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Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
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May 27, 2007
Traction for Ron Paul? Be careful what you wish for
 Couple of new notes on Ron Paul. One is a libertarian lament about what kind of meat grinder Paul's going to be run through if he gains enough traction to be worth more than the few seconds of attention Giuliani gave him at the Fox debate. He's got decades worth of largely unexamined radical rhetoric to be used against him on all kinds of topics, apparently including some unappetizing racial stuff put out under his name.
The other is a small sign that he may in fact be getting a little traction. It's a clip from Bill Maher's show. PJ O'Rourke and Ben Affleck are discussing politics, but they're not what the audience is interested in. As Maher notes, he's got the big movie star Ben Affleck right there on stage - but the audience is whooping and hollering for the non-present Ron Paul whose name was only even being mentioned in passing.
Obviously, the Republican establishment would love to just quash the guy, throw him out of the debate loop and pretend he existed only long enough to give Giuliani an easy applause line. But he's created quite a buzz at this point, and clearly has a fair number of vocal supporters who hadn't even heard of him until the Fox debate. There's definitely a constituency for his views.
From this point on Memorial Day 2007, it seems that he's getting near to a point where they simply will not be able to deny him a seat at the table. Plus, as the broader public starts becoming more aware of him, he will likely start coming up in the polls. He's certainly not going to be nominated or elected, but just by being the only anti-war candidate in the Republican pack he could well pull voting percentages in the double digits - especially in states with open primaries. It wouldn't surprise me much at this point if he gets enough support and delegates to muscle his way into a speaking spot at the Republican convention.
In short, Paul is THE source of excitement in the Republican debate, and only likely to become more so as the public starts paying attention. The cheap attempts to suppress him after the South Carolina Fox debate have failed miserably. The likes of Michelle Malkin are not going to be able to make their conspiracy theorist smear stick, because that's just not what he's saying. He and his supporters are knocking that down handily.
But we'll see what happens when, say, Mitt Romney actually seriously answers his isolationist rhetoric. There's certainly good wisdom in considering how we might be making things worse rather than better with SOME of our extensive foreign military entanglements. But Paul takes that all the way to the wall on principle. His entire foreign policy consists of worldwide military withdrawal, on the frankly asinine presumption that Islamist enemies will just leave US alone if we leave them alone. I for one look forward to seeing how this sometimes valid but extremely simplistic viewpoint stands up to serious scrutiny based on applying it to the real world problems of America 2007.Labels: ron_paul
posted by Al at 5/27/2007 12:38:00 PM
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