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“Ron Paul is not a bad guy. I’d just much rather have a President who puts the emphasis on making the terrorist-spawning countries consider the ramifications of what THEY do, instead of spewing random death like a suicide bomber on an Israeli bus.”

Ron Paul would do that. If a nation supported terrorism and we were attacked Ron Paul would get a proper declaration of war and then he would fight to win. What he wouldn’t do is invade nations that we don’t need to and then sit around letting troops die instead of doing what it takes to kill the enemy. Iran should be afaid of US nuking THEM, not the other way around.

“To try to pin the blame for present situations on a few narrowly selected events long ago (cherry-picked to support a particular ideological position) is not supporting reason, it’s just sophistry.”

That’s true, but that isn’t what is happening here. We are currently at this moment making poor decisions. Pointing out that we made poor decisions in the past, which we should have known were poor at the time, merely illustrates the current mess.

“Retrospective second-guessing of hypothetical alternative universes is delusional and useless, no matter how it’s dressed up.”

Learning from the past is helpful though.

"Ron Paul would do that."

Not based on what I saw tonight. If Ron Paul were President, and the US was again attacked by Islamo terrorists, here's what Pres. Paul would do, based on his performance tonight:

1. Give a speech listing a litany of assorted things the US has done in the Middle East over the past 75 years, and trying desperately to show that somehow the attack was "our fault" or that in some sense we deserved it.

2. Demand that Congress give him a full "declaration of war" in full righteous libertarian mode. Not an authorization for use of military force, a formal Declaration.

3. Congress, dominated by spineless dregs of humanity, would pass, at best, a very weak authorization of military force, with even more monkey-wrenching restrictions than the war funding bill that Pres. Bush just vetoed.

4. Pres. Paul, not having a Declaration of War which is acceptable to the libertarian hardcore fringe, then proceeds to sit on his hands and do nothing whatsoever to respond to the attack. Because to do so would go against his rigid and personally idiosyncratic interpretation of the Constitution.

It's never going to happen. He'll never get above 2%.