It comes as no surprise that Ron Paul is an isolationist, and an ignorant one at that, Ed. But my question would be, why do we keep turning over the rock he's hiding under, as if infinitely fascinated by the grotesqueness of the Ron Paul movement? The field is cloudy enough without wasting time and effort on candidates that aren't.
captained
· 2 years ago
Well, my time, my effort. I also think that one has to address these points when made on national TV. Also, I'm betting that Paul goes independent after he loses the primaries, and we'll want the record on statements like this to be substantial.
TomHolmes
· 2 years ago
I would agree Captain, if only the Ron Paul supporters seemed to have any gag reflex whatsoever. They are prepared to follow their candidate to hell and stay there with him. As far as needing to gather ammo to discredit him, gosh I don't know how much more room there is in the armory.
captained
· 2 years ago
Anyone who raises almost $20 million in a quarter isn't insignificant. That makes it even more imperative to turn over the rock, as you put it. If he's gaining that kind of support, then we need to look at his positions, statements, and actions very closely.
AW1Tim
· 2 years ago
Cap'n,
What i think is even more important is finding out just WHO was sending him that kind of money. The Clintons are in hot water for getting multiple donations from Hsu, who laundered them through various others to escape detection. It wouldn't surprise me in the least to see the same sort of thing at play in this case.
carol H
· 2 years ago
I assume Paul will be running for his house seat regardless if he has an independent Presidential run. Can he be on the ballot as a Republican for the Congessional seat while on ballot as Presidential candidate?
Also I gathered that Paul supports term limits and yet danced around when Russert asked him how he could seeing he has be a rep. for 18 years?
So who would Paul must affect as an independent? Would he take more from the loony left or the far right? All I know is I won't bother to vote if Huckabee is on ballot for the GOP.
AW1Tim
· 2 years ago
Carol,
I feel the same way. For the very first time in my life, I've reached a point where I can honestly see myself staying home on election day due to the lack of any decent candidates. If Thompson makes the ballot, then I'll vote. Anything else and I might as well buy a bottle and get drunk for the next four years.
burt
· 2 years ago
A couple of us are going to write in James Madison and Milton Friedman if either Huckabee or McCain are nominated. I guess we should add Paul to the list.
Christoph
· 2 years ago
Hear, hear.
TyCaptains
· 2 years ago
If he does indeed go independent, say goodbye to any chance for a Republican presidency - Perot resurrected.
richard mcenroe
· 2 years ago
"I like how Ron Paul points to the Constitution on a regular basis."
I'd like it better if he showed any more understanding of the document than does, say, Larry Flynt of the Bible...
Larry Patty
· 2 years ago
When I was a member of the NRA, Ron Paul was regularly soliciting me for money to fight gun control, even more often then the NRA. I didn't need to be a rocket scientist to figure out I was being scammed. As for his followers, the more I hear and see of them the more I think that Lyndon LaRouche's nuts were tame by comparison.
Mark_Sprengel
· 2 years ago
I couldn't believe he made that comment either. I hope his more rational supporters rethink who they're putting their effort into.
Fight4TheRight
· 2 years ago
Mark,
You make a good point here but I wonder if this will really affect his supporters at all. It seems to me that one of the "allures" to Ron Paul is his head-in-the-sand approach to the rest of the world. I believe there are a number of people out there supporting this whack job that agree with him in his earlier claims that if the U.S. hadn't been in the Middle East, that bin Laden wouldn't have attacked us and thus, they won't care if he misspeaks on Iran as it just doesn't matter to them. They want isolation and that alone. In my view, any gaffe that Paul makes about foreign policy loses him nary a supporter - where he will lose support is if he shows any tendency towards bigger government or globalization.
SDN
· 2 years ago
Actually, Ron Paul's foreign policy positions come straight out of the Libertarian Party platform..... which is why I no longer support that party. After 9/11, this country can't afford it. Note that I'm joined by such ex-LPers as Neal Boortz, and for the same reason.
CDR_M
· 2 years ago
Whoever said that should not hold office in the US of A. I would seriously consider getting out of the military if this person attained the Presidency.
Christoph
· 2 years ago
If Paul's commenter army can't abide criticism of their candidate, that tells the rest of us quite a bit about the maturity of this movement. I don't get anywhere near the level of abuse from those who support Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or John Edwards when I criticize them. If the Paul commenters don't think people notice this, they are very much mistaken.
Hear, hear!
If Paul's supporters want him to be taken seriously, then they should consider how their behavior reflects on their candidate.
I'd care more about this if their candidate wasn't meeting with white supremacists and refusing to give back their money. Also writing racist newsletters criticizing blacks. And making anti-Semitic statements.
Now denying Iran has a sizeable military? Puh-leze!
AW1Tim
· 2 years ago
Christoph,
Absolutely. It's amazing to me how selective his supporters are when it comes to their candidte's words and actions. They cherry pick his remarks to make their case in supporting him, then go on hysterical attacks to defend their own flawed arguments. The standard attack starts with ad hominum and goes down quickly from there.
Worst is if they get ahold of your email addy. You'll NEVER get rid of all the spam they'll send you, and most of it has HUGE attachments to boot.
Respects,
pk
· 2 years ago
aaay tim.
i listen to talk shows on the radio a bit (a curse of being retired) and the people that seem call in support of paul or the guy from arkansas seem to have just to professional a turn of phrase to their sentances and its just as if they had a ready, approved and transcribed answer to questions and comments.
just as if they were extremely well rehearsed, not the down homies that they purport to be.
C
mlvezie
· 2 years ago
Ron Paul's response in the You Tube debate question as to whether he would run as an independent (he said he wouldn't, because he still wanted his congressional seat) reminded me of the councilman in Robocop who, holding the mayor hostage, demanded, "And third, I want a recount! And no matter how it turns out, I want my old job back! "
But seriously, what would the effect be of his running as an independent be? Would he take votes away from the Republicans or Democrats? If his supporters are as nutty as they seem to be, I can't help but wonder if they just wouldn't vote for anyone else if he didn't run, thus making his independent campaign a non-event.
gregdn
· 2 years ago
I'm sure he was speaking figuratively, and probably comparing their forces to ours and the Israelis. I don't know much about their army, but their air force is a joke.
Tom Holsinger
· 2 years ago
It is true that Iran does not have an army in the Western sense. Rather Iran has multiple regime protection forces all of which watch each other. Iran's nominal "army", let alone its nominal navy and air force, lack the military capability of significantly impeding an American invasion. Logistics would be a much greater impediment. The other regime protection forces would also impede an American invasion much more effectively than Iran's nominal "army", albeit logistic impediments would still be dominant.
The major diffference between Iran's "army" and the other regime protection forces is that the "army" would not resist us after the mullah regime is eliminated, while the other regime protection forces would.
Iran's mullah regime is quite aware that its "army" is likely to be the chief source of cadres for the army of a replacement regime installed by the U.S., and have done their level best to eliminate this potential threat by eliminating their "army's" military capability.
SwabJockey05
· 2 years ago
Great points TH. Reminds me of a few years ago when I went to a meeting in Cent America where each Cent American country sent a couple military representatives. Costa Rica sent a "police officer". They were very proud of the fact that Costa Rica didn't have a "military". Mentioned it several times....however, after a few drinks, the Costa Rican "police" major admitted that his "police" had tanks...and anti-aircraft weapons....(some more modern than their neighboring country's "army" possessed)
Yet they still cling to the mantra that they (like Paul's Iran) don't have a "Army" ?
unclesmrgol
· 2 years ago
Captain,
In Ron Paul's eyes, we are fascists, which is what he classified in one of his speeches any patriot who wears a cross.
When I commented on the youtube post of his speech my opposition to that point of his speech, it took less than 30 seconds for two counter-posts with ad-hominem attacks to appear (almost as if they had been pre-composed off-line and just needed to be cut/pasted). I responded, they responded -- and finally I gave up after noting that for several hours these guys, along with one other, had been tagging any anti-Paul comments which appeared under the speech in similar fashion. I suspect that these aren't just supporters, but members of Paul's campaign staff delegated to monitor that one YouTube post -- they were way too religious in their efforts to suppress dissent.
Mike M.
· 2 years ago
All I really need to know about Ron Paul and how serious he is, is that loathesome chaps such as Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Greenwald are shilling for him. He's a Republican and a responsible candidate for leadership like my dog is.
Peyton
· 2 years ago
All is explained at the Ron Paul entry on Encyclopedia Dramatica: http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/Ron_Paul Via Jules Crittendon, via The Good LT at Jawa Report. His campaign would be laughable, except for all that dough. Who are his major supporters? Who are the major players in his lunatic-fringe constellation? George Soros, looking to syphon off some part of a Republican electorate? I'm baffled, but I'm just as confident that that kind of fund raising does not come in $10 or $15 at a time from Paultards with cans of spray paint in their hands, nor from a vast energizing of neo-Nazi groups.
namehere
· 2 years ago
Of course ... if you delete all of their abusive comments, then nobody will have any idea just how nutty his supporters are.
Let them spew.
hunter_123
· 2 years ago
Listening to him on the Sunday show tells me he is really just another politico. Seeing that he has not even a clue about somethinga s basic as whether or not Iran has an army or navy tells me he is not only just another politico, but that he is a particularly out-f-touch and uninformed politico.
richo
· 2 years ago
I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but you have to wonder how a clueless guy like Ron Paul can garner the amount of funding he has without stepping into the "I Wonder" realm...Are the D's covertly funding this Wolf in Sheep's clothing?
Every time I hear Ron's shrill voice, and the words coming out of his mouth, my mind drifts back to pre WWII and all the isolationist speak. America listened then, and we ended up in a war that took 6 years (1939 to 1945) and cost the lives of 10's of millions...If America does that again, and buys the rubbish Ron and others like him are spewing, what will be the result? 100's of millions? I shudder at the thought...
My deepest hope is that America can make that popping sound, see the world for what it is (dangerous), and vote appropriately.
EXPAT
· 2 years ago
Sir before you SPEW historical innacuracies, check your dates. Yes the war did start for EUROPE in 39. BUT for America, it started when Pearl Harbor was attacked on WHAT DATE? Do your own research. I should Call you MCCAIN for your uninformed or unintelligent comment.
Neo
· 2 years ago
Ron Paul is a hollow shell.
AW1Tim
· 2 years ago
Cap'n Ed,
I gotta tell you, those RP followers are like dogs on a pork chop. All you have to do is post something even marginally disagreeable with him, and they are all over you in attack mode.
There were a couple of letters posted to the Herald Journal, a newspaper in Logan Utah. You should visit there and see the comments that followed those letters on the online edition. I swear, it's to the point that I actually think that there are really on a handful of actual supporters, but they have hundreds of online names and post like the sock puppet zombie army.
Seriously, some of them even attack you for refering to him as DOCTOR Ron Paul. Sheeeesh. Interesting, though, how he picked up an endorsement from the Bunny Ranch, a Neveada brothel, what with him being an OG/GYN and all..... Maybe it was a professional courtesy?
respects,
Peter_Shalen
· 2 years ago
I happen to have been living in Houston, near RP's district, when he first ran for Congress. His campaign ads always referred to him as "Doctor Ron Paul," with the title spelled out rather than abbreviated, as if it were part of his name.
I think what offends the supporters is not whether you call him "Doctor" or not, but the fact that you question his unique qualifications for the presidency.
AW1Tim
· 2 years ago
oops... That should read "some of them even attack you for NOT refering to him as DOCTOR Ron Paul". My bad.
MrMichael
· 2 years ago
Heh... you and I see the supporters exactly the same way. ;) Wait... what does that make US? YIKES!!!
MrMichael
· 2 years ago
I like how Ron Paul points to the Constitution on a regular basis. I like how he defends the US Constitution, when so many politicians are looking for ways to break it down. I like his small government philosophy.
The view I have seen of his foreign policy scares me, and I cannot understand his supporters. His supporters were the first thing about the Ron Paul campaign that turned me off... and not just because of the symbolism of getting LOVE backwards or something. They are either posting the same spiel under different names, or they are a bunch of individuals with exactly the same thought processes... Zombies or something.
And then Ron Paul starts to speak about foreign affairs. Mr. Paul sounds less informed than Governor Huckabee, and Governor Huckabee seems to be on a campaign to resurrect the reputation of Jimmy Carter's foreign policy. In case you are new to politics... that's bad. Ron Paul's grasp and attitude towards and of foreign policy is the worst I've seen outside a coffee house. It's one thing to be focused on the Bildeburgers and the CFL, but to not even recognize that Iran has a Military?!? Well, he may have been unprepared for this 'question out of the blue' too, but those blindsiding questions are the sort of thing you have to deal with as an executive officer at a WalMart. How unprepared does this make him to be Commander in Chief and Chief Executive of the Executive Branch of the United States?
I like how the Ron Paul supporters feel passionate about their candidate. But like anybody else, they have to discover that your passion does not convince me... your maturity and ability to lead and inspire does. Ron Paul does not inspire me, and his followers offend me. What's to like?
LadyLogician
· 2 years ago
Doctor Paul only seems to use the Constitution when it suits him - a typical politician! However, when you point that out to his supporters they do tend to get all nutso on you.
LL
KW64
· 2 years ago
I listened to his interview and even worse than his ingorant remarks on Iran were his tax positions and national security positions. He wants to eliminate all income taxes and pay for the government via tariffs and fees! The spending cuts he was willing to voice were the military, the CIA, FBI, IRS etc. These cuts he was willing to make would undermine our national security. The government revenues he was willing to allow would not cover interest on the national debt let alone cover the expenditiures he did not advocate cutting; thus his positions would also undermine the fiscal soundness of our government.
Undermining our national and fiscal security is much worse than misrepresenting the military capacity of Iran.
DayTrader
· 2 years ago
If Hillary could get her way the election would look like her against Huck with Paul as an Independent along with McKinney running on the Green Party ticket. If McCain also ran as an independent she would probably send him thank you notes and they could go out drinking buddies again.
What would terrify her is if it comes down to Hill v Rudy with Bloomberg as an independent because it would toss those electoral votes from NY into the lets make a deal hopper.
Del_Dolemonte
· 2 years ago
How about Rudy with Bloomberg as his VP?
KW64
· 2 years ago
A doubtful combination. They are both from the same state; thus they would lose any electoral votes from New York under the constitution. Rudy likes McCain but would McCain be a second fiddle? I doubt it. Same with Romney. Huckabee would help Rudy in the south where he is weak but could hurt elsewhere. I think Jeb Bush would be a help in the South and particularly Florida. Even though his name will scare people, he ran a competent government in Florida and competence has to be Rudy's major theme.
Mickey French
· 2 years ago
I was watching c-span this morning and a Ron Paul campaign worker was on and was takeing calls.... a lot of the calls were promoting permissive drug benefits, he advocates.....I would bet you a few million of those donations via the internet are dope users calling in in a fog, and pledgeing with no intension of honoring it...yet the donations showing up in the liberal press as protests against the military. to depress conservatives no doubt....
Bill
· 2 years ago
Hi,
I guess when I heard it, I thought he meant that they have nothing that could stand up to us in the event that they attacked Israel. In other words he was agreeing with the neocons who say that we could wipe them out in a heartbeat. I'm not a big fan of Paul, he gets my vote to show the Republicans how far off base they have gone.
Bill
CFurg
· 2 years ago
That IS what he meant, and without the machine gun questioning of Russert he would have explained it that way as he has hundreds of times. They don't have a military that can invade anyone else, much less threaten our interests without us wiping them out. That's why they have to resort to supporting terrorists.
Fred
· 2 years ago
Yeah, Ron Paul seems to attract the Crazy Aunt vote but, there wouldn't be so many crazies out there without the Democrats and Republicans making people crazy.
Clearly we need something different with the hope that it's better. Ron Paul is just different.
CFurg
· 2 years ago
I can't speak for any other Ron Paul supporters and why they are rude or abusive in their remarks. I can tell you why I might be: I'm pissed off. At the "conservative" bloggers, commentators, talking heads etc. who have attacked Dr. Paul for being a nutcase or moonbat of some kind. The same people I have aligned myself with since Reagan. Why do they attack him? He only stands for the Constitution, smaller federal government, lower taxes, non-interventionist foreign policy (which is definately different than isolationist - thank you Immolate), individual freedom AND responsibilty, pro-life, sound money...and a host of other things that USED to define the conservative movement. Above all he is straight talk and NEVER varies from his beliefs, unlike every other politician on both sides who pander to every group and special interest who will throw them money for their vote.
But let him state that Iraq was a mistake and we should pull out and the entire conservative world comes down on him. He is falsely linked with the "its America's fault" crowd because he DARE question the foreign policy of the last 100 years that have gotten us where we are today. Confirming everything he says about the neocons to be true.
Have you read some of the vitriol that has come from almost all of the conservative bloggers from Malkin to Flopping Aces, to even your own comments? Read your own reader's comments - thank you Fight4theright for "whack job", or his "nutty" supporters - thank you whoever you were (I can assure you that I am not a nut). Most of them are not directed at his positions but sprial down into nothing more than name calling. And at the same time they are trying to discredit Paul's positions with their own sad version of revisionist history.
The one guy who stands for all these things against the increasingly socialist, fascist, statist, globalist beleifs of the other candidates, (those things that conservatives bitch about ALL the time) and the same party of the 1994 Republican Revolution are his harshest critics. You people complaign ALL the time about the candidates that are out there and their posiitons and turn right around and elect another one just like the ones you bitch about. Makes no sense to me.
Thomas
· 2 years ago
CFurg -- The problem with Paul is that he sounds like a nut, he acts like a nut, and while he may say he stands for the Constitution, he hasn't shown the public that at all. He stated in one of the very first debates the agencies he would remove , disband, etc. from the federal government. Today he denies he mentioned the CIA, the NSA, and the FBI. (He did say they needed to be gotten rid of.) In the Meet The Press interview this past weekend, he couldn't explain his earmarks that he asks for, which simply shows us that he is just more of the status quo.
His biggest mistake in this entire election season is how badly the man is wrong on foreign policy. Look, I know it's cool to go a long with a guy who wants to portray Woodrow Wilson, and simply remove this nation from any foreign entanglements or foreign deals, but that's just not how this world works. We live in a global economy. We have ties to foreign nations, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. When it comes to the defense of this nation, we have to go abroad to engage our enemy. (Ron Paul can talk about Iraq not attacking us all he wants, but I guess he's too obtuse to remember that Saddam was firing at our jets in the no fly zone; a blatant act of war.)
Point being is that his foreign policy ideas, and how he views the world scares the Hell out of us. He's like the Huckster who is woefully naive. That's something Ron Paul supporters can't defend. Sure they can defend what he says about standing up for the Constitution (a document I doubt he knows as much about as he claims to), but you guys can't defend him on the single most important point of this election cycle ....
... A president who will remain on offense as long as this war continues.
Thomas
Peter_Shalen
· 2 years ago
I don't understand your reference to Woodrow Wilson, who was above all an internationalist. He fought for US membership in the League of Nations, but was defeated by the isolationists in the Senate, led by Henry Cabot Lodge.
By the way, I personally don't admire Wilson much. I think his doctrine of the right of nations to self-determination was naive in the extreme. We have seen it play out in the contemporary world as the right of any two-big thug from an underdeveloped country to oppress his own compatriots if he has more guns than they do.
tacodawn
· 2 years ago
I heard him say that and immediately disagreed...Russert was very blase throughout the interview and Ron Paul came off as subdued even though he did have a couple dooseys.
In fact he was the least animated I'd ever seen.
Except when he was talking about all the money he's raised.
SwabJockey05
· 2 years ago
Bad answer to a stupid question/hypothetical.
Iran will probably never use its army to invade Israel. Why fund proxies for all these years if you’re not going to use them when it's time to do the dirty work?
skeptic
· 2 years ago
Captain Ed, you are being intellectually dishonest here. The question referred to an Iranian attack on Israel. Strictly speaking, yes, Iran does have an Army and and Air Force. But what you leave out is both the far superior quality of the Israeli military and the fact that they have a nuclear arsenal of several hundred warheads as well as the means to deliver them. So, for all practical concern, Iran is a pygmy compared to Israel.
Ron Paul is at single digits in the polls. Surely he is not a threat to any of the other candidates. All he has are spammers supported by George Soros, right? The polls are correct, aren't they?
Chiplitfam
· 2 years ago
Boy are you going to be surprised.
chiplitfam
· 2 years ago
Boy, are all of you going to be surprised.
Chip
· 2 years ago
What exactly is your stance on the current political situation concerning the Bush Administration and the 2008 elections? What about voter fraud and corrupt electronic machines? My reason for asking is your attack on Ron Paul. I believe what he was saying was that the power of their influence to wage war is minimal. How should we respond according to your views?
Ray_in_MPLS
· 2 years ago
"I believe what he was saying was that the power of their influence to wage war is minimal."
That's just what Saddam thought when he started a war with Iran. After ten years of fighting, and more than a million deaths, Saddam realized that he was wrong. Any country that can fight a sustained war for ten years is capable of more than a "minimal" ability to wage war in the Middle East.
hunter_123
· 2 years ago
Cleanup on aisle 5. Why oh why are kooks and neverwuzzers able to access the internet?
NoDonkey
· 2 years ago
Ron Paul is tenuous grip on reality and needs to see a doctor, rather than play one on TV.
The sooner sideshow Ron gets the hook from the stage the better.
The Republicans need to run Ron and his troothers, supremicists and neo-Nazis out of the party, ASAP. Kick them all out, Now.
They can all run to the third-party aisle on the Nutcase Ticket.
MSimon
· 2 years ago
Ron Paul is a shallow well.
Sean
· 2 years ago
Until mainstream media outlets stop covering Ron Paul's maniancal ravings, and/or he drops out of the race, thoughtful folks are obliged to point out just how insane that he and his army of spammers are.
I still don't understand why he isn't running as a Democrat. Because if the day is ever so dark that he ever gets the party's nomination, is the day I quit that party.
Alan
· 2 years ago
But keep in mind Iraq had all those things too, and they lasted about an hour.
Neo
· 2 years ago
Nature abhors a vacuum.
The emptiness left by the imprisonment of Lyndon La Roche has finally been filled in with the emptiness of Ron Paul.
Brian
· 1 year ago
"We should remember that Iran, like Iraq, is a third-world nation without a significant military. Nothing in history hints that she is likely to invade a neighboring country, let alone do anything to America or Israel. I am concerned, however, that a contrived Gulf of Tonkin-type incident may occur to gain popular support for an attack on Iran." -Rep. Ron Paul, January 16, 2007
Bobby
· 2 years ago
Typo ;-)
Bobby
· 2 years ago
I didn't know .05 percent of their GDP is a "significant portion". Your point might have a little more credibility, if you had done the slightest amount of research.
captained
· 2 years ago
2.5%, not 0.5%, according to the CIA factbook at the link. Ours is 3.9%. Obviously, you didn't do much research.
unclesmrgol
· 2 years ago
Not to mention the part which is hidden. The proffered number is a lower bound.
SwabJockey05
· 2 years ago
...and that "lower bound" goes for both countries...right?
gitarfan
· 2 years ago
Why does that matter? The point is they do have an army and navy and spend large amounts on both plus a totalitarian regime can hide things more easily than a democracy. Ron Paul either ignores this or doesn't know it. Not something I look for in a leader.
SwabJockey05
· 2 years ago
I'm active duty Navy. Been to the Gulf several times. Compared to the U.S. Navy, Paul is correct: Iran doesn't have a Navy. Just like Iraq prior to Gulf War I. One could say the same for their “army”. Don't know (or care) if that's the way Paul meant it. Paul is cannon fodder to show "disarray" within the Repub party to help Hildabeast sink her filth, gnarled claws into the Presidential Crown.
As for democracies inability to hide budgets? The "hidden" portion of the U.S. budget by itself is more than the Iranians spend on their entire military budget...and from whom is our black budget hidden? The Russians? The Chinese? No way...that info is leaked at the highest levels to our enemies (partly “legal” horse trading...partly illegal treason). No, the "black" budget is only really kept secret from the ones who actually foot the bill: U.S. Taxpayers.
Ray_in_MPLS
· 2 years ago
So, a few months ago, British Navy personnel were captured and held by, what, pirates? I guess Saddam fought a ten year war with Iran's, what, private militia? Iran's Navy may not be as powerful as ours, but that doesn't mean that Iran can't, or won't cause a lot of trouble in the Persian Gulf. The same is true for their Army, it may not be a big or powerful as ours, but it can still do a lot of damage in the Middle east.
SwabJockey05
· 2 years ago
Ever hear someone say "Do that again, I'll kill you"...or "I'll break your neck"...?
Did you tell them that those actions would be "illegal"?
You need to tell me what Iran's navy's done? Thanks. Noted. Gimme a break already.
Again, what Paul said was stupid. Since when is that anything new? But the way you Repubs try to blow everything out of proportion is disappointing...and a bit scary.
Scary because that makes you look like you're panicking....and the ONLY THING WORSE than having one of your socialist-wanna-be Republican candidates getting elected is having the Filthy Hildabeast strutting around the WH again...I think I'd "Kill Myself"....
All Comments
What i think is even more important is finding out just WHO was sending him that kind of money. The Clintons are in hot water for getting multiple donations from Hsu, who laundered them through various others to escape detection. It wouldn't surprise me in the least to see the same sort of thing at play in this case.
independent Presidential run. Can he be on the ballot as a Republican for the Congessional seat while on ballot as Presidential candidate?
Also I gathered that Paul supports term limits and yet danced around when
Russert asked him how he could seeing he has be a rep. for 18 years?
So who would Paul must affect as an independent? Would he take more from the loony left or the far right? All I know is I won't bother to vote if Huckabee is on ballot for
the GOP.
I feel the same way. For the very first time in my life, I've reached a point where I can honestly see myself staying home on election day due to the lack of any decent candidates. If Thompson makes the ballot, then I'll vote. Anything else and I might as well buy a bottle and get drunk for the next four years.
I'd like it better if he showed any more understanding of the document than does, say, Larry Flynt of the Bible...
You make a good point here but I wonder if this will really affect his supporters at all. It seems to me that one of the "allures" to Ron Paul is his head-in-the-sand approach to the rest of the world. I believe there are a number of people out there supporting this whack job that agree with him in his earlier claims that if the U.S. hadn't been in the Middle East, that bin Laden wouldn't have attacked us and thus, they won't care if he misspeaks on Iran as it just doesn't matter to them. They want isolation and that alone. In my view, any gaffe that Paul makes about foreign policy loses him nary a supporter - where he will lose support is if he shows any tendency towards bigger government or globalization.
Hear, hear!
I'd care more about this if their candidate wasn't meeting with white supremacists and refusing to give back their money. Also writing racist newsletters criticizing blacks. And making anti-Semitic statements.
Now denying Iran has a sizeable military? Puh-leze!
Absolutely. It's amazing to me how selective his supporters are when it comes to their candidte's words and actions. They cherry pick his remarks to make their case in supporting him, then go on hysterical attacks to defend their own flawed arguments. The standard attack starts with ad hominum and goes down quickly from there.
Worst is if they get ahold of your email addy. You'll NEVER get rid of all the spam they'll send you, and most of it has HUGE attachments to boot.
Respects,
i listen to talk shows on the radio a bit (a curse of being retired) and the people that seem
call in support of paul or the guy from arkansas seem to have just to professional a turn of phrase to their sentances and its just as if they had a ready, approved and transcribed answer to questions and comments.
just as if they were extremely well rehearsed, not the down homies that they purport to be.
C
But seriously, what would the effect be of his running as an independent be? Would he take votes away from the Republicans or Democrats? If his supporters are as nutty as they seem to be, I can't help but wonder if they just wouldn't vote for anyone else if he didn't run, thus making his independent campaign a non-event.
The major diffference between Iran's "army" and the other regime protection forces is that the "army" would not resist us after the mullah regime is eliminated, while the other regime protection forces would.
Iran's mullah regime is quite aware that its "army" is likely to be the chief source of cadres for the army of a replacement regime installed by the U.S., and have done their level best to eliminate this potential threat by eliminating their "army's" military capability.
Yet they still cling to the mantra that they (like Paul's Iran) don't have a "Army" ?
In Ron Paul's eyes, we are fascists, which is what he classified in one of his speeches any patriot who wears a cross.
When I commented on the youtube post of his speech my opposition to that point of his speech, it took less than 30 seconds for two counter-posts with ad-hominem attacks to appear (almost as if they had been pre-composed off-line and just needed to be cut/pasted). I responded, they responded -- and finally I gave up after noting that for several hours these guys, along with one other, had been tagging any anti-Paul comments which appeared under the speech in similar fashion. I suspect that these aren't just supporters, but members of Paul's campaign staff delegated to monitor that one YouTube post -- they were way too religious in their efforts to suppress dissent.
http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/Ron_Paul
Via Jules Crittendon, via The Good LT at Jawa Report. His campaign would be laughable, except for all that dough. Who are his major supporters? Who are the major players in his lunatic-fringe constellation? George Soros, looking to syphon off some part of a Republican electorate? I'm baffled, but I'm just as confident that that kind of fund raising does not come in $10 or $15 at a time from Paultards with cans of spray paint in their hands, nor from a vast energizing of neo-Nazi groups.
Let them spew.
Seeing that he has not even a clue about somethinga s basic as whether or not Iran has an army or navy tells me he is not only just another politico, but that he is a particularly out-f-touch and uninformed politico.
Every time I hear Ron's shrill voice, and the words coming out of his mouth, my mind drifts back to pre WWII and all the isolationist speak. America listened then, and we ended up in a war that took 6 years (1939 to 1945) and cost the lives of 10's of millions...If America does that again, and buys the rubbish Ron and others like him are spewing, what will be the result? 100's of millions? I shudder at the thought...
My deepest hope is that America can make that popping sound, see the world for what it is (dangerous), and vote appropriately.
I gotta tell you, those RP followers are like dogs on a pork chop. All you have to do is post something even marginally disagreeable with him, and they are all over you in attack mode.
There were a couple of letters posted to the Herald Journal, a newspaper in Logan Utah. You should visit there and see the comments that followed those letters on the online edition. I swear, it's to the point that I actually think that there are really on a handful of actual supporters, but they have hundreds of online names and post like the sock puppet zombie army.
Seriously, some of them even attack you for refering to him as DOCTOR Ron Paul. Sheeeesh. Interesting, though, how he picked up an endorsement from the Bunny Ranch, a Neveada brothel, what with him being an OG/GYN and all..... Maybe it was a professional courtesy?
respects,
I think what offends the supporters is not whether you call him "Doctor" or not, but the fact that you question his unique qualifications for the presidency.
The view I have seen of his foreign policy scares me, and I cannot understand his supporters. His supporters were the first thing about the Ron Paul campaign that turned me off... and not just because of the symbolism of getting LOVE backwards or something. They are either posting the same spiel under different names, or they are a bunch of individuals with exactly the same thought processes... Zombies or something.
And then Ron Paul starts to speak about foreign affairs. Mr. Paul sounds less informed than Governor Huckabee, and Governor Huckabee seems to be on a campaign to resurrect the reputation of Jimmy Carter's foreign policy. In case you are new to politics... that's bad. Ron Paul's grasp and attitude towards and of foreign policy is the worst I've seen outside a coffee house. It's one thing to be focused on the Bildeburgers and the CFL, but to not even recognize that Iran has a Military?!? Well, he may have been unprepared for this 'question out of the blue' too, but those blindsiding questions are the sort of thing you have to deal with as an executive officer at a WalMart. How unprepared does this make him to be Commander in Chief and Chief Executive of the Executive Branch of the United States?
I like how the Ron Paul supporters feel passionate about their candidate. But like anybody else, they have to discover that your passion does not convince me... your maturity and ability to lead and inspire does. Ron Paul does not inspire me, and his followers offend me. What's to like?
LL
Undermining our national and fiscal security is much worse than misrepresenting the military capacity of Iran.
What would terrify her is if it comes down to Hill v Rudy with Bloomberg as an independent because it would toss those electoral votes from NY into the lets make a deal hopper.
I guess when I heard it, I thought he meant that they have nothing that could stand up to us in the event that they attacked Israel. In other words he was agreeing with the neocons who say that we could wipe them out in a heartbeat. I'm not a big fan of Paul, he gets my vote to show the Republicans how far off base they have gone.
Bill
Clearly we need something different with the hope that it's better. Ron Paul is just different.
But let him state that Iraq was a mistake and we should pull out and the entire conservative world comes down on him. He is falsely linked with the "its America's fault" crowd because he DARE question the foreign policy of the last 100 years that have gotten us where we are today. Confirming everything he says about the neocons to be true.
Have you read some of the vitriol that has come from almost all of the conservative bloggers from Malkin to Flopping Aces, to even your own comments? Read your own reader's comments - thank you Fight4theright for "whack job", or his "nutty" supporters - thank you whoever you were (I can assure you that I am not a nut). Most of them are not directed at his positions but sprial down into nothing more than name calling. And at the same time they are trying to discredit Paul's positions with their own sad version of revisionist history.
The one guy who stands for all these things against the increasingly socialist, fascist, statist, globalist beleifs of the other candidates, (those things that conservatives bitch about ALL the time) and the same party of the 1994 Republican Revolution are his harshest critics. You people complaign ALL the time about the candidates that are out there and their posiitons and turn right around and elect another one just like the ones you bitch about. Makes no sense to me.
His biggest mistake in this entire election season is how badly the man is wrong on foreign policy. Look, I know it's cool to go a long with a guy who wants to portray Woodrow Wilson, and simply remove this nation from any foreign entanglements or foreign deals, but that's just not how this world works. We live in a global economy. We have ties to foreign nations, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. When it comes to the defense of this nation, we have to go abroad to engage our enemy. (Ron Paul can talk about Iraq not attacking us all he wants, but I guess he's too obtuse to remember that Saddam was firing at our jets in the no fly zone; a blatant act of war.)
Point being is that his foreign policy ideas, and how he views the world scares the Hell out of us. He's like the Huckster who is woefully naive. That's something Ron Paul supporters can't defend. Sure they can defend what he says about standing up for the Constitution (a document I doubt he knows as much about as he claims to), but you guys can't defend him on the single most important point of this election cycle ....
... A president who will remain on offense as long as this war continues.
Thomas
By the way, I personally don't admire Wilson much. I think his doctrine of the right of nations to self-determination was naive in the extreme. We have seen it play out in the contemporary world as the right of any two-big thug from an underdeveloped country to oppress his own compatriots if he has more guns than they do.
In fact he was the least animated I'd ever seen.
Except when he was talking about all the money he's raised.
Iran will probably never use its army to invade Israel. Why fund proxies for all these years if you’re not going to use them when it's time to do the dirty work?
Ron Paul is at single digits in the polls. Surely he is not a threat to any of the other candidates. All he has are spammers supported by George Soros, right? The polls are correct, aren't they?
That's just what Saddam thought when he started a war with Iran. After ten years of fighting, and more than a million deaths, Saddam realized that he was wrong. Any country that can fight a sustained war for ten years is capable of more than a "minimal" ability to wage war in the Middle East.
Why oh why are kooks and neverwuzzers able to access the internet?
The sooner sideshow Ron gets the hook from the stage the better.
The Republicans need to run Ron and his troothers, supremicists and neo-Nazis out of the party, ASAP. Kick them all out, Now.
They can all run to the third-party aisle on the Nutcase Ticket.
I still don't understand why he isn't running as a Democrat. Because if the day is ever so dark that he ever gets the party's nomination, is the day I quit that party.
The emptiness left by the imprisonment of Lyndon La Roche has finally been filled in with the emptiness of Ron Paul.
As for democracies inability to hide budgets? The "hidden" portion of the U.S. budget by itself is more than the Iranians spend on their entire military budget...and from whom is our black budget hidden? The Russians? The Chinese? No way...that info is leaked at the highest levels to our enemies (partly “legal” horse trading...partly illegal treason). No, the "black" budget is only really kept secret from the ones who actually foot the bill: U.S. Taxpayers.
Did you tell them that those actions would be "illegal"?
You need to tell me what Iran's navy's done? Thanks. Noted. Gimme a break already.
Again, what Paul said was stupid. Since when is that anything new? But the way you Repubs try to blow everything out of proportion is disappointing...and a bit scary.
Scary because that makes you look like you're panicking....and the ONLY THING WORSE than having one of your socialist-wanna-be Republican candidates getting elected is having the Filthy Hildabeast strutting around the WH again...I think I'd "Kill Myself"....