Paul faithful flock to Spartanburg appearance (sixteen standing ovations!)

GoUpstate.com ^ | 7/21/07 | Jason Spencer

[George W. Bush]

Paul faithful flock to Spartanburg appearance

A little-known Texas congressman seeking the Republican nomination for president visited Spartanburg on Saturday and seemed to arrive with all the makings of rock-star candidate for his party — despite polling low, little name recognition and a relatively small campaign staff.

Supporters call it the “Ron Paul Revolution.” You might’ve seen it on signs or T-shirts. Or MySpace.

Paul received no less than 16 standing ovations during his hour-plus speech and question-and-answer session at the Summit Pointe Event Center — first, when he entered the room, a second one when a re-entered after doing a quick television interview and a third when he was formally introduced.

Thunderous applause also followed when he decried the Patriot Act (ovation No. 4), when he said America should never go to war without a declaration from Congress or because of a United Nations resolution (ovation Nos. 8 and 9), and when he attacked President Bush’s foreign policy and handling of the war in Iraq (ovation Nos. 11, 12 and 13).

“No nation building. No policing of the world. Peace is popular,” Paul said. “The sooner we get out of Iraq, the fewer Americans will die. And I say, it’s time to come home.”

About 400 people — half from out of state — were shoehorned into Summit Pointe for a barbecue luncheon that doubled as a fundraiser for the Spartanburg County Republican Party. The local GOP, after expenses, made an estimated $5,000 on the event.

Paul was invited to speak to the local party faithful (they numbered about 80 in the crowd) after county chairman Rick Beltram took offense at Paul’s explanation of the 9/11 attacks as “blowback” from America’s past intervention in the affairs of other countries during a GOP debate. That led to a widely distributed online tit-for-tat between Beltram and Paul supporters, and Beltram eventually invited Paul here to explain himself.

Blowback, in and of itself, was not mentioned Saturday, though Paul often alluded to it, going as far back as World War I, “which (President) Woodrow Wilson got us into unnecessarily, and drew the lines in the Middle East that we’re suffering for today.”

Beltram said he agreed with Paul on most issues except foreign policy, and that he believes the Texan converted some Upstaters to his revolution with Saturday’s speech.

“I left feeling like a hero,” Beltram said. “I got more positive comments after that event than all the other presidential events combined.”

[DJ MacWoW]

Bottom line: The terrorist threat in this country is essentially nill.

Clueless.

[Calvinist_Dark_Lord]

Clueless.

But not wrong.

[DJ MacWoW]

Yes, You are wrong. Who are you going to blame WHEN there is another attack?

[ejonesie22]

You might as well stop. 19th Century thought looking 21st Century threats is a tough leap for some.

[DJ MacWoW]

You’re right. There are some who will be 9/10 until the horde is at their front door.

[Calvinist_Dark_Lord]

Sorry, i missed this post, i'll respond now.

Well, gee. So did the terrorists.
U.S.S. Cole, the ‘93 WTC bombing, Khobar Towers sound familiar?
And let’s not forget the Pentagon, Flight 93, and the hole in Manhatten.

Well then, why aren't we at war with Saudi Arabia in light of the fact that 16 of the 19 hijackers were from that nation, and their demonstrated Wahhabibist tendacies show no sign of abating?

oh, oh, i know, because the Saudis are our 'friends', at least as long as they keep selling that oil. Sheer lunacy.

What the hell did Saddam have to do with 9/11, the same people didn't like him very much either.

[ejonesie22]

Worse, a dirty bomb or a suitcase nuke goes off and they’ll say “yeah, but they’re too primative to have anymore, and if they do I’ll just shoot ‘em up with my truty 45!”

[ejonesie22]

trusty, damn I’m typing too fast.

[DJ MacWoW]

Yup. A .44 would have worked for those in the WTC. Oh wait.........a handgun won’t stop a plane. Hmmmmmmmm. ;)

[DJ MacWoW]

Yeah and your gun is a 45 and mine turned into a 44. LOL

[ejonesie22]

No worries, between us we can bring down a rather large vulture...

Incomming plane, well...

[JTN]

“I’m not willing to support laws that prohibit early term abortions.”

Fred Thompson on abortion

[DJ MacWoW]

Seriously, I don't know if they'd try the "plane as a bomb" thing again. A suitcase nuke is more likely. So far we've successfully stopped anymore attacks but with the PC crowd trying to tie our hands.......................

My parents generation never forgot Pearl Harbor. For some, 9/11 is SO "yesterday". How can anyone forget the shock and horror?

[TheZMan]

"I'm not willing to support laws that prohibit early term abortions ... It comes down to whether life begins at conception. I don't know in my own mind if that is the case so I don't feel the law ought to impose that standard on other people."

If you'd like me to start cherrypicking BS half-quotes on your boy and playing this dumbass game back and forth I will.

Actually, no, I won't. You've proven you don't give a damn for the truth and to be honest you're playing liberal games and don't really belong on this board.

[BlackElk]

That's nice. The fact is that we are we and they are the Islamofascisti. We trust us and we do not trust them. I don't give a rat's (or a Demonrat's) patoot what some barber in Lebanon thinks, assuming that he thinks. I don't care if he is ethnocentric. I don't care if you are ethnocentric.

I care that the United States recognize its interests (which most certainly include who governs the Lebanese barber). I don't recognize their "turf claims." Any turf claims of any Islamofascisti from any country whatsoever were cancelled permanently on 9/11. All that remains is a massacre of Islamofascisti (collateral damage notwithstanding) so memorable as to guarantee no repeat performances now or ever. Catholic Europe peeled them back at Lepanto and at the gates of Vienna. Of course, the Church lacked nukes. The US has nukes and need take no Islamofascist guff.

Oh, but the world won't looooooove us!!!! Sniffle, sniffle. It will FEAR us and, as Machiavelli observed, that is more important. The Islamofascisti have killed American citizens IN OUR COUNTRY by the thousands. They have run a passenger airliner into our Pentagon, the center of administration of our military. That's like crashing an airliner into St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican during a papal Mass. They have our attention. Let them now suffer the retribution they have earned.

Now, Dr. Paul prescribes that we TRADE with them and then everyone will just love everyone and all ills will be cured. As Lenin said, when the time comes, American businessmen will gleefully sell to their executioners the ropes with which they will be hanged (or the swords that will behead them as the case may be). PaleoPaulie may want to be beheaded but he does not and will not speak for me or mine.

Going into Iraq was not a mistake. Finding and hanging Saddam Hussein was NOT a mistake. Finding and ventilating Uday and Kucay was NOT a mistake. Not gong in earlier WAS a mistake. Not going into Baathist Syria WAS a mistake that let the WMD get away. Not making falujah flat, black and glowing in the dark after two days notice by flyers dropped from the sky, to the women, children, old folks and cripples to leave through checkpoints or die, that WAS a mistake.

We need to stop the diployak and stop caring about what one backward sect of Islamofascisti thinks about or does about another. THERE IS NO MORAL EQUIVALENCE between us and them and thus no argument that starts out: "If someone did to us what we did to them, then...." needs any consideration whatsoever. They are not equals of ours. When paleoPaulie whines about the "feelings" of the Islamofascisti, he becomes a propagandist for Al Qaeda. You may not like that but it is true. You may not agree but it is still true.

I don't care at all what Mohammed Nawful or Mohammed Anyone thinks. I care that they sit down, shut up and keep out of our way now and forever. I don't care if they pathologically hate the Jews who are our allies so long as they don't DO anything about it. Let them live their lives of frustration and festering hatreds and mental disability out of our notice. The price of Islamofascisti doing 9/11 to get noticed is to die en masse, spectacularly, memorably, at the hands of the US military and/or the Israeli military. When we find Osama bin Laden, dead or alive, he should be skinned, his pelt soaked in pig blood and mounted under glass in the cabinet room, complete with the hair on his chinny-chin-chin. If some Islamofascisti deepen their hatred of us, toooooo baaaaaad.

It is also true that the paleoPaulistinians give to support Al Qaeda by supporting their apologist for president as he reads from their talking points in the faces of justifiably outraged Americans. Bearing in mind that we like our "tribe" better than we like their tribe, should make them appreciate your last paragraph. Whether the likes of Mohammed Nawful are SAID to BE right or merely to hallucinate they are right does not matter just as the distinction as to Mr. Nawful's actual personal opinions do not matter. What matters is that we not take such guff from the Islamofascisti and teach them a lesson they will nit soon forget.

[BlackElk]

PaleoPaulie wants a policy of national cowardice. That is NOT conservative. He is a libertoonian. He says he is pro-life but other than the usual lip service has accomplished nothing.

The sweetness of this struggle is to watch the Paulistinians evaporate as the primary results roll in and join their leftist foreign policy allies in whining that the primaries were stolen since they just don't know ANYONE who did not vote or paleoPaulie and he just could not have finished below 5% in primary after primary.

Don't worry about Juliannie. We'll deal with him too. The only way that Juliannie gets nominated is if the only alternative is the paleopipsqueak. Don't get your hopes up. Politically your boy is a dead man walking. He just hasn't figured out that he is supposed to fall over but he will get all the help he needs. He will be politically slain by the jawbone of an ass: his own, spouting Al Qaeda propaganda points dishonoring our troops in the field as a treasonous Congressman in time of war.

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

I’d respond but your level of conversation is on par with that of a 5th grader.

[BlackElk]

Beauty as well as paleodelusion is in the eye (or ear) of the beholder. Antiwar antiAmerican Al Qaeda propagandists are useless scum in the estimation of GOP primary vters as paleoPaulie will learn to his utter humiliation when the votes are cast.

[BlackElk]

You’d respond but what can a paleoPaulie supporter say and still be regarded as rational on an actually conservative website???? Supporting an apologist for the Islamofascist enemy in gtime of war is never likely to be popular here.

[JTN]

If you'd like me to start cherrypicking BS half-quotes on your boy and playing this dumbass game back and forth I will.

If the additional words in his quotes that you are supplying actually changed what he said, you might have a point. They don't, so you don't.

“I do not believe abortion should be criminalized.”

Fred Thompson on abortion