Given the inefficiencies of what D.C. laughingly calls the “criminal justice system,” I think we can safely assume that 95% of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal. If similar in-depth studies were conducted in other major cities, who doubts that similar results would be produced? We are constantly told that it is evil to be afraid of black men, but it is hardly irrational.
Ron Paul is the signage candidate of choice in some of our more racist outlying areas here in my beloved but deeply fucked up red state.
And yes, I’m aware that Benazir Bhutto was assassinated. I just don’t have much to say, except that I suspect we’ll find out that it’s another case of the lengths people will go to in order to stop democracy from happening.
131 Responses to “Keep on defending him”
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So when is Ron Paul going to slip and start referring to darkies? Or shout out “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!”
Or just come out and say “The only good black man is a dead black man…”
I dearly wish they would just lay their racism out in the sunlight and stop all this dancing around. Just admit they’re bigots and have done with it…
First of all, goddamn!
Secondly, what the hell is “semi-criminal” supposed to mean?
Is it really a surprise that Ron Paul is an internet darling? After all he is the perfect internet libertarian. He’s all for low taxes and giving as much freedom as possible to white males. Minorities? Yeah right. Women? Bitches can’t be allowed control over their bodies! He’s the Randian dream!
And he hangs out with, and takes money from, Nazis.
I can understand how opposition to the war can be someone’s primary reason for supporting (or not) a candidate, but at some point other factors have to come under consideration. Paul’s support among libertarians is unsurprising and long-standing, but his support from liberals is just bizarre to me.
NAZIS. Hello?
There are enough laws on the books that we’re all “semi-criminal.”
I just don’t get hassled by bored cops enough to be found out.
I am not a Ron Paul supporter, but I will call B.S. that this is a real quote from him. If you follow the link it never gets to the actual article, other than to a posting to a 15 year old listserv. Pretty weak.
“Secondly, what the hell is “semi-criminal” supposed to mean?”
They possess the desire to be criminals but are too craven to follow through with it?
Seriously, though, what the hell happened in the past decade that a statement like that isn’t a campaign ender when you’re at the national level?
Any time somebody starts out with “I am not a Ron Paul supporter, but…” look out. There’s some crap a comin’…
It’s a real quote. It appeared in his newsletter years ago.
Paul now claims “Ohh, someone in my office wrote that. I didn’t write that!” Dude, your name was on the newsletter, it went out with your blessing, you own the quote.”
Fucking Pauldroids and their jackbooting support for militia lovers.
Links galore.
The Skeleton Closet is one of my favorite election year resources. It’s worth bookmarking for future research.
“Any time somebody starts out with “I am not a Ron Paul supporter, but…” look out. There’s some crap a comin’… ”
Well, I’m not. But for anyone but a fool to believe this is real you might want to come up with at least a single copy of the Report. Didn’t you learn anything from Rathergate?
preying mantis, “semi-criminals” are (in the eyes of some) Black men who just haven’t been caught yet. The cops “know” they’re guilty of something, they just have to figure out what it is. That’s why Black men get stopped for DWB so often - the cop is trying to find a pretext for arrest…
Yet another reason for being embarrassed to be an American - as if we don’t have enough already…
Tell you what, though. Just TRY to suggest that Ron Paul is a right-wing wackjob to one of his supporters…
Jeebs, while drinking a beer with casual acquaintence of mine — a guy who has spent too much time looking for black helicopters — I mentioned that Paul has long been both anti-woman (no abortion, no exceptions) and anti-science (creationist loon with an M.D.?), and the gut just exploded. Freaked out.
There are some scary, true-believers out there. Just watch. When Paul fails to get the nomination, we might see some of these folks either jumping off tall buildings or shooting down from them.
mass, I’m kinda expecting a bunch of nutso Pauldroids to start stalking candidates. They pulled so many of them from the Patriot/Militia/Klan movements, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re not already stockpiling weapons. The next big terrorist attack is likely going to come from a bunch of Pauldroids…
The scary/creepy house down the street that was plastered with Bush posters in 2006 is now plastered with Ron Paul signs.
That was enough for me.
“Didn’t you learn anything from Rathergate?”
Yeah, I learned that when the Reichwing bitches loudly and often about some topic they know will expose an essential truth, the facts will get lost in the hubbub and the people trying to share that truth with us will get shut down.
Koolaid drinkers like you, seroj, see Dan Rather as an evil Leftwing assassin who was stopped by the brave and concerted efforts of the Basement-Dwelling Pantload Squad. The rest of us know Rather had the facts on his side and was shut down because those facts were inconvenient to the Bushites.
After all, everybody knows it was far worse to protest Vietnam than to go AWOL and fail to finish your TANG commitment. Just like a White House blow job is much worse than outing a CIA agent, for example.
But just keep drinking that Koolaid. Now that it’s available in the new PaulBorg Grape flavor, it’s tastier than ever!…
Ron Paul less of a libertarian and more of a paleocon who really, really likes the 10th Amendment. See this pretty good article from Mother Jones, especially the Venn diagram at the bottom to see what I mean. Hes gets so much attention because hes the only anti-war Republican, and believe it or not there are Republicans who don’t like the war.
“The scary/creepy house down the street that was plastered with Bush posters in 2006 is now plastered with Ron Paul signs.”
Probably were Pat Buchanan supporters in 2000, and Perotistas before that. If George Lincoln Rockwell was still alive, he’d have that whole segment sewed up…
Mike,
Or, the lesson you could have learned is not to forge documents. The Ron Paul “newsletter” seems like a pretty clear hoax. Unless you have evidence otherwise, it’s time you S.T.F.U.
That right-wing blogs can get any story spiked no matter how true if they shout loud enough?
Hey, seroj: Vince Foster’s still alive in Ruby Ridge!
The death of Benazhir Bhutto is proof that even when you’re the former Prime Minister, men won’t take a woman seriously when she says she’s in danger.
“Hey, seroj: Vince Foster’s still alive in Ruby Ridge!”
Really? Do you have a 15 year old listserv proving that one true also?
Face it: You were taken in by a hoax. Just admit it and move on. If you had an actual newsletter you’d post it.
And ya gotta be proud of that David Duke endorsement, huh?
I’m not his biggest fan, but pointing out Ron Paul has the endorsement of Stormfronters reminds me of when the right wing photographs extremist signs carried by the ANSWER nutjobs at anti-war rallies. Its called guilt-by-association.
“Unless you have evidence otherwise, it’s time you S.T.F.U.”
Why should I need any more evidence to support an assertion that Ron Paul is a racist trojan horse than the Reichwing needs for any of its character assassinations?
Besides, if Vox Day is a Pauldroid, that should be enough proof for anybody…
Paul taps into this weird little subgroup of the single and double issue voters: the anti war, pro drug legalization libertarians.
They are otherwise uninterested in politics but they here about this Republican who wants to bring the boys home form Iraq and let them smoke weed and suddenly they’re all Che Guevara of Cleavland.
All other viewpoints are negotiable because it won’t effect them. But so long as they can smoke pot and stop having to think about Iraq, they’ll pull that lever and by God, don’t you get in the way of them or their blimp!
“Why should I need any more evidence to support an assertion that Ron Paul is a racist trojan horse than the Reichwing needs for any of its character assassinations?”
Well, I guess that is the best you can do, being that you believe something even though there is zero evidence that’s it’s true. I’m not sure you had any other way out.
At least you admit you are foolish.
Well, if you don’t like that quote, seroj–factual though it is–perhaps you can explain why the Paul campaign is all atwitter over an endorsement from Vox Day, asshole extraordinaire. It’s one thing to be endorsed by someone odious–a campaign can’t stop that from happening–it’s another to proudly display that endorsement on your campaign’s website.
If you follow the link it never gets to the actual article, other than to a posting to a 15 year old listserv.
It took me, like, a couple minutes on Google to find this. You could have done this yourself in probably the time it took you to write your several comments.
The link goes to a May 23, 1996 Houston Chronicle article quoting the 1992 newsletter; if the link does not work for you return to the Chronicle archives page and search for stories on that date containing “Paul”. The reporter in the article got a quote from a Ron Paul spokesperson, and– although my understanding is that Paul has since started claiming that particuler article was “ghostwritten”– the spokesperson did not at that time, for whatever reason, attempt to claim Ron Paul had not written the article. Instead the spokesperson only said that the statements were similar to statements made by Rev. Jesse Jackson.
“Well, I guess that is the best you can do, being that you believe something even though there is zero evidence that’s it’s true. I’m not sure you had any other way out.”
Hey, I’m just following in the well-worn footsteps of my Reichwing and religious forebears. After all, isn’t “He said it, I believe it and that settles it” the way the new America v2.0 works? It’s all about faith, and conviction, and the Triumph of the Will!!!
seroj, don’t you remember that 9/11 changed everything? That reality is what we want it to be? That we are at war with Eastasia, and we have always been at war with Eastasia?
Things George Bush KNOWS:
Terrorism is the greatest threat to mankind EVAR!!!
There WERE WMD in Iraq! That’s why we invaded!
We’re in Iraq to promote FREEDOM and DEMOCRACY!
We’re in Iraq to PREVENT CIVIL WAR!
All them guys in Gitmo ARE guilty! No trial needed!
Waterboarding in NOT torture!
We NEED to torture people to SAVE AMERICA!
We are NOT spying on Americans!
We need to monitor all phone calls, all emails, and all use of the intertubes to KEEP AMERICA SAFE!
Bill Clinton did it TOO!
Abraham Lincoln DID IT!
Global Warming is a hoax!
Valerie Plame was not a secret agent!
The president is the KING OF AMERICA!
Besides, as a Randroid/”libertarian” yourself, you have no leg to stand on when it comes to standards of proof for anything. Plus, the Koolaid will make everything better (or at least end the pain of living). Drink up! And have an extra gulp for me. You deserve it…
seroj, the authenticity of the Killian documents is rather (cough) beside the point. The underlying, undeniable realities of Bush’s failure to fulfil his service, his refusal to fight in Vietnam, and his repeated preferential treatment are well known. It is also inarguable that documents which would support Bush’s account have not been released by the Bush administration. If I recall correctly they have been “lost” or “destroyed” and that such problems in recovery are inconsistent with the normally scrupulous record-keeping for comparable documents of the same era.
Um, seroj, if the bit from the Ron Paul Survival Report is a forgery, then why didn’t Paul say that, instead of saying that it was the fault of some random staffer writing under Paul’s own byline? Surely, if it was forged, he’d have said so in his denial?
“Um, seroj, if the bit from the Ron Paul Survival Report is a forgery, then why didn’t Paul say that, instead of saying that it was the fault of some random staffer writing under Paul’s own byline? Surely, if it was forged, he’d have said so in his denial?”
Nobody has produced the newsletter. The best source, apparently, is a 1996 Houston Chronicle article about the newsletter. In that article Paul claims that he never wrote those quotes.
If the quotes are “Ron Paul Verbatim” as the headline reads, then you need some proof. If you can prove it, then fantastic. I’ll believe you.
You aren’t even close yet.
I am of a mixed mind about the swell of support for Ron Paul. On the one hand it indicates that many conservatives are no longer being taken in by big-government, anti-freedom neo-conservatism. Which I think indicates an opening for liberals. OTOH, in general, while our national discourse needs authentic conservative voices (e.g. a conservative voice would say about the war in Iraq — “should we really do it? shouldn’t we wait and see a little bit more?”), I also fear the larger implications of a return to paleo-conservatism.
I sometimes fear that the wave of support for Ron Paul is an embodiment of my concerns expressed some time before Ron Paul mania began.
Here is perhaps a good analogy. The National Enquirer is running stories that John Edwards has recently gotten his girlfriend pregnant. None of the MSM have covered it. The only person I’ve read who has really fallen for it is Mickey Kaus.
Is it true? I have no idea. I think I’ll wait a little while until I see some proof.
Maybe you should do the same with regards to a mysteriously missing 1992 newsletter.
The best source, apparently, is a 1996 Houston Chronicle article about the newsletter. In that article Paul claims that he never wrote those quotes.
No such claim appears in the Houston Chronicle article.
Seroj, I wonder if you were and are this persistent in quibbling about the assorted lies coming out of the political right in America. I doubt it. You fit the right wing pattern very nicely. The left is held to a 100% accuracy and proof standard, and is disbelieved even if they are met, and doubly disbelieved if they are correct. The right is entitled to say what it wants and demand that anything it says be repeated without examination. The whole prove it prove it prove it! stream shown here is entirely representative.
I think that we’re done jumping through your hoops. You disprove it. If you can disprove it, then fantastic. we’ll believe you. You aren’t even close yet.
Yup, I’m getting a stronger feeling of late that Ron Paul supporters are the Branch Davidians of ‘07-’08.
“I think that we’re done jumping through your hoops. You disprove it. If you can disprove it, then fantastic. we’ll believe you. You aren’t even close yet.”
Ok, I will disprove that Ron Paul wrote those things. No such copy of it exists. Not even a fossil record.
Gee, that was pretty easy.
“The National Enquirer is running stories that John Edwards has recently gotten his girlfriend pregnant.”
Now wait just a minute. Ann Coulter says John Edwards is gay, but the Enquirer says he fathered a child with his mistress? Those are both incredibly trustworthy sources…what do I believe now?…
“The right is entitled to say what it wants and demand that anything it says be repeated without examination.”
seeker, don’t you understand that they are THE RIGHT? That means ALWAYS CORRECT!
Geez, why do I have to spell it out for you?…
seroj: if you want to find that newsletter, look on WorldCat. It’s out there and you can order it through inter-library loan. Look under “Racial terrorism” as part of the title and Ron Paul as author. The listing is there. I’m sure you can get a photocopy for a nominal fee. Though you may not need it, you probably have the whole series in your mother’s basement, next to your bed.
“Yup, I’m getting a stronger feeling of late that Ron Paul supporters are the Branch Davidians of ‘07-’08.”
Anybody else want to chip in to buy them a compound in Waco?…
child with his mistress? Those are both incredibly trustworthy sources…what do I believe now?… - MikeEss
Both of them.
“You’re kissing a girl? That’s so gay!” … Simpsons
No, he does not. The article says: his written commentaries about blacks came in the context of “”current events and statistical reports of the time.”.
He later claimed that it was written by a staffer, but that he takes “moral responsibility” for his words. So Ron Paul himself has admitted that those words were published under his name, which makes your assertion that it’s a hoax pretty ridiculous.
(You have to be a subscriber to Texas Monthly to see the actual source, but his comments are mentioned in this New York Times article and on the Ron Paul Wikipedia page).
MikeEss– Scariest thing about these folks if, they’ll volunteer to bring their own lighter fluid and Zippos.
seroj, in 1996 Paul directly addressed and qualified the 1992 statement.
“Gee, that was pretty easy.” Everything’s easy, dear, if one follows your model of not caring whether you get it right or wrong.You can find a copy in the UC Davis library. My prior comment is either in moderation or has disappeared. But the title search on WorldCat should be: Race terrorism with Ron Paul as author. If you just search under author, among many other interesting titles, you will find his different volumes of his newsletter under various but similar titles. However, I saw no library that had the whole run. Here is the citation from UC Davis:
Author Paul, Ronald N.
Title Race terrorism in America / by Ron Paul.
Published Houston, Tex. : Ron Paul Survival Report, c1993.
Description 12 p. ; 22 cm.
Record format BK Book
Check Availability All items
Call no. Shields Special Collections P-008 62:35
Note Cover title.
Per.Sub. King, Rodney.
Subject Riots — California — Los Angeles.
African Americans — California — Los Angeles.
Add.Entry Ron Paul Survival Report.
Local Added Entry Walter Goldwater Radical Pamphlet Collection
Okay. We’ve established that the article exists, that it is officially credited to Ron Paul, that Paul is on the record as having accepted moral responsibility for it but adding a caveat as to context.
seroj, do you still think that it doesn’t exist?
“seroj, do you still think that it doesn’t exist?”
He’s too busy saying “La La La…” while sticking his fingers in his ears…
seeker, I suspect that if seroj can’t see a hard copy with his own eyes, hold it with his own hands, watch Paul write it and sign his name to it, then he’ll insist it’s invented by Paul’s reptoid enemies.
MikeEss, Scott, I think that you are both correct, and both incorrect. Incorrect in that you momentarily forget the gameplan of the right’s acolytes:
(1) Insist that a given issue is important.
(2) Assert that your view on the issue is correct and your opponent(s) wrong.
(3) Take the position that your assertions are valid on their face, but your opponents’ assertions must be proven and re-proven to a scientific level of certainty.
(4) If convincingly proven to be wrong, move on and insist that it was never important.
(5) Pick something new and repeat steps 1 through 4.
“Ron Paul says the Earth is flat! That’s insane!”
“Lord Paul never said that! You can’t prove he said that!”
“Here’s an article where it quotes him saying ‘The Earth is flat, and dragons live in the sea!’ See that quote?”
“Bah! You can’t trust the papers. They lie about Lord Paul! There’s no proof he really said that!”
“Look, here’s a video of Ron Paul saying the same thing, plus he insists that Bruce Wayne is Superman!”
“Lord Paul would never say that! You can do anything with special effects!”
“Look, both of us just left an event where Ron Paul made a speech and said all that stuff, plus he claimed that magic imps from the Magical Land of Zoop would heal the economy with the eggs of the Binkly Bird. You heard him say that!”
“Ohh, yeah. Well, I agree with him. You can’t prove that the Binkly Bird doesn’t exist, can you? Heretic.”
Close readers of the National Enquirer will note that the article itself does not accuse Edwards of fathering the child. Rather, it says (a) an Edwards staffer became preganant because of an affair with a married man, (b) that married man is someone who, after a brief flurry of speculation, admitted to being the father, (c) this admission was a “curious/stunning” development, and (d) the staffer is leaving the campaign to move to north carolina in order to avoid scrutiny. The Enquirer is one of those annoying yet amusing tabloids which makes sure to create “big stories” over a set of otherwise mediocre facts.
In any case, no one claims that the Ron Paul quote is a forgery. They just claim that the article was written under Paul’s name by a staffer of Paul’s, without Paul’s knowledge. Sometimes people also claim that the staffer was fired for this.
“seeker, I suspect that if seroj can’t see a hard copy with his own eyes, hold it with his own hands, watch Paul write it and sign his name to it, then he’ll insist it’s invented by Paul’s reptoid enemies.”
No, that would be good enough for me.
However, a 1996 Houston Chronicle article and an entry to the UC Davis library is not exactly the air tight case you were hoping for.
But keep digging.
you distrust librarians? man you’re an ass.
“you distrust librarians? man you’re an ass.”
It’s a library ENTRY. What’s in the book itself?
Jessica reminds me of people who point to the existence of Hillary’s undergraduate thesis and someone know what it contains without having ever read it.
Well, gee, there’s a Ron Paul book at UC Davis, ergo the Ron Paul quotes are real.
Who’s really doing the digging?
seroj, thank you but you’ve proved my point.
You go on and believe what you do or don’t want to believe, but it’s proven, which leaves us two possibilities. First, you are a genuine denialist idiot, in which case, it’s not worth talking further to you. Second, you are being deliberately obtuse and provocative and working from a tired right wing script, in which case, it’s not worth talking further to you.
I personally believe the latter. It is abundantly clear that you are not arguing in good faith.
Ron Paul is interesting because he brings ideas to the table that are strictly forbidden by The Villagers. Some of these ideas are batshit crazy, but some are well worth discussing, such as a purely defensive military posture, ending drug prohibition, and a few others.
It would be nice to see these ideas coming from a candidate who wasn’t also a racist, misogynists wackjob, but given that one way or the other racism, misogyny, and wackjobbery will be all over our TV screens throughout that campaign season, I’m at least a little relieved that there are some peanuts in the shit.
the name is jessi, kthx. and the article is all over the fucking internet, everywhere, and paul, while he now denies writing it, fucking admits to publishing it.
so if you want to pretend it isn’t real, more power to you, alot of people like to pretend. but here in reality paul already admitted publishing it.
With the sort of evidence seroj wants, he could graduate to Holocaust denial. In fact, it would be a good thing to start looking into the debate, since rousing discussions about it are sure to come up at the next Ron Paul fundraiser drive…
That’s the whole point, mass. In the right wing world, only progressives are obliged to prove truths, no matter how often or convincingly they are already proven. The right is obliged to prove nothing, save their skill at attacking people who question even their more egregious lies.I strongly recommend that we stop feeding the troll now.
See, seroj says he won’t believe it unless he sees the hard copy with his own eyes.
seroj is a troll.
Let the ignoring of the dishonest master debater begin.
seroj: You can order a copy of it through inter-library loan. Once you have it, you can report back to us. Even though it is in special collections, they may very well make a photocopy for you, for only a nominal fee, your allowance may cover it. And you may be able to do this without even leaving the basement!
Finally, you are the only Paul supporter (yeah, we know, you don’t actually support him) who denies the existence of the publication. The Paul campaign and his supporters now insist that he did not author the article and that, though he did not disavow it at the time, it does not represent his beliefs. But you know that. You’re just hear to derail the thread.
y’kno, we got so distracted by the troll that nobody even bothered to comment on how fucking insane someone has to be to write something called “The Ron Paul Survival Report” in the first place.
i mean, survival report, seriously? what exactly are we in dire need of surviving? is it like a boy scout manual? will it teach us how to build campfires and tie different knots?
the man is fucking batshit.
Now (briefly) in Seroj’s defense, some of the initial offerings of proof were a little weak. But the fact that Ron Paul has acknowledged that quote as being published in his newsletter should be enough.
If it was untrue, any reasonable person can conclude that he would have said as much, though he probably wouldn’t have been required to produce the actual quote.
But Paul owns up to it. Being well aware of how often the press gets things wrong and how many things are mis-quoted and mis-reported, that’s enough for me. He claims it as being published by him. It exists, and it says what Amanda says it does. The only thing left to debate is whether or not Paul is lying when he says he didn’t write it.
Being wrong doesn’t make you an idiot. Clinging to a mistake and denying it being a mistake in the face of evidence does make you an idiot though. Just sayin’.
“y’kno, we got so distracted by the troll that nobody even bothered to comment on how fucking insane someone has to be to write something called “The Ron Paul Survival Report” in the first place.”
I’m waiting for either The Paul Diaries or his magnum opus: My Struggle…
“But the fact that Ron Paul has acknowledged that quote as being published in his newsletter should be enough.”
Where does Ron Paul acknowledge that the quotes listed above were published by his newsletter? Nobody has linked to that yet, unless you count an extraordinarily vague Houston Chronicle article from 1996.
Now, I know we are just supposed to believe ever single thing we read on the internet. But these quotes do not sound like like they were written by someone in 1992 who was serving in the US House.
All this acrimony for somebody for whom double digits in a primary would be an unattainable wet dream.
That being said, I have seen his signs in very non-outlying places around Austin. He’s probably polling at about 100% amongst cable access talk show producers.
Ah yes, 1992. I remember those days well. The first flying car had just taken off, I bought my first robot maid, and racism had been abolished for over a decade now. Good times.
In any case, no one claims that the Ron Paul quote is a forgery.
“Seroj” attempts to claim exactly this in a multiple places above. I will accept the argument, should you choose to make it, that seroj is “no one”.
They just claim that the article was written under Paul’s name by a staffer of Paul’s, without Paul’s knowledge.
So now we’re getting somewhere! But darn, even the fact that was able to happen says some fascinating things about what kind of public figure Ron Paul is.
And it fits an interesting pattern, that seems to just come up again and again in defenses of Paul. If Ron Paul votes against something, like say a congressional medal for Rosa Parks, that doesn’t mean he’s against the thing he voted against, it’s just that he votes against everything. If Ron Paul submits a constitutional amendment, say against flag burning, that doesn’t mean he supports the bill he endorsed, it’s just that Paul submits bills sometimes to make the other Republicans vote against it. If Ron Paul publishes something, with his name on it, in a newsletter, because apparently not everything with Ron Paul’s name on it was actually written by him and we apparently can’t hold him responsible for the things he publishes under his own name.
In all cases it seems to be that Ron Paul can’t be nailed down to standing for anything he did, said, or wrote. And since we don’t ever seem to get terribly explicit clarifications by Paul after the fact– it would be nice if for example it were as easy to find the exact wording of Paul’s semi-retraction, or even better a statement by Paul that goes beyond “I didn’t write that article” and into an explicit “I disagree with that article”– the general effect seems to be to almost completely obscure what Paul’s positions actually are on basically any subject besides the Iraq War. Overall if we want to know who Ron Paul is or what he stands for, it seems we’re supposed to be limited to only the way he wants himself to be seen on the campaign trail, or failing that just default to the most positive interpretation his supporters can come up with on the spur of the moment.
Since, of course, Paul’s actions only seem to go all vague like this when those actions embarrass him. Unlike his vote against the Rosa Parks medal, we’re supposed to interpret Paul’s vote against the Patriot Act as legitimately opposing the Patriot Act. If Paul introduces legislation to end the Iraq war, then unlike the constitutional amendment to ban flag-burning we’re supposed to interpret this as legitimately wanting to end the Iraq War. And so on. One cannot help but suspect Paul is the perfect candidate here– he’s all things to all people, since if there’s something you like you can get all excited about it, if there’s something you don’t like there’s always some excuse why it doesn’t count.
Ron Paul himself isn’t a whackjob, but he seems to attract a lot of whackjobs–from the right (racists, North American Union conspiracists) and the left (9/11 conspiracists).
I don’t think hes a racist, a conspriacy theorist, or a nutbag himself.
Having said that, I will say hes not very careful about who he associates with. I think hes being taken advantage of by nutjobs who project their own fantasies onto his candidacy.
Mcc-
IRRC he would have voted for the Rosa Parks medal if every member of Congress agreed to contribute to the cost out of their own pockets instead of using taxpayer money.
If you think thats coded racism, well, he also voted against a Congressional medal for himself for precisely the same reason.
he wrote something called “The Ron Paul Survival Report”
that makes him a whackjob. end of story.
If hes a whackjob, so is Cindy Sheehan. End of story.
“Having said that, I will say hes not very careful about who he associates with. I think hes being taken advantage of by nutjobs who project their own fantasies onto his candidacy.”
There were people who said the same of Reagan, and there are some who say it of the current occupant.
I guess it just comes down to this:
Accountability. It’s important for everybody! (except Republicans, Randroids, and Libertarians…)
mcc, my comment was address at seroj. Perhaps I should have used the phrase “no one but you” or “No Ron Paul supporters…”
What was so stunning was not that seroj was trying to defend the article by disavowing Paul’s responsibility, but that he, completely out of thin air, claimed it was a forgery when no one else, not even Ron Paul himself was claiming that. It indicated to me he’s either appallingly ignorant and an obstinate jerk.
Mike Ess–
I’ve defended Cindy Seehan from right-wingers for much the same reason I defend Ron Paul. I think both are cases of a naieve person being taken advantage of by group of professional whackjobs*.
*In Sheehans case I don’t mean regular, anti-war people like you and I. I mean the ANSWER crowd.
Tyro, that’s a false dichotomy. (Thank you, thank you.)Atomic, Paul presents himself as a serious candidate for president, after having been a congressman for some years.
He wants the biggest job in the country, then he should step up and take responsibility for his choices and the choices of his people. After all, The Buck Stops Here, right?
Comparing Paul to Sheehan makes no sense…
seroj never argues from good faith or has anything relevant to say (and refuses to admit when he’s been completely owned like he has on this thread). Every time he opens his sexist pig mouth it’s an attempt to derail a thread. Why has he not been bunnied yet?
@ MikeEss
Very few things a Ron Paul supporter says make sense. Ever. Talk about denying reality.
I think that MikeEss makes a good point, though, about those who seek to minimize or softpedal some of Paul’s more extreme views. Such apologists are trying to suck and blow at the same time, in that they want to be able to refine and limit and caveat-to-death those of Paul’s views which seem to hurt him, whilst lauding to the skies those (equally strongly-held) views of Paul which politically help him. In essence they are trying to stand on two trains going in opposite directions: the He Means What He Says! (Express) to the White House and the But That’s Not What He Meant! (Local, stopping at Racism, Isolationism & Sexism) away from same.
i had no clue there was a “The Cindy Sheehan Survival Report”. could you point me in the direction of this publication, or can i just find it with the google? i’m quite curious, i mean, this could be the girl scout manual to ron paul’s boy scout manual!
“Comparing Paul to Sheehan makes no sense…”
Ok, if 9/11 conspiracy theorists and the ANSWER crew favored Dennis Kuccinuch, would that make Kuccinuch guilty by association too?
I have a lot of problems with Paul, and I’m pretty much a small-l libertarian. But calling him a racist or a branch davidian is a bit of a cheap shot.
What is kind of ironic is that so many of the comments that have blasted Paul for propping up stereotypes are doing the SAME thing to his followers. Obviously not all AA’s are criminals, and not all Ron Paul followers are conspiracy theorists.
Stereotypes are stereotypes are stereotypes
Theres no “Cindy Sheehan Survival Report” but shes strongly associated with ANSWER, a front of the Stalinist World Workers Party that are professional aplogists for Fidel Castro and Kim Jung Il. Shes also very cozy with the authoritarian Hugo Chavez.
If you think those aren’t whacked out views well, then, get help.
But no, I don’t think shes a whackjob. Shes been taken advantage of by a group of professional nutjobs. I think the same thing is happening with Ron Paul.
see, you’re missing my reason for calling paul crazy. i am ignoring his guilt by association. i am concerned by the fact that he appears to believe we are in dire danger of something and hence published a guide for survival. all i can infer from reading the quoted bits of the newsletter is that we are in dire need of surviving the black menace. which is, of course, batshit.
oh, and then theres the fact that he thinks Lincoln was wrong to fight the civil war.
He said it was ghostwritten, which suggests not racism but that he isn’t careful about who he associates with.
The thing he probably is worried about is the increasing size and scope of the state, not blacks. At least I’d assume it until he makes a public speech talking about the black menace. When he does that, let me know. If he were such an awful racist you think he’d be on CNN every day speaking of “negroes in our swimming pools” a la Strom Thurmond.
Ok, you got me there. Thats a crazy view, but its a very common one among southern white males over 70.
Tyro: Ah, I see.
AtomicFruitbat: I don’t think Paul’s voting against the Rosa Parks medal indicates any disapproval of Rosa Parks, or that his vote was coded anything. That’s the problem– his vote communicates nothing, coded or otherwise. My point is that with Paul apparently we can’t use most of the indicators we normally use to judge the positions of an elected official, and I consider this troubling. Exacerbating problems are that, although his public record is littered with these “don’t count”s, his public record is being used in some cases as a point in his favor, and when that happens it apparently does count– and here’s the tricky part, it seems likely to me that there are some people who are supporting Paul because of his stances on some issue or other which, for other supporters, would be a “don’t count”.
It seems to me that people who support Ron Paul, in general, have no idea what it is they’re actually supporting. But even if they’re not sure what that thing they’re supporting is, by supporting it, by insisting it’s not crazy really, they’re in their small way granting it a certain amount of legitimacy. Legitimacy for what?
MCC–
Thats a good point, and I think its preciseley the reason why he attracts certain nutjobs as part of his support. They can project anything they want onto his record, even if he doesn’t really share their views.
Ron Paul sponsored a bill to define life at fertilization and has gone on record as against evolution.
Whack. Job. Seriously. It’s the 21st century.
He said it was ghostwritten, which suggests not racism but that he isn’t careful about who he associates with.
A man this undiscerning about the company he keeps still doesn’t belong anywhere near the Oval Office.
A statement that applies even more so to JFK, which is another debate... and Warren Harding and U.S. Grant, now that we’re on topic.
Seeker, that particular political disease seems to affect a lot of Presidents. Even George Washington, since Hamilton manipulated him to nefarious ends in his second term.
Anyway, to anyone who thinks Ron Paul is some kind of great representative of libertarianism, I once again direct them to the excellent Mother Jones article I linked to above.
Be sure to pay attention to the venn diagram at the bottom.
Since Mother Jones is a lefty magazine, you can trust that it is in no way biased towards a libertarian viewpoint.
Which brings me to a point that I have made repeatedly: there is a huge overlap on social issues between progressives and what we can call civil issues libertarians. Both give considerable importance to the notion that people living their own lives should, absent demonstrable harm (and perceived moral harm is not demonstrable real harm) to the people around them, be left the hell alone to do what they want. The problem for the likes of us here at Pandagon is not only that the economic libertarians get a vastly disproportionate amount of the press, they are also the ones most likely to show up and spout fetishistic, masturbatory nonsense about free markets. (It’s not as if that mistake is limited to the fools on the EL side. Amanda ofen uses the word “libertarian” as if restricted to that element alone, ignoring the ferociously good work of people like Radley Balko in exposing the militarization of police forces, the lunacies of drug policies, police and official misconduct and false arrest and imprisonment cases.)
Agreed. It is also why Bush is so different from his predecessors. Most of them were either exploited by, deceived by or turned a blind eye to rampant corruption and incompetence. The Bush Administration is actively set up not only to make such things happen, but to make them normal.It really is not trolling to ask that “verbatim” comments be appropriately sourced. There is nothing liberal, conservative or political about proper sourcing.
This post links to another blog post, which in turn links to another blog post, which in turn links to another blog post, which in turn links to another blog post. Only the last of those posts includes any sort of attribution or sourcing whatsoever, and as the blog posts progress they strip out more and more of the original context until all that is left is the outrageous money quote.
Good writing is good writing and shitty writing is shitty writing. It’s important to recognize shoddy work even when that work is aligned with your political beliefs. If you refuse to do that you are nothing more than a partisan hack looking to score points.
This post sucked. That doesn’t mean Ron Paul is awesome.
A HRC is the candidate of choice of the military industrial complex.
Margalis, your point may have been appropriate much earlier in the thread. As it progressed, however, seroj’s demand for proper proof was met and then some and more, resulting not in a concession of validity but snottier demands for more proof. “It really is not trolling to ask that “verbatim” comments be appropriately sourced” but it is trolling to refuse to admit them when they are.
As for HRC, you will find a surprisingly small number of fans here. Shillary is a bar-coded Village pol and this is a populist, progressive blog. They go ill together. Presidential candidate-wise, the most baffling thing here is Amanda’s continued dedication to that gutless wonder who followed up his 2004 polishing of Cheney’s belt buckle with his spineless abandonment of both Marcotte and McEwan at the first sign of right wing bile.
Yes there is. The only person who voted against the “Patriot” Act in the Senate was a liberal (Paul Wellstone), and may he rest in peace for having the courage to do it.
That said, I think libertarian views on civil liberties and libertarian views on economics are closely intertwined, but I’m not going to threadjack.
AIUI, seroj’s argument is basically, “It’s obviously a hoax, because the quote is racist, and Ron can’t be a racist because everybody knows he’s a libertarian”.
This interesting construction raises huge new vistas in revisionist history. For instance, when Osama bin Laden says he was inspired to attack the U.S. by Ronald Reagan’s abrupt withdrawal of our troops from Beirut, that’s an obvious lie, because everyone knows Ronald Reagan was a stand-up he man, stronger than the Bear. So never mind Reagan’s signature on the order to evacuate, obviously Reagan didn’t do it.
Maybe it’s just me, but if someone questioned the veracity of something I believed the very next thing I posted would be proof.
If nothing else it saves a lot of idle chatter. You can find a transcript of the newsletter in question here:
http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/people/g/ftp.py?people/g/gannon.dan/1992/gannon.0793
Yes, it certainly could be fake, but there are limits on the amount of verification you can perform over the internet, even a direct scan would not please some people.
I would make two comments about it:
1. It’s very unlikely that the text was actually written by Ron Paul himself and it’s more than a little naive to think that something called “The Ron Paul Political Report” is directly from the pen of Ron Paul. I get email from Chris Dodd all the time — yet I suspect that Chris Dodd is not actually writing the emails. Even calling it “ghostwritten” is a bit of a misnomer. Staffers put this sort of stuff together all the time, that’s what they are paid for. It certainly helps someone opposed to Ron Paul to pretend that Ron Paul said these words “verbatim” but realistically speaking he probably didn’t. That’s just how the world works, and recognizing how the world operates is important even when it detracts from your slam-dunk argument.
2. The money quote above is just the tip of the iceberg. I don’t like the way that we look for damning soundbytes to hang people by. And in this case the entire thing is damning! It’s actually much worse than just the money quote above might indicate.
Staffers put this sort of stuff together all the time, that’s what they are paid for. It certainly helps someone opposed to Ron Paul to pretend that Ron Paul said these words “verbatim” but realistically speaking he probably didn’t.
Doesn’t matter. You put your name on a product like that, you’re responsible for what it says, and pawning it off on a staffer is pure cowardice.
The only thing left to debate is whether or not Paul is lying when he says he didn’t write it.
It doesn’t matter whether Paul personally wrote it, any more than it matters that George Bush doesn’t write his own speaches. If you allow your employees to publish something under your name in your newsletter, you’re responsible for what they say.
The “Axis of Evil” speach–what a foriegn policy blunder by David Frum!
There is no need to defend Ron Paul. Merely to see that all here apply the same standards to their own candidates.
Let’s see - Clinton, voted for the war in Iraq, and for a resolution increasing the possibility that Bush would bomb Iran. She’s thus one of those responsible for hundreds of thousands dead and injured and made into refugees. (Somewhat more significant than a Survival Report, IMO).
Obama - hasn’t done much of anything, including honoring his own pledge to support Senator Dodd’s filibuster of telecom amnesty. He’s thus one who is not for investigating and punishing illegal surveillance; he’s one who thinks at least one clause of the Bill of Rights is irrelevant. (Somewhat more significant than a Survival Report, IMO).
Shall we continue?
Actually, the relevant standard to apply would be, “what is the candidate likely to do in office, based on what they’ve done and said, particularly on the reasons they’ve given for their actions and other statements?”
And this is generally a very tricky guess to make, because history is full of candidates who had one kind of record and then, once in office, acted rather differently than that record might reasonably have predicted. Perhaps if Ron Paul got into office, he would live up to all the best features of Libertarianism (not that that would be great from my POV, but perhaps an improvement on business as usual). Maybe.
Generally the good rule is, they will live up to their track record or do worse, though sometimes they do better. With either Clinton or Obama I’d expect business as usual post-Reagan, and perhaps not even raising things back to pre-W standards. That would be bad.
With Edwards I might hope for real improvement, bearing in mind that such improvements would be mightily opposed by the powers that be. (But the power bases of the powers-that-be are getting mighty wobbly of late. Which is not necessarily good news–they might well panic.)
Now if Paul does pretty much what he and his supporters are telling us right now he would do, the results would be terrible.
If some other Republican got in, also terrible.
If you go by what they have in fact done while in office, none of these options look very good. I am going more by my sense of how far and in what directions any of them can be pushed, by us, toward more reasonable policies, versus being pushed by others in even worse directions. To me right now Edwards looks like the best combination of possibly electable times willingness to be pushed in the right directions, and I think we’d have more traction at least restraining any mainstream Dem from the worst and possibly moving them toward the better than any R, all of whom are promising to make things worse across the board, regardless of what they might secretly intend.
Re: “guilt by association” … in general it is wrong. You shouldn’t judge a candidate by who supports them.
However, it is fair to ask:
(1) Why do the people that support candidate X support her? What kind of dog-whistles might she be blowing that she gets the kind of supporters she does?
(2) Are these “associates” going to turn into staff members? A President is a chief executive. A large part of being a chief executive is delegating authority, responsibility and work to the right people. In practice a President often delegates authority to cronies, however … so it is fair to ask what kind of people does the Presidential candidate seem to hire and what kind of people are his cronies that he’s likely to hire. E.g. Clinton’s cronies tended to be more competent at governance than Bush’s cronies … which makes a huge difference.
(3) What is the general effect on our political discourse of having a candidate around whom wingnuts can rally and thus have their views injected into the mainstream? Barry Goldwater(*) may not have been a racist at all, but his candidacy gave voice to racists at a time when racism otherwise should have been going the way of the dodo bird. It re-enforced groundwork recently laid by the likes of Buckley (who had not yet had his operation hummingbird moment vis-a-vis the Birchers) and Podhoretz to provide a safe-haven in the conservative movement for racists, so long as they could be cryptic about it, and allowed that haven to be the GOP. We cannot call Goldwater a racist, but it is fair to put out that so many of his supporters were and that his candidacy gave them a renewed voice and haven.
Actually my take on Paul’s supporters is that they are a fairly diverse bunch. Some no doubt are racists. Some are actually fairly standard libertarians (who no doubt disagree with him on many issues) but don’t care (or don’t even know) how he stands on abortion, etc — they just support him precisely because, as was pointed out above, he’s talking about things the Villagers say one should not discuss.
That ideas outside of what the Villagers deem acceptable are being injected into the debate is something incredibly refreshing and important. One could argue, e.g., that part of the reason we are in Iraq is that the arguments against going into Iraq were fundamentally conservative (i.e. when in doubt, don’t make a #@$%ing change — e.g. by deposing Saddam Hussein), yet no so-called conservative was making them and we liberals sounded a bit odd making them. In that sense, the reintroduction of paleo-con voices is very refreshing.
OTOH, as I’ve blogged about, given some historical precidents, we have much to fear from a resurgence of paleo-conservatism. Maybe not from Ron Paul himself, but from into what directions the movement could easily go as a reaction to a certain kind of “activist” conservatism.
* Full disclosure — I received a Goldwater scholarship as an undergrad and am casually acquainted with his daughter Peggy.
If the quote is so off-base, why doesn’t Ron Paul openly and plainly disavow its content, e.g.,
Could it be that he does believe race plays a role in making somebody a criminal or “semi-criminal” Hmm?
I think we need address the “name’s on it but didn’t write it” notion. I cannot find the exact quote, but the issue came up in a discussion with Pierre Salinger as to whether or not he or JFK was the author of some of JFKs’ more famous speeches. Salinger responded — IIRC — that the author is the man whose name is on it and who bears responsibility for their contents. It was a tactful and delicate way of admitting that he wrote them but it was also a reminder that the President bore full responsibility for them and that responsibility very properly lay on his shoulders and not the shoulders of the man who penned the words.
The only person in the Senate who voted against the Patriot Act was Russ Feingold. Wellstone voted Yea.
1) criminal could mean took an apple, being a libertarian he may think it’s ok to shoot you if they see you doing that but he is incorrect.
2) violations of rights are committed by other people than black men, and not only a small percentage of mentally unstable others either.
3) there’s racism, sexism and other ways in which the law does not reflect people’s rights, rape conviction rates are 5 friggin percent.
4) I don’t trust anyone completely, not just who he thinks are the correct people for othering.
Oh, GOD! The Paulnuts showed up here, too!
Arun, you say we need to apply the same standards to our candidates yet you havent truly mentioned anyone the pandagonians seem to be rallying behind. i havent seen any rabid hillary supporters here, and the obama support has been weak. we dont like the same old shit any more than anybody else does, so no, your attempt fails.
plus, the hatred of women, people of color, the poor, and the LGBT community shown by paul is currently more important to me than the war. so there, i said it. if everyone here ends up back in some feudal slavestate we cant do a fucking thing to end the war, well be too busy fighting like dogs over scraps.
Accuracy matters. Don’t be like a wingnut and just make shit up because the end justifies the means.
Of course Ron Paul is responsible for it. However it is most likely not “verbatim” Ron Paul. Telling the truth is important even when you are one of the good guys looking to further your wonderful cause.
Misrepresentation is misrepesentation, and that does matter.
This is not a difficult concept: just because you have right on your side doesn’t mean you get to ignore reality. That’s what the Bush Administration believes, we should probably strive to do a bit better than that.
And Margalis immediately makes the illogical leap: You must be just like Bush because you don’t like Ron Paul and you’re not rolling over and letting me lie
Well, that settles it. OUT, TROLL.
Damian, I don’t think that Margalis is a troll; a perusal of his blog would seem to indicate otherwise.
I do think that he is having a massive attack of the quibbly nitpicks, almost to the point of parody. Without realizing it he is falling into a rightwing trap of holding progressives to ludicrously stratospheric standards of conduct whilst walking past infinitely more serious wrongs done by conservatives. It’s the blog equivalent of somebody berating a fireman for misaligned buttons whilst an arsonist burns other buildings.
And Margalis, I do think that you are also technically wrong. If Paul was responsible for that — and he is — then the use of the term “verbatim” applies. Amanda quoted what was in that Report “in exactly the same words; word for word…” in a manner “corresponding word for word to the original source or text”. If an exact quote from a document in Ron Paul’s Report over Ron Paul’s name as accredited author does not qualify as “verbatim” then little to nothing does.
I liked your blog. You seem like a sane and sensible person. But on this one you have committed an error to which I am more often prone: popping a small gasket on something on which you are actually in error.
It’s obvious if you read my blog that I am a rabid Paul supporter….
Yes, it is a minor nit. But language abuse is a real pet peeve of mine, even when that abuse is done for a good cause. The attitude that accuracy doesn’t matter as long as you have right on your side is a very dangerous one, as evidenced by the last 7 years.
I do tend to nit on the people on “my side”, but I do so in comments like this one rather than in my blog postings. I think that’s far better than doing the reverse.
I believe that sloppy language is both a cause and effect of sloppy thought. Or put another way:
Isn’t that exactly how the Republican noise machine works?
I’m about to start a regular series on my blog about exactly this subject.
“The only person in the Senate who voted against the Patriot Act was Russ Feingold. Wellstone voted Yea.”
I stand corrected. Its easy to confuse two upper mid-west liberal Senators with some measure of sanity on civil liberties issues.
Lord Seitan:
if everyone here ends up back in some feudal slavestate we cant do a fucking thing to end the war, well be too busy fighting like dogs over scraps.
In my point of view, unless we restore the Constitution, its checks and balances and the rule of law, all other causes are, in the long term, lost causes. It is the common understanding of how politics and government should work that is being lost, and once it is lost, we become Yugoslavia or Somalia or Iraq, a bunch of warring factions united only by geography. There will be no framework within which to address gender or race equality, interventionist foreign policy, health care, the wealth gap or anything else.
I support Ron Paul for the Republican nomination, but not for President; of the potential Republican nominees, he’s the only one who has repudiated Bush’s expansion of executive power. Heck, I’d vote for the ghost of Barry Goldwater before I voted for Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, or John McCain.
Thought experiment: The Republican Party gives you $10 million to distribute among the candidates for the Republican nomination. Which candidate do you give the money to?
Margalis, I think that you missed - or chose to miss, which is fine, I suppose — one of my points: that there was no language abuse here. You want to pick nits, fine. I won’t say I’m cool with that because I am a firm believer in attacking one’s enemies before quarreling with one’s friends. But the fact remains that Amanda Marcotte’s use of language was accurate, so we are left without nits to pick.
“Thought experiment: The Republican Party gives you $10 million to distribute among the candidates for the Republican nomination. Which candidate do you give the money to?”
Give the money to the mangled and broken soldiers whose lives have been ruined by Cheney’s war of conquest (and Bush’s Oedipus-complex). None of the Rethug candidates deserve a penny…
Okay, you’ve just been arrested for embezzlement, the money has been recovered, and given to someone else to distribute on behalf of the Republican party. In other words: you missed the point of the question.
If you want, you could try to figure out which of the Republican candidates is most likely to lose a general election, and support that one…
Arun, i can see the sense in that, definitely. but how is ron paul, who is opposed to something as basic to freedom as the 14th amendment, going to fix the constitution. were he elected he would do the same as any other candidate, he would pursue his own agenda, and his agenda hurts everyone who isnt a wealthy white heterosexual christian male. the guy is the living breathing embodiment of privilege, where becos he would do ok without basic safety nets, he assumes everyone would. mind you, thats me giving him the benefit of a doubt and for a minute here pretending that he isnt a hatemonger, but instead just blind to the way everyone else lives.
but, we already kno where ron paul stands on all of these issues, and his stance on all but one (interventionist foreign policy) will hurt everyone in this country who has ever been the “other”. i don’t kno enough about foreign policy to say anything definitive, and while i do agree we need to get our troops out of iraq, i’m not sure closing all of our military bases worldwide would be a good long term strategy.
i’ve got a big horse in this race, a chronic health condition i was due to have an operation for over 3 years ago, yet i have no health care. a candidate who opposes medicare and medicaid and who is vehemently opposed to universal healthcare and any regulation of the insurance companies is a candidate who is in so many words is telling me “tough luck, go die.” so while i respect your beliefs, were going to have to agree to disagree.
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Thought experiment: The Republican Party gives you $10 million to distribute among the candidates for the Republican nomination. Which candidate do you give the money to?
—
Doug, do you know anything about RP? Or are you another Paulbot troll. Absolutely anyone before Ron Paul. This is a liberal feminist blog. RP should be far more loathsome than other GOP candidate for anyone whose views are to the left of Ayn Fuckin Rand.
I would rather see one of the other Republican candidates elected over “Dr. Paul” and his rabid crew of climate change denying, gummint-hatin’, Enron-investing, “The Fountainhead”-clutching, corporatist, gun-collectin’, Greenspan-worshipping, tax-evading, free-market-fundamentalist militia nutketeers.
Luckily RP is about to crash and burn. RP supporters will soon go back to their bogus income tax schemes, gun fetishes, Wikipedia-editing, and Xboxes, a little poorer but wiser.
Sorensen, not Salinger.
I’m a single issue voter: I vote against whatever candidate the “Religious Right” supports.
According to the God-O-Meter, Ron Paul is less of a would-be theocrat than any of the other Republican candidates except maybe Fred Thompson.
Yes, Ron Paul is batshit insane. But to paraphrase a quote from To Kill a Mockingbird in which Atticus Finch explains his strategy for jury selection, “There’s not much difference between one man who’s going to be a theocratic dictator and another man who’s going to be a theocratic dictator. There’s a small difference between a man who’s going to be a theocratic dictator and a man who’s not right in the head.”
The current Republican party isn’t even a conservative party any more. It’s a theocratic party and a kleptocratic party. It’s gotten to the point where the spinning in Barry Goldwater’s grave could provide enough energy to end our country’s dependence on foreign oil. As far as I can tell, Ron Paul is the only Republican candidate to support a position - ANY position - other than what can accurately be described as “fascism carrying a cross”.
I’ll vote for any Democrat over Ron Paul, but I’d rather see Ron Paul get the Republican nomination than any of the theocrats. If it comes right down to it, I’m willing to throw many important issues under the bus if it means that we don’t get the Christian Taliban in power in 2008. To be blunt, if the only candidate that wants to repeal the Patriot Act, roll back the “security” state, renounce Bush’s blatant power grabs, and say “Fuck you” to the theocrats is also a “climate change denying, gummint-hatin’, Enron-investing, The Fountainhead-clutching, corporatist, gun-collectin’, Greenspan-worshipping, tax-evading, free-market-fundamentalist militia nutketeer”, well, then my vote goes to the “climate change denying, gummint-hatin’, Enron-investing, “The Fountainhead”-clutching, corporatist, gun-collectin’, Greenspan-worshipping, tax-evading, free-market-fundamentalist militia nutketeer.”
Hence, Any Democrat > Ron Paul > Any Other Republican.
It doesn’t matter, though, because there’s no way he’s winning the nomination anyway.