Posted on 10/05/2007 8:55:02 AM PDT by SJackson
I think Yoshi is overreacting to the Ron Paul boomlet.
I can understand why: Paul is the lone antiwar Republican in the race, and thus it's assumed he's pulling all of his support from antiwar lefties looking to mess up the GOP. That just isn't so.
Ron Paul has a reputation of being the most virulent anti-government politician in recent memory. He's known as "Dr. No," for his supposed insistence on voting against any government action (including innocuous, non-binding resolutions) that is not specifically enumerated in the Constitution. As such, a large chunk of his support comes not from mischievous Democrats, but from genuine Republicans angry about President Bush's overspending (it's made Paul Martin look like Preston Manning) and, yes, the war in Iraq.
So Paul's Republicanism is genuine, if a little odd. That does not mean, however, that Paul will have staying power, delegates at the Republican convention, or the ability to do damage to the GOP nominee in 2008 for several reasons:
Delegate selection rules: In most states, Republican primaries and caucuses (and not, this is only for Republicans) is "winner-take-all" (what we call first-past-the-post). From second place on down, the candidates get zero delegates. Furthermore (and I'll admit I'm guessing on this), the states that aren't winner-take-all statewide are still winner-take-all at the Congressional district level. Thus, Paul would actually have to win a Congressional district in a primary to get any delegates. He may carry his own district (stress may) but that's about it. Personally, I project Paul's delegate count to be zero.
His record: Ron Paul may not quite be the libertarian everyone down here thinks he is. I already caught him deviating from his constitutionalism just this year. Those who support Paul for his limited government stance may want to take another look at him.
Any lefty-blog attempt to prop him up will be too transparent to have an effect: The left tried something similar in Connecticut, when Joe Lieberman had to run as an independent because the Democrats wouldn't nominate him. All of a sudden, the lefties were singing the praises of the Republican candidate, who proceeded to go down in the polls as a result of his new friends.
His antiwar voters would never support the Republican nominee anyway: As for the anti-war folks propping Paul up, these are not folks upon whom we can count for support in 2008. In fact, Paul is actually to the left of the likely Democrats nominate (Hillary Clinton) on Iraq. If Paul were to run on a third-party ticket (and one would be available), he could end up taking away more Democrats frustrated over the war than Republicans.
This could especially be true if the GOP nominates Rudy Giuliani, whose social liberalism would make a Clinton victory far less necessary to antiwar lefties on the dmoestic front. Granted, Paul may also pick up pro-life voters from the right upset over Rudy's nomination, but that would simply give those voters a place to go (rather than stay home), and in such a dynamic, Paul to wreak havoc on Democratic plans in the northeast and the Midwest (the Dems' base areas).
Now, we're still over a year away from the elections, and darn near anything could happen. Yoshi might be right; Paul could catch fire somewhere. I just doubt it, and I further question the conventional wisdom that it's the Republicans who will get burned.
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We have a problem here.
Of course, many of you know it already. But, I think the time has come to make it official: Ron Paul’s campaign for the Presidency now presents a serious challenge to those who love liberty and seek its preservation against the Islamist assault on our civilization. It is no longer sufficient to simply dismiss those who support him as a motley collection of nuts and morons. It’s not that I deny that many of them are – it’s just that nuts and morons get to vote too.
It is fashionable for conservatives to dismiss Ron Paul, citing his flat poll numbers – just a few percentage points in most polls. I believe this to be a mistake – not only are national polls worthless in assessing the results of individual primaries, but they also fail to consider support that polls – especially polls partisan primary polling – might fail to pick up. While there’s absolutely zero chance that Paul is going to win the Republican nomination, there is a very high probability that he will be able to raise enough money to remain in the race and get enough votes to continue to receive media coverage. Worse still, it is entirely possible that he will win a sufficient number of delegates to cause trouble during the Republican National Convention (even, say, thirty could be a serious annoyance and disruption) and that he will go on to run as a third party candidate. There is also, if Senator Clinton secures the Democratic nomination early, the possibility that the internet-savvy leftist nutroots might organize in order to give Paul the illusion of more support.
Of all opposing forces, fifth columnists are the hardest to defeat. And that is what makes Ron Paul such a serious threat – because he is nominally a “Republican” he gets to go up on stage with the serious candidates for the Republican nomination and to spew his garbage all over the stage.
(It goes on and on and on at my blog. [below]As you might have surmised, I really, really, really don't like Ron Paul).
http://www.adamyoshida.com/2007/10/ron-paul-modern-copperhead.html
Who is Ron Paul? For a name that we hear so often (at least online), I don’t think most of us know much about him. He’s been a member of Congress for twenty years. In that time, he’s failed to achieve a single item of note. Instead, he’s dedicated himself to fringe causes – such as abolishing the Federal Reserve and returning to the Gold Standard. In the meantime, he’s helped to ensure his own re-election in part by securing pork projects for his own district while maintaining his ideological purity by voting against them on final passage.
In short, in three decades in public life, Ron Paul has shown himself to be a nothing more than a kook politician noteworthy primarily for his uselessness and pointless lectures. He is, it must be conceded, a strange vessel to contain such support as he now commands.
So? Why have many chosen him? Simply put, because he’s the candidate who has managed to capture the imagination of a certain sort of person on the war. The thing to remember about Americans – and watching Democratic debates it is easy to forget – it is that they are an unusually patriotic people. Even many (though not all) of the people working to bring about the defeat of the United States in the War on Terrorism (and before that in the Vietnam War – and long before that in the Civil War) think of themselves as American patriots. What Ron Paul – and all of his declarations about George Washington, non-intervention, the Constitution, and so forth – offers is a way for some people to feel that they are patriotically seeking to bring about the defeat of the United States and the victory of its enemies in a war.
When the Copperhead Democrats sought to undermine the Union during the Civil War they, much like Ron Paul today, claimed that they were acting in the defense of the Constitution – which they accused Abraham Lincoln of destroying. Like Ron Paul, the leader of the Copperheads, Clement Vallandigham, railed against debt, taxation, and the loss of rights under the Constitution. Lincoln responding by having Vallandigham exiled to the Confederacy but, alas, I don’t think there’s any chance of President Bush handing Ron Paul a one-way ticket to Tehran.
Who does support Ron Paul? I am told that the “Don’t Tase Me, Bro” guy is one of his Legionaries. The base of his support, it is not at all difficult to conclude, is drawn from the vast ocean of “slight unmeritable men” about whom it is hard not to wonder, as Antony did of Lepidus in Julius Caesar whether it is really fitting, political power being divided such as it is, that they ought to have an equal share.
Obviously, individual political equality is a basis of modern democracy but, nonetheless, it is probably worth wondering why we ought to consider the beliefs and views of, for example, 9-11 Conspiracy Theorists to be of any merit at all. It is not really possible to reason with people who adhere to a worldview for entirely irrational reasons.
Whenever I see Ron Paul’s supporters, my mind flashes (though not for any pharmacological reason, I assure you) back to a time that I saw pro-drug crusader Marc Emery speak during the 2001 provincial election. Every time the man spoke his dirty and confused supporters – who uniformly reeked of pot – would scream their approval, even when he made statements (abolish welfare, radically cut taxes, and the like) which would not ordinarily meet with the approbation of dishevelled hippes. In each case, an unlikely figure was grabbed onto by a motley crowd of fringe fools because of the appeal of their position on a single issue. In one case, drugs and in this case the war.
But, we cannot simply dismiss the fringe. In that 2001 Election, the Marijuana Party got 3.2% of the vote across the Province of BC and that was without a galvanizing issue like a war. Well-organized kooks can cause problems. It is tempting to simply dismiss the 9-11 Truthers, the people who see Black Helicopters’ everywhere, and the rest of that crowd as irrelevant. But, sadly, they aren’t. Individually they don’t matter but, if they can gather in once place, they are… Well… A problem.
Dennis Miller is still alive? Really?
What information do you have that tells us anything concrete about the "long-run" of Islamofascism that you can make so confident a statement?
Socialism and communism have killed millions of people and hindered the lives of billions in the last 100 years. Islamofascism hasn't even come close to the impact of socialism/communism. Sure, two huge buildings coming down are pretty dramatic but by no means would destroy the US. Push comes to shove we could blow up the entire middle east if we felt it necessary and not worry about it. The creeping socialism in the US at this point is almost impossible to stop and at some point will break this country.
The political season is way to early. It is over 13 months left, and already, people are flocking to one cadidate or another.
My biggest gripe is fawning idiots spamming Freerepublic with threads honoring an anti-war kook more in tune with Al Qaeda than with the near unanimous views of the Freerepublic community which shows it's support for our troops and mission in Iraq.
Ron Paul is the candidate of movon.org, not Freerepublic.
Islamic facism is not limited in its scope to 9/11. Its impact is already well entrenched in much of the Middle East and Persia, not to mention some parts of Africa and the Far East. Its effects are only starting to be felt in Europe (Mohammed (and variants) was the #2 name in the UK last year. I believe it's #1 in Belgium.). IOW, 9/11 is not the definition of Islamofacism. It's only a symptom. If you talk to the people of the Sudan or Christians in Iran, you might have a different opinion of the effects of communism (a different manifestation of socialism, which you freely interchanged) vs. Islamofacism.
“My biggest gripe is fawning idiots spamming Freerepublic with threads honoring an anti-war kook more in tune with Al Qaeda than with the near unanimous views of the Freerepublic community which shows it’s support for our troops and mission in Iraq.”
“Ron Paul is the candidate of movon.org, not Freerepublic.”
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As I said, he was hopeless from the start, and thus the great antipathy of most FR stalwarts is a bit puzzling, but also puzzling is the serious mislabeling of his position. My sense of the “Moveon” crowd is that they secretly (or even not-so-secretly) hope for an al Qaeda victory to vindicate their Bush-phobic mindset, where-as Paul’s position is a disagreement over the appropriateness and prudence of defeating al Qaeda in the way “most FR types” seem to prefer.
“The political season is way to early. It is over 13 months left, and already, people are flocking to one cadidate or another.”
Indeed, and the struggle with the “khalifate revivalist” strain of Islam which is so fundamental to the ideology of al Qaeda is in its early decades, and not going very well in Europe. Have you noticed?
We are in a marathon, not a sprint, and the need to take a measured view of the struggle, and husband our resources accordingly seems obvious to many observers, who wonder how long it will be before the US fiscal situation makes these global military operations in 100 countries and maintenance of a baker’s dozen of nuclear carrier task forces impossible to maintain, as ‘entitlement spending’ is projected to push the Federal budget bite out of the annual GDP from 20+% to over 40% during the next few decades.
I will be interested to see if any of the ‘plausibly electable’ candidates have as much useful insights to offer concerning these considerations as the politically hopeless Paul. So far, the field doesn’t look very promising but, as you say, the election is over a year away.
In the meantime, you might want to check out this article in the issue of Barrons on sale this weekend:
Monday, October 8, 2007
Slimming Entitlement Costs
By PETER J. FERRARA
FEDERAL SPENDING HAS HOVERED around 20% of gross domestic product for more than 50 years now, ever since it settled down after World War II. Despite all the battles over taxes and spending in that time, the federal share of our economy has remained fairly stable.
That will change quite dramatically without fundamental reform of our nation’s entitlement programs. The latest long-term projections of the Congressional Budget Office estimate that federal spending will soar, reaching close to 40% of GDP over the next 40 years, primarily owing to exploding costs for Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare. Add in costs for state and local government, and total government spending in America will be well over 50% of GDP.
If anything even close to this happens, the fundamental nature of our economy and our government will have changed. Our capitalist free-market system, the source of America’s historic prosperity, will constitute less than half of our economy. Something like Swedish-style socialism will dominate.
etc. etc.
Don't deny the man his rightful constituency.
‘So who has the answers?’
Thats still up in the air. What isn’t is Ron Paul, and Democrats in general, would like to pretend that Islamofacism is a ‘fad’ that will pass with ‘time’.
It isn’t, and it won’t.
‘> the single most important issue we face as a nation today is Islamofacism.<
Bush is a bigger supporter of Islam than most folks want to admit.’
Supporting freedom of religion is why they want us dead, remember?
Islam isn’t confused with Islamofacism by the intelligent and informed.
‘Nope, huge rampant socialism is far more serious a problem at this point than Islamofacism in the long run.’
You can’t debate domestic policy if you are dead.
Yep....unlike Ron Paul, that looks like a walking cadaver.
However, the immediate and most deadly threat cannot be ignored, which is precisely what Ron Paul would do. There are hosts of reasons and arguments against the notion that Ron Paul would even be fiscally responsible in the first place, but those arguments distract from his most fatal and irresponsible positions.
We’ve had what 4k deaths in the last 20 years due to foreign terrorists? As far as I’m concerned, next time it happens, the country(ies) involved get bombed into oblivion. A weak domestic policy will inevitably lead to a collapsing military (see USSR). The two go hand and hand.
“American never got into a war because it was too strong’
Ronald Reagan
Yes, economically strong is just as important as militarily. Many great military countries saw huge military declines due to collapsing economies including Rome, Ottoman Empire, and the USSR. If you do not have the economic infrastructure to handle increasing military technology without bankrupting your gov’t, its worthless.
Yep.
you mean like president bush ?
Please tell me that was photoshopped.
Incidentally, Ron Paul plays the pork game just like all the others.
I don't think those are necessarily bad ideas, but you'd need some plan and time period for transition from the Federal Reserve fiat currency back to the gold-backed one.
Dear Ron Paul: Like you, I am not pro-war. Unlike you, I am pro-victory. How ‘bout rooting for our side (for a change)!
Exactly. There is nothing left but victory or surrender (Call it what you want, it would be surrender)
This is what I keep asking Ron Paul supporters, but they can't answer it.
Paul wants the patriot act and any legislation like it ended, even though no one can show abuses of it.
Paul refused to vote for military to patrol our borders. So he doesn't plan on stopping them there.
Paul voted for Most favored nation trade status for China, stating he was for the same for Iran, Iraq, etc. and would never use economic sanctions against any country.
In March, Paul requested millions to build the Texas Leg of the Nafta Superhighway.
So what is Paul's plan to protect Americans?
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