Archive for October, 2011
The Truth About Ron Paul’s Foreign Policy
This column was inspired by questions from Alert Reader JMC, who is looking for a GOPer to get behind since JMC’s first choice, Sarah Palin, is not running.
Honestly, and I would have never thought I would be saying this, but Ron Paul is the only one in the current field of GOPers that I agree with most. There are some issues that I have with him but the reality is that there will never be a 100% perfect candidate. So, I have to weigh out the good points and the bad points. Here are my questions:
- Where does RP stand on Islam and Muslims as a whole? Does he view them as a threat or does he think that they are good people who just want us to leave them alone?
- Is he or isn’t he a 9/11 Truther?
- Does he stand with Israel or does he want them to fend for themselves?
First of all, JMC, thanks for being a responsible participant in the American electoral process.
The best source of information about Ron Paul’s foreign policy is the man himself, in A Foreign Policy of Freedom: Peace, Commerce, and Honest Friendship
I’ve never read any quotes from Ron Paul that indicate he thinks the 9/11 attacks were staged by anyone but Khalid Sheik Mohammad and the 19 hijackers, but he has said that decades of U.S. foreign policy mistakes, and bureaucratic intelligence failures, led up to them. I suspect that people who find this opinion offensive might want to put a pejorative label of “Truther” on Ron Paul because of it. It’s a common Alinsky tactic.
Ron Paul’s live-and-let-live brand of libertarianism attracts a cornucopia of supporters, the most vocal of which are often the most controversial (but many, I suspect, are actually paid Mitt Romney operatives), which makes him a frequent target of criticism by the Cocktail Party GOP Establishment. Because Ron Paul believes everyone has a right to his or her opinion, he does not demand ideological purity among his supporters, and rarely comments on the antics of the more fringy among them. It is against everything Ron Paul stands for to tell other people what to do or how to think.
During the 2008 campaign, Ron Paul was asked about the handful of his followers who were 9/11 conspiracy theorists. “I can’t tell people what to do but I’ve abandoned those viewpoints and I don’t believe that,” he said during the a South Carolina presidential debate.
Ron Paul is profiled in the Christian publication World Magazine, in a great article titled “Father of the Tea Party.”
At the New Hampshire GOP presidential debate in June, Paul received cheers when the moderator asked him about bringing troops out of Afghanistan: “I’d bring them home as quickly as possible. And I would get them out of Iraq as well. And I wouldn’t start a war in Libya. I’d quit bombing Yemen. And I’d quit bombing Pakistan. I’d start taking care of people here at home because we could save hundreds of billions of dollars.” Military personnel contributed more to Paul in 2008 than to any other Republican candidate, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Ron Paul’s Plan to Restore America calls for ending all foreign aid, which includes ending aid to Israel and all of Israel’s enemies, which currently get 7 times more money from the U.S. than Israel does.
GOP Frontrunner Ron Paul has gone on the record as saying that the jihad against the U.S. by Islamofascists has its roots in “blowback” from U.S.-orchestrated coups and assassinations in the Middle East dating back to the 1950s, when the CIA removed a democratically elected head of state in Iran and installed the Shah as a puppet–plus continual meddling in the internal affairs of Middle Eastern nations ever since, both official and covert. Many in the Cocktail Party GOP find this opinion offensive. I don’t know why–it’s exactly what the 9/11 Commission said in their report–that 9/11 was “blowback.”
This issue is covered in an excellent article in Esquire Magazine, Ron Paul: The Founding Father.
All this started because Ron Paul said something he wasn’t supposed to say. During the second Republican presidential debate in 2007, when they had him shunted off to the far side and gave him as little airtime as possible, the subject of Al Qaeda came up. “They attack us because we’ve been over there,” he said. “We’ve been bombing Iraq for ten years.”
The idea that terrorists attack the U. S. because “they hate freedom” was always more of a slogan than a serious position, but it had frozen into Republican orthodoxy. “That’s really an extraordinary statement,” said an outraged Rudy Giuliani. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard that before, and I’ve heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11.” Even the moderator got huffy. “Are you suggesting we invited the 9/11 attack, sir?” But Paul just continued in the same placid and rational way, oblivious to ordinary political calculations. “I believe very sincerely that the CIA is correct when they teach and talk about blowback. They don’t come here to attack us because we’re rich and free. They come and they attack us because we’re over there. I mean, what would we think if other foreign countries were doing that to us?”
Here’s a commentary on Fox News about blowback, from the 2008 presidential race: Straight Talk: Paul Has A Point:
The “blowback” theory isn’t some fringe idea common only to crazy Sept. 11 conspiracy theorists. It doesn’t suggest that we “deserved” the Sept. 11 attacks, nor does it suggest we shouldn’t have retaliated against the people who waged them.
What it does say is that actions have consequences. When the Arab and Muslim world continually sees U.S. troops marching through Arab and Muslim backyards, U.S. trade sanctions causing Arab and Muslim suffering and U.S. bombs landing on Arab and Muslim homes, it isn’t difficult to see how Arabs could begin to develop a deep contempt for the U.S.
Read Ron Paul’s statement on 9/11 here: 9/11: Ask the Right Questions and Face the Truth, in which he notes that
Sometimes it can be very uncomfortable to ask the right questions and face the truth. When a slick politician comes along and gives a much more soothing, self-congratulating version of events, it is very tempting to simply believe what we would like to hear. But listening to lies does not make us safer, even though it might make us feel better about ourselves. The truth is that ending these misguided wars and occupations will make us safer, more prosperous and more free.
Here’s a huge compilation of Ron Paul statements on terrorism, Iran, non-interventionism, blowback, 9/11 and other related issues, from a website called The Mossadegh Project. Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh was the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran who was ousted by the CIA’s “Project Ajax” in 1953.
As for Ron Paul’s stand on Islam…Ron Paul is an individualist, and believes individuals should be responsible for their actions. So I think he’d say that individual Islamic terrorists are a threat. Ron Paul suggested the use of Letters of Marque and Reprisal to combat the organizers of the 9/11 attacks. He suggested the same thing to go after individual Somali pirates who were responsible for shipping attacks off the coast of Somalia. He didn’t recommend bombing or invading the entire country of Somalia–he wanted to go after the individuals causing the problems.
I believe Ron Paul would say the same thing about Muslims in general as he would say about members of any group. In an interview with the Iowa State Daily, Dr. Paul said,
You know I just, I don’t think of people in little groups like that. I don’t think of people as ‘gay’ here and ‘black people’ there, or ‘women’ over here…Everybody is an individual person and everybody has the same rights as anyone else. The government has no business in your private life, you know, so if one person is allowed to do something so should everyone else.
As for Israel, the best way to characterize Ron Paul’s position is he wants The United States of America to fend for ourself, defend ourselves, and mind our own business except in instances of a confirmed national security threat.
One of the Left’s favorite canards is to accuse a conservative of being against something if that conservative is against Federal funding of it. In this case, Leftists and Cocktail Party GOP operatives try to paint Ron Paul as being “anti-Israel” because he’s pro-American Taxpayer. Whether or not you think it’s a good idea to send foreign aid to Israel, the fact of the matter is that The United States of America is bankrupt, so 40¢ of every dollar we send to Israel is borrowed from China.
Here’s an excerpt from “Israel and the Right,” from The American Conservative, May 23, 2011:
Congressman Ron Paul was also critical of Obama’s Israel policy, but from a different perspective: “While President Obama’s demand that Israel make hard concessions in her border conflicts may very well be in her long-term interest, only Israel can make that determination on her own, without pressure from the United States or coercion by the United Nations. Unlike this President, I do not believe it is our place to dictate how Israel runs her affairs.”
Paul added, “We should respect Israel’s sovereignty and not try to dictate her policy from Washington.”
This is not the first time Paul has taken this position.
When Israel attacked a nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981 almost the entire US Congress voted to condemn the act, but Congressman Paul was one of the few Republicans who stood up and said Israel should not have to answer to America for how she defends herself.
An excellent opinion piece was published a couple of days ago in The Daily Caller: Ron Paul vs. foreign policy partisanship
So what does saying, “I like Ron Paul, except on foreign policy” really mean?
A crass but not untrue answer would be that Republicans don’t mind Republican wars, despite the reasons, results or costs, and Democrats don’t mind Democrat wars, despite the reasons, results or costs. And the American people in general don’t mind wars as long as the results are good and the costs are low.
Paul believes that any war under any president will come with a significant cost, which is why our reasons for going to war should be ultra-strong and the desired results, ultra-clear. What threat does a country actually pose? If we go in, what is victory? What is our exit strategy?
[Sarah] Palin summed up Paul’s defense philosophy well when she pointed out that being extremely “careful” about “interjecting our country in other nations’ business” is precisely Paul’s foreign policy. For someone to say, “I like Ron Paul, except on foreign policy” is really to say that Paul’s consistent reluctance to go to war can be quite annoying when it clashes with partisan attachment or popular opinion.
JMC, thanks for giving me the opportunity to share this information with you and other open-minded Hillbuzz readers who, like me, are determined to nominate an actual conservative instead of Mittens “Obama Lite” Romneycare.
Question: When did the Cocktail Party GOP establishment as we know it congeal its power?
I’d like to spend some time today looking back to discover when the Cocktail Party GOP establishment as we know it congealed its power.
We all know the Republican establishment didn’t support Ronald Reagan and tried its best to thwart his 1980 run for the White House.
So, I am assuming that Reagan cleared out the establishment types after his inauguration in 1981…and I further assume these people did not call the shots while Reagan was in office.
I’m guessing the Cocktail Party GOP establishment as we know it today was birthed by the first President Bush, sometime in late 1988 or in 1989.
This makes sense to me, because Cocktail Party GOP establishment stupidity can, in retrospect, be faulted for Bush’s loss in 1992…and then the disaster that was Bob Dole’s “it’s his turn” presidential campaign. The Cocktail Party almost lost the 2000 election against Al Gore…and Cocktail Party decisions were directly to blame for Republican losses in 2006 that turned power back to the Left.
The “it’s his turn” mentality favored by the Cocktail Party GOP establishment resulted in McCain 2008 — a campaign that just gave up on itself in September of that year, while simultaneously including Cocktail Party attacks on Governor Sarah Palin while she was McCain’s running mate.
The Cocktail Party GOP establishment has aggressively assailed Tea Party Americans as much as the Left has attacked us. The Tea Party and what it really represents is an existential threat to both the Left and the Cocktail Party GOP establishment.
I’d love your help today thinking about who exactly the Cocktail Party leaders are, and where they congealed their power. The Cocktail Party is aggressively pushing the nomination of Mittens Romneycare as the lastest “it’s his turn” candidate. I believe Romneycare is the only Republican who will lose to Barack Obama in the general election because the Left’s plan is to run Romneycare as the GOP nominee while encouraging a third party candidate like Jon Huntsman to split Republican votes enough so that Obama squeaks through to re-election.
That third party stunt will only work with Romneycare, since fewer Republican voters want Mittens as the nominee than supported McCain in 2008. If the Left funds a third party candidate like Huntsman, people who won’t vote for Romneycare will have somewhere to register a protest vote.
The Left would never get away with funding Huntsman if Herman Cain was the GOP nominee, however. It would look like flat-out racism to have Huntsman challenge both Obama and Cain — two black candidates running for president. This gambit only works with Romneycare (who, incidentally, as a candidate allows the Left to take Obamacare off the table in the next election, since Mittens won’t attack Obama on something based squarely on Mittens’ own actions as Massachusetts Governor).
When do you think the Cocktail Party GOP establishment congealed itself as we know it today?
Who was responsible for this?
Who are the real driving forces within this permanent political class?
HillBuzz Open Thread: Sunday October 30th, 2011
[ Note: The clip above is from the old TV show "What's My Line?", in a segment where a panel of celebrities has to identify someone they don't know by asking that person questions. This was filmed before the majority of Americans had ever heard of Kentucky Fried Chicken or its founder, Colonel Sanders. None of these panelists had any idea who he was, which is amusing today because his image is so recognizable in the fast food world. A modern example of this kind of thing would be if you time-traveled to the year 2004 or so and had a panel asking Mark Zuckerburg questions about Facebook or went further back and had a bunch of celebrities asking Steve Jobs questions about computers, long before anyone in the general public had heard of either of these two people or were thinking about their companies. ]
Today in History:
2005 – The rebuilt Dresden Frauenkirche (destroyed in the firebombing of Dresden during World War II) is reconsecrated after a thirteen-year rebuilding project. How long will it take for America to rebuild places like Detroit, which are in worse shape today than just about any city around the world that’s been through an actual war. Comparing Detroit to Hiroshima in terms of now vs. then photographs is especially vexing, since if someone had to guess which city had an atom bomb dropped on it at some time in the past, I bet they’d think it was Detroit.
1995 – Quebec sovereignists narrowly lose a referendum for a mandate to negotiate independence from Canada (vote is 50.6% to 49.4% I have always thought that if Quebec ever did go independent of Canada, that would last for about five years before Quebec (and eventually the eastern Canadian provinces) became part of the US. I still think this might happen in the future.
1991 – The Madrid Conference for Middle East peace talks opens. So long as there is Islam, there will never be peace in the Middle East because Islam itself is designed to thrive on chaos and bloodshed.
1985 – Space Shuttle Challenger lifts off for mission STS-61-A, its final successful mission. If you remember news coverage of the Challenger disaster, you might remember a woman giving color commentary of the astronauts as they boarded a van to take them to the launch pad. That woman gave little bios on each of them as they appeared out of the building and got into the van…years later, that woman is still broadcasting…as Andrea Shea King on Patriot Radio.
1974 – The Rumble in the Jungle boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman takes place in Kinshasa, Zaire. It’s horrible what Parkinsons did to Muhammad Ali…and sad that George Foreman is now better known for his line of grilling products and that fact that he named all of his children (even the female ones) “George” than he is remembered for his athletic abilities.
What’s on your minds today?
What are people talking about in your part of the country?
What do you think the big story will be this week?
Herman Cain needs our help.
The Cocktail Party has already picked our nominee so all of us who do not want Romney as our 2012 nominee should just pack up and go home. It’s over. Romney is it.
Here are the results of the National Journals Political Insiders Poll…
| Rank the top five candidates, 1 through 5, in terms of who you think is most likely to capture the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. | |
|
Republicans
(105 votes) |
|
| CANDIDATE | INSIDERS INDEX SCORE* |
| Mitt Romney | 98 |
| Rick Perry | 72 |
| Herman Cain | 47 |
| Newt Gingrich | 31 |
| Rick Santorum | 13 |
| Jon Huntsman | 11 |
| Michele Bachmann | 7 |
| Ron Paul | 5 |
|
*Methodology: In tallying the rankings, a first-place vote was worth 5 points, a second-place vote was worth 4 points, and so on. The Insiders Index reflects the percentage of points that each contender received out of the maximum possible. For example, Mitt Romney scored an Index rating of 98, meaning he received 98 percent of the possible 525 points, the number he would have if all 105 participants in the poll this week had ranked him first. |
|
The ruling class of the GOP don’t want Herman Cain. They’ve spent too much time and money grooming Mittens to let an outsider like Mr. Cain take the nomination. They seem to be ignoring one little fact…
We the people decide who will be our nominee.
It’s our votes that count…it doesn’t matter what Karl Rove or Charles Krauthammer or Chris Christie or any of the other good little GOP puppets want.
Herman Cain needs our help. NOW. He needs money and he needs volunteers. He needs people on the ground in Iowa and New Hampshire but I ‘m sure his campaign could use help everywhere.
Let’s help Herman Cain win the GOP nomination (and 2012 presidency).
Please go to his campaign website and donate….either your time or money or both.
The American people should decide who’s best for our country.
Ron Paul Wins 2 More GOP Straw Polls In Iowa
Ron Paul, via Slate.com
This weekend, Ron Paul won both National Federation of Republican Assemblies Presidential Straw Poll vote tallies in Iowa, one among Iowa voters only with 82% of the vote, and one tally among non-Iowa voters with 26%. These two tallies were the 13th and 14th straw poll wins for Ron Paul this election season, giving him the straw poll vote lead among all GOP candidates.
NFRA delegates went on to give Rick Santorum the organization’s endorsement, despite the fact that Santorum received only 1% of the vote of Iowa voters who participated in the straw poll. Delegates included Cocktail Party GOP insiders such as former Ohio secretary of state and treasurer Ken Blackwell.
H/T Wikipedia.org
There were two tallies: one of Iowa voters only, and one of non-Iowans who voted in the poll. Paul won both tallies. Here are the results:
In the Iowa voters result:
- Ron Paul: 82%
- Herman Cain: 14.7%
- Rick Santorum: 1%
- Newt Gingrich: 0.9%
- Michele Bachmann: 0.5%
- Rick Perry: 0.5%
- Gary Johnson: 0.2%
- Jon Huntsman: 0%
- Mitt Romney: 0%
It would appear that GOP voters in the Hawkeye State did not receive the Democrat-controlled media’s memo. Among Iowa voters, Democrat-media-annointed “frontrunners” Rich “I Heart Illegals” Perry and Mittens Romneycare got 0.5% of the vote and 0% of the vote, respectively.
In the non-Iowa voter tally:
- Ron Paul: 26%
- Herman Cain: 25%
- Rick Perry: 16%
- Rick Santorum: 16%
- Newt Gingrich: 11%
- Michele Bachmann: 6%
- Mitt Romney: 1%
- Jon Huntsman: 0%
- Gary Johnson: 0%
Ron Paul’s straw poll wins have included the influential Conservative Political Action Committee poll and the Values Voters poll, and he has finished in the top four in eight other straw polls. He lost the Iowa Straw Poll to Iowa native Michelle Bachmann by less than 1% of the vote, ending in a virtual tie.
Media Manipulation Alert: Democrat Media Urges Ron Paul to Run as a Third Party Candidate
If you are a low-information voter, and get all your data about the GOP field from the tee vee and dinosaur media, you have been told for the past 5 years that GOP Frontrunner Ron Paul is completely unelectable. He’s a zero! Move along, nothing to see here.
If that’s true–and Ron Paul stands no chance–why is the Democrat-controlled media doing everything in its power to derail Ron Paul’s campaign? Why does the Democrat-Controlled Media feature GOP Frontrunner Ron Paul in just 2% of news stories about the GOP field, when he consistently polls between 10% and 13% (and conversely, why is Rick Perry #1 in news coverage when he only polls at 8%?)
The latest attempt to deep-six the candidacy of GOP Frontrunner Ron Paul is a blog post in The Hill, in which a writer who was previously hostile to Ron Paul is suddenly calling for him to run as a third party candidate. Brent Budowsky writes breathlessly,
It has been said of Mitt Romney that he has been a liberal, a moderate and a conservative. What will the next Mitt Romney be? Is there any serious conservative who trusts him? Of course not. If Ron Paul runs for president as a third-party candidate against Obama and Romney, he changes the entire dynamic of the campaign and totally transforms the national debate….Ron Paul would pick up significant new support running against two establishment figures such as Obama and Romney. He would win support from a wide tier of voters who would see Romney as a distrusted, establishment, old-Wall Street and banking country-club Republican.
Whaaaaa? If Ron Paul is so wonderful compared to Mittens Romneycare (and he is!) and can beat Obama (which he can!), why the hell would he, or anyone, want him to run as a guaranteed loser third-party candidate?
Oh, that’s right–to ensure that Mittens Romneycare is the nominee.
I suspect that the internal polls that are being conducted by the Obama Regime (I mean, Campaign) are showing that GOP Frontrunner Ron Paul can beat Teh Won, especially if disaffected black voters stay home on election day–and Mittens Romneycare can’t.
Ron Paul is in a dead heat with Barack Hussein Obama in many GOP preference polls. In the most recent survey I could find, Ron Paul beats BHO 47% to 28% among independents. And in many states, like New Hampshire, there are more registered Independents than Republicans or Democrats.
GOP Frontrunner Ron Paul has raised over $12,000,000 in campaign contributions, 96% of which come from grassroots individual donors, making him #3 in fundraising behind Mittens and Perry–despite the media blackout. Most recently, Ron Paul supporters raised nearly $3 million during a 5-day Money Bomb, from 44,000 individual donors.
Ron Paul’s top 3 sources of donations are members of the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army and U.S. Navy. He receives more donations from active duty military than all other GOP candidates combined.
And the GOP strategist show below says, “Ron Paul could win–he could win the nomination” because Perry is a flash in the pan, Cain is a neophyte, and “Romney can’t get through the South on Super Tuesday.”
So, the moral of the story is: DON’T LET THE DEMOCRAT-CONTROLLED MEDIA PICK YOUR CANDIDATE.
If they want Ron Paul to run a third-party campaign, there’s a reason for that–and the reason (whatever it is) is bad news for the GOP.
George Will correctly informs Republicans that a President Romney would be too afraid of making actual, hard decisions to save the country from economic ruin
George Will’s new column on Mittens Romneycare is out. You can read it here.
Essentially, Will clearly spells out that Mittens is just not the sort of politician who can be counted on to make tough, unpopular decisions that will be needed to get our economy back on track.
One area of Mittens’ long history of taking both sides of just about every issue that Will highlights is Mittens’ flip-flopping on ethanol subsidies; Mittens changes his opinion base on whom he is speaking to in a room on that particular day.
Ethanol subsidies are part of what’s tanking our economy and driving up food prices around the globe. Some days, Mittens is for them (when he’s sucking up to Iowans) and other days he’s against them (when he’s directly confronted on this by conservatives). Mittens is so afraid of bad media coverage and upsetting people he needs for his rise to power that he just can’t be trusted to do the right thing and end all ethanol subsidies and ethanol requirements in fuel.
Mittens can’t be trusted to do the right thing on anything, and would essentially be Obama-lite as president.
Do you really want this?
