times (Rudy Giuliani/Newt Gingrich), a libertarian who wants to bring back the gold standard (Ron Paul/Ron Paul).

Read the Whole Thing, of course, but remember this: last time the Annointed Nincompoop had to run with the Shroud of George Bush hanging on his shoulders. This time he gets to run against the Shroud of Emperor Golden Dancer. McCain was an old man running on his war record against the Shiny New Candidate of Hope. Mitt Romney may excite no man, but he exudes managerial competence from every pore of his being. We should not pretend that such will not matter against #OccupyResoluteDesk, whose supposedly masterful campaign has been sputtering of late, and in any case only won 52% of the vote last time.

 

In Which I Argue Against Every Point I Just Made About the Election

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Just because I’m cynical about the remaining forlorn hope for a Not-Mitt doesn’t mean I’m any more pleased about it than say, the gang at Protein Wisdom.

Let’s consider some other possibilities.

  1. Either of the Ricks (Perry or Santorum) Might Win South Carolina. New Hampshire has an open primary. That means Democrats and Independents voted. This explains why Huntsman came in third and Ron Paul came in second. South Carolina is not like that. Evangelicals matter in South Carolina. An upset win could stop Romney’s momentum and end his sense of Inevitability.
  2. Gingrich Might Land a Punch. The insidious thing about Gingrich’s Bain Capital remark is that it got people talking about it. It’s the kind of argument that Obama could easily use against Romney, and if enough people notice that, Romney’s main argument — his electability — could be seriously damaged. And if not, Newt’s still mad enough to come at him another way. He might yet find something that will actually turn off people who’re are lukewarm for Romney.
  3. Ron Paul Might be Stronger Than We Think. Paul is the “to hell with everything” candidate in a “to hell with everything” year. We shouldn’t underestimate that. Nor should we overestimate the importance of foreign policy to voters, especially in a “to hell with everything” year. Remember, for the past several years, Barak Obama has been sending robot bombers to blast away at people around the world and no one, left or right, seems to care very much. And even if Obama and the media attempt to cast Ron Paul as Bull Connor, Paul seems perfectly willing to play the race card on behalf of blacks, especially as regards things like the Drug War. And, as we’ve noticed, he possesses sufficient fortitude to punch back twice as hard in debates. The disappointed Obama Youth might just not care about stuff that was written before they were born.

The deeper question is, given a choice between Obama and Paul, could I vote for Paul?

Read this blog and tell me the answer.

The Bearable Tedium of Mitt Romney

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Apparently “Santorum” is Catholic for “Huckabee.”

Personally, I don’t expect much to change in South Carolina. Last time ’round, South Carolina was supposed to be the last bastion against John McCain.

South Carolina makes a good last bastion.

Fred Thompson Will Rise Again!

More to the point, Gingrich has once more demonstrated his tactical incompetence. Who the hell told him that going after Romney’s business record was going to play well in a Republican primary? (h/t: Instapundit) Layoffs are part of the business cycle. Republicans are supposed to understand the business cycle, or at least, not attempt to make hay out of it. Apparently Gingrich got it into his head that if he made lefty-ish noises about unemployment, he could poach some of Ron Paul’s Occupier mob. Gingrich is just smart enough to be that stupid.

So now Mitt Romney is the champion — no, really — of capitalism. And it only took three years of Barack Obama to make capitalism look awfully nice.

So Santorum has no carrying power, Gingrich is intent on blowing himself up, which leaves Rick Perry to stand athwart party tradition yelling “Stop.” Perry’s gotten better in the debates, but I don’t think he’s gotten good enough. He hasn’t made the case for himself in a compelling way. He may have done himself too much damage to really recover from.

And if that’s true, then barring a sudden, sad, final groundswell for John Huntsman, Mitt Romney is gonna be our guy. Unless we all decide to go full-Goldwater for Ron Paul, in which case, we should start practicing our curtsies.

THAT'S RAAAAACIST!

How Newt Shot Himself In the Foot on the Chickenhawk Question…

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Newt Gingrich stands out amid the current GOP field in one particular way: he has a talent for arguing the premises of the question, and rejecting those too long accepted. His rise from the pit to brief front-runnership was aided by little else.

Which is why I found this exchange so irritating:

Gingrich needs to learn that no one finds smart, well-to-do white conservatives sympathetic, especially him. No matter what he says or does, people are going to find him arrogant. It goes with the territory of being unapologetically intellectual. So to see him wrapping himself up in the mantle of Victim of Paul’s Lies bores even as it offends.

This is what Gingrich should have said:

“Given that Dr. Paul’s foreign policy bears close resemblance to George McGovern’s, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised to see him adopt lefitst arguments to disparage his opponents. What is surprising is to see such an supposedly ardent Constitutionalist confused as to the requirements of the Presidency. Nowhere in Article II does it require that the President of the United States have ever served in the military; yet it does stipulate that the President is the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces regardless of his or her background. So the “chickenhawk argument” is a tiresome ad hominem which deserves no respect in these debates.

Moreover, what ought to be pointed out here is that no one on this stage has, in the parlance of the Union Army, “seen the elephant.” Dr. Paul was a flight surgeon in the Air Force before Vietnam. Governor Perry flew C-130 tactical airlift after Vietnam. Which means that not a single candidate before the American people has ever heard a shot fired in anger. So for any candidate to pimp his campaign medals as though he is the equal of a veteran of Second Fallujah strikes me as being in very poor taste.”

Instead, Gingrich accepted the premises of the accusation and tried to argue that he was something like being a veteran, which allowed Paul to trump his REMF service and win the point.

The Liberals are Abandoning Obama…

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…for not being liberal enough.

This is why I didn’t get so excited as others on the starboard side over Taylor Marsh’s denunciation of Obama. She was upset with him over being insufficiently supportive of abortion rights. And for all the dramatic thrust of the closing statement, Marsh isn’t going to actually vote for the GOP candidate next November, even if it is Ron Paul. She will find a way to convince herself that Emperor Golden Dancer deserves her vote.

This happens every election. Voters jump like Olympic gymnasts on and off the party bandwagons, denouncing their respective allies as corrupt, unprincipled swine, only to denounce the other side as dangerous corrupt, unprincipled swine a beat later.

I am no exception. I remember strongly echoing Jeff Goldstein’s dictum: “I will not, will not, vote for John McCain.” Well, guess what I did three Novembers ago?

If anyone actually believed that someone in the Democratic Party had the fortitude to challenge Obama in the primaries, or if Captain Corvair announced another run of the Spoiling Green Party, then liberal discontent would matter.  If anyone thought that liberals would consider this election so unimportant as to sit it out, then liberal discontent would matter. But so long as whoever wins the GOP nom has to keep the Tea Parties happy, the liberals are going to be scared enough to clamp on the clothespin and do like I did last time.

Jeff Goldstein Explains Ron Paul

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Get out of my head, man:

Of course, Paul is a disaster as a candidate, and his ties with various unsavory types less careful about expressing their bigotry than he has been would sink him in a general election. But he does come across onstage as anti-establishment — while not carrying the “baggage” of faith that many conservative / classical liberal / libertarian types seem so much to distrust in their prospective candidates (at least, if the candidates gives the impression that s/he believes the tenets of that faith and might actually hew to them) — and this appeals to many of those who are fed-up with a business-as-usual government they can’t seem to change, even after sending an unmistakable message via the ballot box that it is significant change they desire and demand.

Hence, Ron Paul. The ultimate protest vote from those who reject big government and Wall Street crony capitalism; from those who want significant spending cuts and the elimination of vast swathes of governmental “oversight”; and for those who are put off by the caricature of social conservatism that both the GOP moderates and Democrats have spent years creating and institutionalizing.

Sometimes a single issue dominates an election enough to turn down the volume on things that would normally be disqualifying in a candidate. I think Ron Paul’s supporters hope that his ne plus ultra Tea Partyishness will cause voters to overlook that unsavoriness. “He has leftish suppoters! Occupiers!” they think.

They’re wrong. The Occupy crowd is nowhere near as significant in the voting bloc as they would like to be, and I doubt very much if they’re really going to ever actually vote for Paul. Right now the media is playing a classic rope-a-dope; ignoring Paul’s past during the primaries only to unload it during the general.

Not that it matters. No one whose foreign policy matches up with George McGovern is going to get the nomination anyway. The GOP makes room for everyone except doves.

Ron Paul Channels Jimmy Carter

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At RedState (h/t: Memeorandum)

“Even if it really was Muslims who bombed the WTC in 1993, and not Mossad, it was still the Jews’ fault for being all Jew-y out there in Jew-land.”

There are so many things about Ron Paul’s basic principles of governance that I do like. It’s a shame that he can’t extricate his constitutional originalism from the racist faux-libertarianism of a Bircher. He does not seem to know what century he’s living in.

Just When You Thought it was Safe...

Ron Paul: The Not-Mitt to Defeat All Not Mitts

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Don Surber is funny: (h/t: Insty)

20. From Rasmussen: “Romney 45%, Obama 39%.”

They have been saying a generic Republican could beat him. They don’t get more generic than Mitt Romney.

And as Ron Paul peaks, a great many people are going to find Romney’s very inoffensiveness preferable.

I really hope Ron Paul doesn’t get the nomination, because the media is going to put him in a White Robe faster than you can say “Stormfront,” and Obama will win in an obligatory landslide.

ROGER SIMON: ”If Ron Paul is not a racist, he is certainly terrible at picking employees and colleagues.”