Ron Paul
An Open Letter to Anyone Who Complains About Ron Paul Coverage on This or Any Site: Like Him or Not, Ron Paul’s Fans Are Real and Will Be A Factor in the 2012 Election One Way or the Other
Barack Obama’s only path to re-election victory next year depends on three things working in concert:
1. Willard Mittens Romneycare becoming the Republican nominee (the only candidate that Obama is guaranteed to win against)
2. The Occupy Wall Street crowd (the Occupoopers), the Labor Unions, ACORN, and other Democrat Party goons using voter fraud and intimidation to game the system in swing states
3. Ron Paul’s fans feeling so alienated in the election that they end up voting for Jon Huntsman’s third party campaign (which Democrats are designing and running to split enough votes from the Republican nominee to secure Obama wins in swing states)
That is the only way Obama gets to 270 in the electoral college, and the White House and DNC knows this very well.
The Cocktail Party GOP establishment has suicidally committed itself to pushing Romneycare as the latest in a long string of “it’s his turn!” cucumber and mayonnaise “moderate” candidates who are doomed to be rejected by voters who just can’t trust these types of men who don’t really stand for anything besides getting themselves elected to office. Though it’s clear to a majority of Americans that Barack Obama is a disaster of a president, to get people to head out to the polls and vote they can’t just vote AGAINST Obama…they need to vote FOR someone, and they just aren’t going to ever vote FOR Romneycare.
The Cocktail Partiers are poised to squander what could be a historic rebuke of the Left, because Romneycare will have a detrimental impact on Senate and House races — and many Democrats who would have lost their seats will remain in Washington all because the Cocktail Party GOP establishment was too stupid to see the disaster that Willard Mittens Romneycare will be in the general election.
Watching this insanity unfold is like walking past the TV when an old horror movie starts playing; you know what’s going to happen, you want desperately to warn the people on the screen of their coming doom, but you feel powerless to stop any of this.
For those of you who’ve been reading HillBuzz.org since we started the site in 2008 during the Democrat primaries that year, we’ve repeatedly tried to warn the American people about the dangers Barack Obama and his Leftist acolytes posed to this country. I’ve also personally written volumes on the dangers the Cocktail Party GOP establishment poses — which in my personal opinion is even greater than the dangers of the Left, since the Left could not get away with anything in Washington without the Cocktail Party’s “let’s go along to get along” brand of enabling. Since 2008, I’ve warned against the dangers inherent in running Romneycare as the 2012 “it’s his turn!” candidate, knowing full well the entire Cocktail Party GOP establishment had decided on Romneycare for 2012 the day after John McCain conceded the presidency back in 2008. This is how the Cocktail Party works, and this is why Republicans lose so many winnable races and forever squander so many golden opportunities.
I remain heartbroken and crestfallen that Governor Sarah Palin chose not to run for the presidency in 2012; I think she missed an opportunity not only to make history, but to be the historic heroine this country needed at the time we needed her most. 2012 was her year to win, but it appears the Cocktail Party GOP establishment made it clear to her there’s no way she’d get the nomination. I respect and admire Governor Palin, but I think she was misguided and wrong not to run.
It reminds me of how I felt in 2003 when Hillary Clinton chose against better judgment not to run for the presidency herself in 2004; she was talked out of a run that year by the Kennedy Family, which told her it “wasn’t her turn” and that she should wait until 2008. We all know how that worked out. It’s soul-crushing to see this happen again here in 2011, with Governor Palin clearly promised “her shot in the future” or “her turn in 2016″ if she’d stay out of the race this year.
I really think this is why people like Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry got in the race in the first place, because they didn’t want the Cocktail Party GOP establishment to have its way and give Willard “his turn” to lose to Obama without a real primary fight. Gingrich clearly never thought he’d be an actual, serious candidate and has been surprised by how well he’s done in the polls. Perry had back surgery and fumbled and bumbled his campaign launch as a result, and has always seemed to be a very good man and a decent leader who just wasn’t fully prepared to run a national campaign — but chose to do so because he saw the need for a real conservative to be in the race, no matter what it would cost him. I really respect that about Perry, though I was alienated from him long ago by the behavior of his supporters (who, most famously in the form of Erik Erikson at Redstate.com decided to declare a senseless and unwarranted war on Governor Palin’s supporters before she officially declined entry into the presidential race).
A candidate’s supporters have always had a big impact on my personal support for a candidate. Barack Obama’s acolytes in 2008 employed Alinsky Methods warfare on us Hillary Clinton supporters during the primaries, lobbing accusations of racism against anyone who decided not to support Obama. I’d never seen weaponized Alinsky smears used against fellow Democrats like that before, and I’d certainly never experienced the full Death Star-grade blasts of the Alinsky RAAACIST! attacks on a personal level before 2008. I had been a Democrat for my entire life up until Barack Obama’s primary campaign and affirm yet again that the behavior of his followers provided at least 60% of the reason for my permanent break from the Democrat Party and my ultimate decision to consider myself a Republican from here on out.
I saw there was no place in the Democrat Party for conservative, Jacksonian, Hillary Democrats with Obama’s followers calling the shots now and I can’t imagine a future where I’d ever vote Democrat again, even for people I know and like on a personal level. It turns my stomach, actually, to think of ever voting Democrat again, for anyone. Ever.
I bring all of this up today because the Democrat Party is counting on Ron Paul’s fans to similarly break from the Republican Party and vow to never vote Republican again when Dr. Paul does not become the Republican nominee.
And make no mistake about that — Ron Paul will not be the nominee and Ron Paul has only himself to blame for that, because Ron Paul is a damn fool with regards to the expression of his views on American foreign policy. People like my friend Kathleen always claim Dr. Paul is “misunderstood” or “misquoted” when he says horrifying things related to Iran, Israel, or the withdrawal of all American troops overseas. It’s indeed true the agenda-driven media and Cocktail Party GOP establishment both detest Dr. Paul, with a passion equal to that felt in support of Ron Paul by his fans.
But, in this instance at least, just because the agenda-driven media and the Cocktail Party GOP establishment detest someone doesn’t mean I naturally have to support that person even though I personally detest both the agenda-driven media and the Cocktail Party GOP establishment.
I would walk miles over broken glass and fall willingly on a sword for Governor Sarah Palin…and she’s someone both the agenda-driven media and the Cocktail Party GOP establishment detest with a passion. But the reason I support her, and the reason I wanted her to run for president and to lead our country in this time of grief and chaos, is not BECAUSE the forces I abhor in this country have aligned against her. Politics and political passion are just not that black and white, and the enemy of my enemy is not always my champion.
Ron Paul proves that.
I do not understand the support he receives from his fans, but do feel it’s the same sort of emotional support that Barack Obama’s fans give him.
I saw clearly in 2008 just how foolish it was to underestimate the destructive power of emotional support like that when employed by Obama’s acolytes; in 2012, I see the extreme dangers inherent in allowing the agenda-driven media and the Left to harness the emotional support of Ron Paul’s fans and turn it towards a third party candidacy once Dr. Paul is out of the GOP primary race.
I do not believe for a moment that Dr. Paul will run third party himself, because Dr. Paul wants his son Rand to remain a United States Senator and win re-election in the future; the Pauls know that if Ron bolts third party that Rand will suffer a consequence in years ahead, because payback is a bitch in Republican politics.
Jon Huntsman has been diluting and parroting a great many of Ron Paul’s talking points quite deliberately in recent days. The agenda-driven media keeps pushing Huntsman onto the debate stage despite him never reaching more than 1% or so in the polls (while at the same time other 1%-ers like Gary Johnson or your Aunt Sally are not allowed a place at the debates, despite having about the same level of support as Huntsman). The Left is strategically positioning this very wealthy man with an enormous ego to become a third party spoiler in 2012.
I firmly believe Huntsman has been promised the prize of Secretary of State in an Obama second term if he successfully siphons enough Republican votes to allow Obama to squeak to re-election. Whenever I write about this, I hear people claim that “Huntsman’s no Ross Perot and doesn’t have a cult following like Perot did”. Well, Huntsman’s actually richer than Perot and is more willing to spend everything he has on a vainglorious and doomed third party quest in 2012…and he doesn’t need a cult following of his own because he’s going to just co-opt Ron Paul’s.
That has always been the plan, folks. David Axelrod, Valerie Jarrett, Donna Brazile, Howard Dean, and most importantly George Soros convened long ago in a foul-smelling room somewhere and addressed the reality that Hope!, Change!, and Unicorns! was not going to win Obama re-election. So these strategists conceived the three point plan to keep the White House in Democrat hands in 2012:
1. Ensure Willard Mittens Romneycare is the “it’s his turn!” Republican nominee
2. Deploy Democrat goon squads with weaponized Alinsky Method attacks on the ground
3. Co-opt the cult of Ron Paul and drive it toward Jon Huntsman as a third party candidate
I see what’s happening as clearly as I would see Laurie Strode or other victims of Michael Myers cluelessly wandering around dark hallways unsuspectingly when I’ve seen this movie before and know how Halloween ends.
Right around next Halloween, if Willard Mittens Romneycare’s the nominee, and if Occupy Wall Street has been deployed as domestic terrorist-grade shock troops engaging full scale Alinsky class warfare on Republicans, and if Ron Paul’s fans have been so alienated from Republicans that they’ve embraced Huntsman as a doomed third party spoiler, I’ll be horrified by the thought that Barack Obama’s very preventable and avoidable re-election might actually come to pass because the Republican Party truly and eternally is the “party of stupid”.
I’ve had friends here in Boystown who were committed alcoholics whom I watched drink their lives away; I didn’t know how to stop these people from self-destructing, and I don’t know how to stop Republicans for falling for the Democrats’ three-pronged Obama re-election strategy. Every time I read anyone out there advocate that “Romney’s the most electable!” I think, “Are these people honestly that stupid?”. Somewhere on a TV in the dark, there’s also some fool saying “I’ll be right back” as he or she wanders into the woods to investigate a strange noise. It’s horrifying to never be able to stop these people from doing themselves great harm. But the harm they cause themselves is SO PREDICTABLE to the point of being cliche.
It’s frustrating to not know the magic spell to snap people out of whatever’s making them fall into Barack Obama’s re-election trap. The Party of Stupid — with Willard Mittens Romneycare as its appointed standard-bearer — is poised to snatch Defeat from the jaws of Victory yet again. Bob Dole 1996. John McCain 2008. Mitt Romney 2012. There’s as much a pattern here as there was in the Friday the 13th films…coming next year to a polling place near you on Tuesday the 6th of November.
What’s truly maddening is seeing so many conservative political sites out there attempt to pretend the cult of Ron Paul doesn’t actually exist. My very good friend Kathleen Gee is a committed fan of Ron Paul’s. Kathleen is one of the best people I have ever known, but I think she’s out of her living mind to support Dr. Paul because I think his take on foreign policy is absurd at best and at worst pure and unadulterated madness. My boyfriend Justin insists on spending every waking minute of his free time playing some kind of “massively multiplayer online video game” called Goblin Quest (or whatever)…and for the life of me I will never understand it’s hold over him or why he can’t see there are better choices available to spend his time focused on. Justin has Goblin Quest; Kathleen has Ron Paul. I guess I used to have Vanilla Coke until its novelty finally wore off. Like bees to a blossom or moths to a flame, we all have our obsessions (and, apparently, random shoutouts to Elizabeth Taylor that all of five people will appreciate).
It seems every election there’s a candidate that I call the “Mr. Mxyzptlk Mistake”; this is an oddball supposed “outsider” who captures the imagination of everyone who has grown too disgusted with either political party to be able to support anyone else who is running for president. The Mxyzptlk Mistake takes on Goblin Quest level obsessiveness over large swaths of the politically active…though I don’t understand WHY or HOW the new Mr. Mxyzptlk is chosen every other presidential election or so.
The ORIGINAL Mr. Mxyzpltlk was a bowler-hatted impish oddball outsider from the Fifth Dimension who bedeviled Superman in the comic books; over the years, he’s reminded me of Ross Perot, Lyndon LaRouche, Ralph Nader, Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich, and Ron Paul. Because political writers deliberately avoid ever writing seriously about any of these people, I’ve never seen anyone really address the fact that EVERY FOUR YEARS there is some variation of Mr. Mxyzpltlk who draws legions of cultishly devoted followers to him (much like Justin and other “gamers” plugging into Goblin Quest like they are freebasing electronic crack). These oddball supposed “outsiders” become anti-heroes who command scores of zealots who come damn close to being anarchists; they seem to want to crash our entire political system more than they want to actually elect their candidate to national office. Defense of the latest version of Mr. Mxyzpltlk is obsessive, vociferous, and 100% emotion-based.
I can tell you from personal experience WHY political writers never want to give consistent and determined coverage to the Mr. Mxyzpltlk Mistake — whoever he might be that particular year; it’s the hatemail they’ll receive from writing about him, the threats they’ll receive from people upset that Mxyzpltlk received any ink, and the ire that will be directed at them from Mxyzpltlk cultists who don’t think their Fifth Dimensional Crusader received favorable enough coverage.
In the almost four years that I’ve been running HillBuzz.org, I’ve been subjected to about a dozen or so clearly identifiable waves of cyberstalking and hatemail because I’ve managed to tick off one fringe group or another with something that I’ve written or published on this site.
I’ve gotten death threats and AIDS-grams (a particular niche of hatemail from people who tell me they hope I get AIDS and die because I’m a gay man who doesn’t follow the gay agenda in politics) because I have never supported Barack Obama and what he’s doing to this country.
For the first year or so of this site’s existence I deliberately published HillBuzz.org anonymously because I needed to protect myself and my friends from the Alinsky Methods Death Star of attacks that come from the Left for opposing Barack Obama.
In December of 2009, I was outed by a woman named Fran Eaton at the Cocktail Party GOP establishment website Illinois Review because I opposed Mark Kirk’s nomination for the United States Senate here in Illinois. Fran Eaton worked on John McCain’s presidential campaign with me in Illinois and published my name as the creator of HillBuzz.org because the Cocktail Party GOP establishment wanted to punish me for speaking the truth about Mark Kirk and the fact that as a Senator he would be another Lindsey Graham-style closeted Republican in national office who did the Left’s bidding whenever ordered to do so (lest his blackmailers out him, the way the Left always outs gay Republicans who cross the line and oppose the Left at some crucial juncture). Fran Eaton didn’t just out me as a political writer who tried to remain anonymous so I could have a nonpolitical career, but she also outed me as gay to a national audience when I was (and remain) a private citizen and not an elected official or member of any elected official’s staff. Since then, the Cocktail Party GOP establishment has attacked me on a personal level for opposing Willard Mittens Romneycare’s nomination as much as the Left continues to attack me for opposing Barack Obama’s re-election.
There’s great truth to what Governor Sarah Palin says about the permanent political class on both sides of the aisle reading from the same playbook, engaging in the same tactics, and ultimately having the same agendas.
At various points through the years, something I’ve written has given various other groups with disparate agendas assorted opportunities to launch new attacks on me on personal levels that have impacted my health, my relationships, and even my ability to feed, house, and support myself. I’m currently suing two of these cyberstalkers for engaging in an orchestrated campaign that was designed to make me unemployable. One of these people actually used her employer’s computers to cyberstalk me from her office while billing clients for the time she spent doing this; I’ve named her employer and those clients in the lawsuit as well…and am quite looking forward to traveling to Indiana next spring to begin depositions on that case. Supposedly this woman didn’t like an essay I wrote last year and — despite a dozen fan letters she’d written me through the years claiming I was one of her favorite writers — decided she needed to start hating me and spending her time at work, using her employer’s work machines and other resources (while billing clients for her time), cyberstalking me.
These are the kinds of things I have to deal with to this day because in 2008 I created a little Hillary Clinton-supporting website that opposed Barack Obama and has continued to opine on American politics to this day. I came close to dying this year because the stress and grief heaped on me because of HB so adversely impacted my health that my body nearly gave out on me. Every day, someone out there is mad about something. Every day, someone who claims to have been a fan for years decides today is a great day to go bipolar and become a new nemesis. Every month or so, I max out another credit card or have to borrow from friends to pay the bills that keeps this site alive…because I’m repeatedly told that if I ever stop and if I ever just shut it all down that I “let them win”, whoever “they” are.
My number one cardinal rule in running a political site is to never, ever allow any of the hatemail to impact my decisions on what to write about. I have also NEVER censored any of the people I’ve hand-selected as contributors to the site. There have been people who’ve been a part of HB in the past who are no longer on the team because we came to differing opinions on certain topics and didn’t agree on the direction I took politically. I’m sure in the years ahead, this will be the case as well. I’ve never let a threat from any of them to never write another article here or to break off and start their own site affect my own writing or decision making — and I certainly don’t allow the hatemail from random strangers to decide courses of action for me either.
I will continue to allow my good friend Kathleen Gee to write about Ron Paul as much as she wants. I will continue to allow my other good friend Bridgit Casey to write about how crazy she believes Ron Paul is as much as she wants. Ron Paul, in my personal opinion, is ultimately irrelevant but HIS SUPPORTERS are going to play a crucial factor in the 2012 election. I honestly feel the same emotionally about Ron Paul as I did about Lyndon LaRouche, Ralph Nader, Howard Dean, and Dennis Kucinich: these are all Mxyzptlks to me and I will never understand the emtional pull they have on their followers.
BUT I recognize the importance that emotional pull plays on a significant number of voters who can be used by the Democrats in the next election to secure a sneaky, squeaky win for Barack Obama. Pretending the Mxyzptlks of politics don’t exist is folly. I’d give anything to find a way to trick them all into saying their names backwards and pop them all back into the Fifth Dimension where they belong, but absent that magic in years ahead, after Ron Paul’s last hurrah, there will be another Mr. Mxyzptlk to deal with in 2016…and in 2020…and in all the presidential elections I’ll witness with whatever time I have left on this Earth.
People like Kathleen who are fans of Mr. Mxyzptlk might think I’m from another dimension myself, because I can’t understand their zeal for a person I think is dangerously naive or downright nuts on foreign policy. But I need to acknowledge that a good portion of the hatemail I still get every day is from people who have an obsessive and never-ending hatred of Hillary Clinton and are still upset that I worked for her 2008 campaign back when I was a Democrat. Then there’s the people who hate me because I support Governor Sarah Palin, or the ones who hate me because I wanted Governor Palin to be a candidate for president this year and they’re upset she decided against running (which is somehow my fault).
Every day, someone will be upset about something. I am horrified to imagine what it must be like to be someone like Rush Limbaugh, Dennis Miller, Andrew Breitbart, or Ann Coulter and receive the volume of hatemail THEY must get from all the various fringes out there who decide to engage in two-minute-hates on a given day.
I have to say, I’m very disappointed whenever I see someone chime in with a “I have been reading you for years but because you don’t censor Kathleen I’m never going to read you again and now I’m going to get on my computer at work while I’m billing clients for my time and I am going to write to magazines and journals and tell them to never hire you as a writer so that you can’t buy food or pay your bills because I don’t think you should let Kathleen have an opinion that is different than mine”.
Let me be very clear: the reason I’m disappointed in reading that is because I never wanted a person like that as a reader in the first place, so I wish when we started this site I had some way of screening these sorts of haters out to begin with. I used to think the absolute worst people to ever deal with were the ones who complained about their comments not posting immediately (which is a major pet peeve of mine), but I have to admit that the “I’m never reading you again because I don’t agree with Kathleen” people are worse.
I don’t agree with Kathleen either, but I’m not going to censor her. If you disagree with her, debate her point by point and prove her wrong. I grant you that debating a Ron Paul supporter and addressing his foreign policy stances in particular is like trying to draw many in Hollywood away from Scientology, but if you can’t conduct or express yourself without stooping to expletives or threats — or, worse, without becoming a cyberstalker that I’ll have to file a lawsuit against in years ahead to get your harassment to stop — then please stop reading this site.
I’ve gone into massive debt keeping HB alive. It has long since ceased being something I enjoy doing. There are many days when I absolutely hate myself for ever creating this site, because it has brought me relentless attacks and the wrath of committed emotional terrorists for going on four years now. If you don’t like what you read here, then don’t read it. Save us the bandwidth costs by going elsewhere to hate or complain every day.
But don’t kid yourself that Ron Paul supporters are not out there, and that the nebulous Mxyzptlk cult that reforms every four years around an “oddball outsider” like him won’t continue to play its strange, spoiler role in presidential elections for years to come.
If you become unhinged and irrationally angry because Kathleen Gee wrote an article you didn’t like about a man you’ve never met but don’t like, then you should consider looking at the bigger picture and come up with a way to address whatever emotional pull Mr. Mxyzptlk has on people like Kathleen.
Use the intellect and imagination God gave you so solve the Mxyzptlk dilemma we seem to always face, so that the line of Mr. Mxyzptlks that’s run through LaRouche, Nader, Dean, Kucinich, and now Paul at last comes to an end.
SOMEONE out there will figure this out, in time, I’m sure. Just as Superman always found a way to get his own “oddball outsider” to say Kltpzyxm in every cartoon and pop him back into the Fifth Dimension.
What’s “Ron Paul” backwards again?
Luap Nor!
How’s that for a simple rallying cry the next time you disagree with Kathleen or any other Ron Paul fan. Just write LUAP NOR! LUAP NOR! LUAP NOR! as shorthand and I will definitely know what you mean.
An Open Letter to Bridget about Ron Paul’s “Skeletons”
Hi Bridget,
I love you girlfriend, but you’re seriously drinking some DNC-controlled-media Kool-Aid when it comes to your take on Ron Paul. 
I’m serious…I think you’re a wonderful woman, I agree with you on 90% of the issues, and I think you’ve been had. You’ve been lied to. But we all have. I just have more incentive to research things about about Ron Paul than you do, or most readers of HillBuzz.org. And that’s why you don’t know the facts about the newsletters written by ghostwriters and published by a company under Ron Paul’s masthead over 20 years ago.
If you’re not a Ron Paul voter like me, you probably don’t know that Ron Paul scores highest among minorities in a head-to-head matchup against Barack Obama, according to the latest CNN/ORC poll released Tuesday. Ron Paul gets 25% of the vote amongst non-whites, whereas Romney polls at 20% and Gingrich gets only 15%.
H/T TheLibertyVoice.com
I’m also sure you haven’t read this Open Letter to the Media by a black man, who points out that even if Ron Paul actually believed everything written by the ghostwriters (which, clearly, he doesn’t),
Pursuing [Ron Paul’s] platform of limited government against a hostile bipartisan congress will be hard enough, why would he use his 4 year stint to bring back Jim Crow? Does anyone realistically think he would try to reshape America into some postcard of the antebellum south with black people working in cotton fields and white masters in palatial mansions? Really? […]
Despite anything Ron Paul could say or do in office he couldn’t use his mandate to change who we are. I have more faith in the American people. How quickly we forget that a majority of white people in America chose an unknown largely untested black man over a seasoned, white war hero in 2008. Four years is not enough time to fundamentally change who we are as a society. Americas political structure wouldn’t permit Ron to create a “Racist States of America”. Not within a 4 year term, even if he were 100% in favor of it.
You probably also didn’t read the commentary from Black Entertainment Television, which pointedly does not label Ron Paul as a bigot (which is what one might assume from BET.com). Instead, the writer notes,
“Paul has since come out and said he only lent his name to the newsletters, and that he never actually wrote the content in them. Business Insider suggests there’s reason to take him at his word on this one, but even if we do there’s still the case of Paul’s views on civil rights. To that I’d say that Paul is a true libertarian, and being a true libertarian means believing that the government shouldn’t have the right to meddle in people’s lives, regardless of whether those people hold abhorrent beliefs.
A lot can be said about Paul, but one thing you can’t say about him is that he’s an ideologically inconsistent politician who lies and changes his mind constantly in order to court votes. What’s sad about American politics is that this is somehow considered tremendously virtuous, and not just the status quo.”
So…let’s think about those ghostwritten newsletters for a minute.
You and I both have the ability to log into HillBuzz and write whatever we like, don’t we?
Has Kevin ever told either of us what we could or could not say?
Has he ever demanded that we censor ourselves, or write for or against any topic?
I can’t speak for you, of course, but I believe Kevin has given every HillBuzz contributor free reign to express ourselves, even when he strenuously disagrees with us.
Because the views of the contributors are not necessarily the views of Kevin DuJan.
But here’s the interesting wrinkle. Because I have administrative access, I can, at this very moment, post an article with ANY byline I choose. I could post under your name, my name, Kevin’s name, Megan Fox’s name…anybody’s. I could create a totally new author account and post under that name.
So let’s say I log in under NewtLove’s name and I put up a post that says “Hitler had the right idea” or some b*llsh*t like that, would that magically transform Newt into a Nazi? Would that actually change who Newt is or what he believes? Would Newt suddenly behave differently? Would he start goose-stepping his way through life? Of course not. Newt stays Newt.
This is basically what happened with Ron Paul’s newsletters. Dr. Paul got out of Congress, went back to running his OB/GYN practice full-time, and gave up day-to-day control of the company that published several different newsletters with his name in the masthead. There were several different newsletters, with a series of editors. And they were written by ghostwriters with an occasional article by Ron Paul thrown in the mix.
Here’s my take on the Ron Paul newsletters, as a professional ghostwriter. It explains how ghostwriting works, and why Ron Paul probably couldn’t ever publicly identify the ghostwriters involved, even if he knew who they were.
This non-controversy has been resurrected time and again by Dr. Paul’s political opponents, and debunked time and again. Here’s what Ron Paul had to say about it during the last election cycle:
And why has this story popped up again, two weeks before the Iowa Caucus? Well, Ron Paul is polling at #1 in Iowa, has the best campaign, a ton of money, and the most energized and loyal supporters.
And he’s been running an ad that points out Newt Gingrich’s serial flip-flopping pretty much non-stop on Iowa TV (it has almost a million views on YouTube as well.)
Newt Gingrich doesn’t have much money, and he has no ground game. And his support is weak. But he does have one ace up his sleeve…a hack writer and Cocktail Party GOP/John McCain supporter named James Kirchick, who’s a fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, D.C.
And guess who else is involved with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies? Why…Newt Gingrich. He sits on its Leadership Council.
The Foundation for Defense of Democracies apparently lobbies heavily for Israel and against Iran…and since Ron Paul wants to cut all U.S. foreign aid (including that to Israel) and doesn’t want to bomb Iran into the stone age without a Congressional declaration of war, it puts Ron Paul at odds with the group, with Newt, and with Mr. Kirchick.
So, conveniently, just as Newt started to plummet in the Iowa polls, Kirchick re-ignited the non-controversy with The Company Ron Paul Keeps – Meet Alex Jones.
Ron Paul has never, not once, spoken a bigoted comment, or advocated a discriminatory policy. In fact, we libertarians don’t view people as members of groups. We judge people on the content of their character, not the color of their skin. We see people as individuals. Libertarianism and collectivism (racism, sexism) are polar opposites.
If there was ANY audio or video of Ron Paul–oh, I don’t know–calling Barack Obama “clean and articulate” for a black guy (like Joe Biden) or saying Barack Obama is appealing because he’s a light-skinned black who can switch in and out of black dialect at will (like Harry Reid), don’t you think we would have heard it by now?
Let’s contrast Ron Paul’s views on racism with these choice comments by DNC-media darling The Reverend Al Sharpton, in a speech at King’s College:
“White folks was in the caves while we [blacks] was building empires … We built pyramids before Donald Trump ever knew what architecture was … we taught philosophy and astrology and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it.”
Wow! Racism AND homophobia in one sentence. Way to go, Reverend Al!
Later in the same speech, Reverend Al gave some background on America’s founders, whom he described as “the worst criminals, the rejects they sent from Europe and sent them to the colonies.”…“So [if] some cracker,” he continued, “come and tell you ‘Well my mother and father blood go back to the Mayflower,’ you better hold you pocket. That ain’t nothing to be proud of, that means their forefathers was crooks.”
So, my 13-year-old ancestor, Mary Chilton, was a “crook” who was “sent” here? Gosh, I thought the Pilgrims came here because they were fleeing religious persecution. I guess that shows you what I know about my own family tree!
This is what real-live racism smells like, Bridget. This is the real deal in all its disgusting “glory.”
But because he’s a Democrat–and a liberal one at that–a real live in-your-face, caught-on-video racist like Al Sharpton doesn’t just get a free pass from the media…he gets his own TV show on MSNBC!
That’s right…if you’re a Republican, you can be accused of RAAAAAACISM and anti-Semitism and burned at the stake by the DNC-controlled media for words you didn’t even say and don’t believe…despite a complete lack of evidence…despite the fact that your heroes are Dr. Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Gandhi, and Jewish economists Murray Rothbard and Ludwig von Mises and despite a 35 year track record of voting against racism and collectivism in all its forms.
But if you’re an authentic, confirmed, proven, on-the-record Jew-hating, cracker-hating racist whose words caused a riot that killed a few people in a Jewish-owned clothing store in Brooklyn, you get your own TV show.
I have some serious questions for you, Bridget.
Are you really going to allow yourself to be manipulated by the same DNC-controlled media who destroyed Sarah Palin’s character because she “could see Russia from her house?”
Are you going to believe the same DNC-controlled media who smeared Newt Gingrich by reporting that he “served his dying wife divorce papers in her hospital bed?”
Are you going to believe the same DNC-controlled media who took down Herman Cain with completely manufactured charges of “sexual harassment?”
Are you going to believe the same DNC-controlled media who claimed that Kevin DuJan was “rigging the votes for Bristol Palin” on Dancing With the Stars?
If there was any video or audio of Ron Paul saying anything even remotely questionable, don’t you think it would be starring in a Mittens Romney commercial already? Don’t you think you would have seen it in any of Ron Paul’s 12 congressional campaigns or his two previous presidential campaigns? He has been elected to office 12 times from a district that is approaching 40% minority population.
Do you think a district that’s nearly 40% minority would elect Ron Paul to Congress 12 times if they thought he was a racist?
Bridget, if you think Ron Paul is a racist, it’s because you’ve been played, and the DNC-controlled media and Cocktail Party GOP are counting on the fact that you won’t make any effort to discover the truth for yourself.
I respectfully request that you examine the links I’ve provided and look at this smear campaign with an open mind.
Very sincerely,
Kathleen
The Skeletons in Ron Paul’s Closet
Last week, someone posted in the comment section of one of the Hillbuzz articles that we had turned into a Ron Paul site so I thought I would chime in and make a correction. I am not a fan of Ron Paul. I have never taken him seriously as a GOP contender and always just thought of him as an annoying distraction. Until now. If the polls are to be believed, he could very well win Iowa. Disturbing. It would most likely end there for him (hopefully) but it does make you sit up and take a healthier look at him and what he believes and some very disturbing things are bobbing to the surface. Like any candidate that is taking a lead in the polls…media scrutiny is part of the territory. I have to say that I agree with his general theory that less government is ideal. I know that Ron Paul wants to get rid of many (or most) of the government agencies and for that I applaud him but his foreign policy views scare the hell out of me. Islam is a very big threat to the United States…Iran is a very big threat to the United States…we can’t ignore them and leave them alone. A nuclear attack from Iran would change life as we know it. Like it or not, the world counts on us… and our current president wants to weaken us to the point that we are no longer able to protect those who want to live free. In the words of the great Ronald Reagan…
“You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children’s children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done.”
So, like all the other candidates, Ron Paul is having to answer questions about his past and there’s plenty of skeletons to dig out of his closet. Here are a few things you may (or may not) know about Congressman Paul.
1. Did you know that Ron Paul endorsed Cynthia McKinney in 2008 as the Green Party candidate? Yep…you read that right. Instead of endorsing McCain/Palin (or remaining silent) he actually endorsed one of the looniest humans to ever walk the Earth…Cynthia “I love Muammar Qaddafi” McKinney.
2. I know this has been covered on here before but did you know that Ron Paul thinks that Bradley Manning is a patriot? Yep…the Bradley Manning who gave stolen classified military documents to Wiki-leaks to be exposed to the world? How could an American presidential candidate actually voice support for someone who knowingly put our troops lives in danger?
3. Did you know that in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, Congressman Paul had a monthly newsletter called Ron Paul’s Freedom Report? This newsletter made very controversial anti-gay, anti-Semitic and anti-black statements. One newsletter claimed that gays were trying to infect other Americans with AIDS by compromising our blood supply. Another stated that order was established during the LA riots only because the blacks had to go pick up their welfare checks. Paul has tried to distance himself from the newsletters by saying that he did not write the articles but they were written in the first person (as if by him) with no other name in the byline and Mr. Paul profited over a million dollars from the newsletters. Whether he wrote all the newsletters or only some of them, he should have been aware of what was being written in his name. He has been given a free pass on these newsletters because no one has taken him seriously as a presidential candidate but in light of his poll numbers in Iowa…he has some explaining to do.
Whether you love Ron Paul or hate him…you have to ask this question…
If Ron Paul is so libertarian that he won’t even police people who use his name, if his movement is filled with incompetents and opportunists, then what kind of a president would he make? Would he even check in to see if his ideas are being implemented? Who would he appoint to Cabinet positions?
For the record…Kevin and I have discussed at great lengths the current GOP field and agree that currently Newt Gingrich would be the best man for the job (unless Sarah decides to jump in and save the day…how wonderful would that be?). Rick Perry is also a good man but may have done too much damage to himself during the debates to recover fully. We both were greatly disappointed by the demise of Herman Cain, who clearly was not ready for prime-time. I am almost completely burned out by this political roller coaster and we haven’t even begun the primaries yet. The people that I used to admire and respect (Charles Krauthammer, George Will, Ann Coulter, Nikki Haley etc.) have really let me down and have proven to all be establishment cocktail party hacks. I’m not sure where the Tea Party is in all of this mess. Who are they supporting? Have they made any statements? Will we be stuck with Romney? Will Ron Paul launch a 3rd party bid should he not be the GOP nominee or will he accept defeat so as not to damage his son Rand’s political career?
What are your thoughts?
Ron Paul Warns Town Hall Audience About NDAA
I watched this Town Hall event online last night instead of sleeping. It’s what I do nowadays. I spend 4-6 hours a day working on HillBuzz, about 11 hours a day on my real job, and about 3 hours a day volunteering for Ron Paul’s campaign. So sleep has become optional.
Anyway, I watched this Ron Paul Town Hall meeting on C-SPAN last night, and was excited to witness someone going through the same process I went through when I first started realizing that things just weren’t adding up for me anymore.
In this video, you witness a citizen discovering that his Congressman has lied to him about the NDAA. He was so angry that he provided his Congressman’s letter to his local paper (see the link below to watch the video and download his Congressman’s response.)
Although it was the last question of the night during a Monday night campaign stop at the Executive Court in Manchester, it was the one Ron Paul took the most time to explain – what is the National Defense Authorization Act and what should people understand about changes made for 2012.
The question came from Alex LaRoza of Bedford, a homeschooled high school student who asked Paul for his take on the controversial military spending bill. […]
See the video to find out Paul’s answer, and what got Keith Myrdek of Manchester so upset with his Republican Congressman [Frank Guinta], after hearing Paul’s answer….Myrdek says he now believes Guinta misled him about the substance of the NDAA.
VIDEO: Ron Paul on NDAA: ‘Biggest Story’ Nobody’s Talking About
I’m always excited to watch the light bulb come on for someone. That’s why I really enjoy teaching people about media bias and how the Cocktail Party GOP works.
Check it out.
You can watch the whole event here: Ron Paul Town Hall meeting on C-SPAN
Ron Paul Projected To Win Iowa Caucus; GOP Fears Hacker Disruption
A 12-term congressman known for his Constitutional conservatism, having run a campaign supported almost entirely by small donations from individual voters, is set to win the Iowa GOP Caucus, according to several recent polls. Ron Paul is currently the only GOP candidate who beats Barack Obama in a theoretical head-to-head matchup, mainly because of his overwhelming superiority among independent voters.
In a completely unrelated and coincidental development that has nothing whatsoever to do with Ron Paul’s rise in the polls, the Iowa Republican Party has announced that it is “taking steps to secure its electronic vote collection system after receiving a mysterious threat to its computers.”
A video claiming to be from a collective of computer hackers has jolted party officials with a worst-case scenario: an Iowa caucus marred by hackers who successfully corrupt the database used to gather vote totals and crash the website used to inform the public about results that can shape the campaign for the White House.
While confident in the safeguards protecting the vote count itself, and aware the video may be a hoax, members of the state Republican Party’s central committee told The Associated Press they are taking the threat seriously and have authorized additional security measures to ensure hackers are unable to delay the release of results. […]
The two-minute video features a computer-generated voice denouncing what it calls a corrupt political system that favors corporations and calls on supporters to “peacefully shut down the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses.” The video claims to be from Anonymous, a loosely organized group of hackers that has claimed credit for attacks on targets ranging from the Peruvian government to Paypal.
A former activist for Occupy Des Moines, Clarke Davidson, has acknowledged posting the video on YouTube. He said he did so after masked men left it outside his tent near the state Capitol on Nov. 3.
Seriously? He put it up on YouTube after “masked men left it outside his tent?”
You can’t make this stuff up.
Sarah Palin on the GOP Field
Very interesting comments by Sarah Palin on the GOP field going into Iowa.
Note: Clicking on the image will take you to a blog post on the Washington Post’s website, because the embed wasn’t working for this clip. Don’t read the blog post unless your blood pressure is too low this morning.
Newt supporters: Don’t read this. Seriously.
Ron Paul supporters crash, mock Newt Gingrich’s party
A group of Ron Paul supporters staged a satirical protest outside at least two Newt Gingrich events today, pretending to be ardent fans of the former House Speaker while holding signs that criticized his past positions and personal baggage.They call themselves the Party Crashers (or, they did, when asked if they had a name), and held signs with slogans including “Divorce Lawyers for Newt” and “TARP recipients.”
[…]The Party Crashers handed out constitutional report cards on which Gingrich earned an F in every single category “so that everybody knows if you really want to destroy the constitution, this is the man,” one girl explained.
Only Ron Paul got straight A’s, a rating the group joking insisted was actually a bad thing.
“We want a Washington insider,” a girl said.
“We like Freddie Mac,” said another.
“He’ll keep the ‘too big to fail’ alive, sucking the last life out of the treasury. And we know that he wants individual mandates,” added another.
“We want to see corruption not only continue, but increase,” insisted one girl.
“And the wars!” another woman chimed in. “We want Syria bombed. And Iran.”
[…]In a rare moment of seriousness, another Crasher criticized the former Speaker for not treating his supporters with respect. She noted that the Gingrich campaign had too many people to register for the event.
“They told all 1,200 people that they had seats, and that they just had to show up,” she said, though the venue seated only 650 people.
“We make sure we take care of the people who can take care of us,” she said. “We’re not dumb.”
With that exception, however, everyone the group stayed in character.
“He’s a dirty hippie,” said one girl, referring to a Paul supporter who was mentioned in conversation. “Ron Paul’s a dirty hippie,” she laughed.
[…]
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/12/13/ron-paul-supporters-crash-mock-newt-gingrichs-party/#ixzz1gS0KWiU4
An Open Letter to Kathleen Gee and Ron Paul’s Supporters: How Does Dr. Paul’s Table Float Without Any Legs?
Dear Kathleen,
Yesterday, you wrote an open letter to me on this site where you attempted to address the horror I intrinsically feel nearly every time Dr. Ron Paul opines on American foreign policy. You are a very good friend of mine who really came through for both me personally and for HillBuzz.org as an online political magazine when my health collapsed and I was not able to maintain this site further on my own. I’ve very grateful for that, and for your passion in supporting your chosen candidate, Dr. Paul, because passionate support of a candidate is always a good thing (even if I don’t also see the great potential in that person). As we’ve talked about many times before, you’ll never see Hillary Clinton the way that I do, or understand just how different her presidency would have been from Obama’s; that’s similar to how I will never understand, exactly, where you come from regarding Ron Paul.
I really want to understand the support you, and millions of other supporters out there, have for Dr. Paul but I need for you to understand that there must be something seriously wrong with the way Dr. Paul chooses to present his message because a candidate who excites you so much should not horrify many of us in conservative ranks to the same degree.
An Open Letter to Kevin DuJan about Ron Paul and September 11th
Hi Kevin,
We’re having this discussion in front of God and everybody, so I hope this will be an example of how people who believe different things can discuss things rationally and still respect each others’ basic goodness.
In tonight’s GOP Debate Live Blog, you say,
I am horrified by Ron Paul’s assertion that the United States government was gleeful after 9/11 or that our government knew the attacks were going to happen and let them happen anyway….After these 9/11 remarks, I’ve had enough of this garbage and no longer feel like indulging Fifth-Dimensional craziness in serious debate proceedings. I really hope Paul has to answer a question about his 9/11 remarks; I am sure my friend Jane will be looking down from Heaven with great interest to hear what he has to say.
You and I have not talked about Ron Paul’s comment in private and this is the first I’ve heard about your reaction to it. For those who aren’t familiar, it was part of a speech at the University of Iowa in which Dr. Paul was discussing his foreign policy of non-interventionism, and warning that the Obama Regime is making noises about going to war with Iran:
“Think of what happened after 9/11, the minute before there was any assessment, there was glee in the administration because now we can invade Iraq, and so the war drums beat…That’s exactly what they’re doing now with Iran.”
I think that after working with you for a year, and helping keep HillBuzz.org going at a significant personal investment of time and money, you know my character. I hope you understand me to be unwaveringly patriotic and dedicated to restoring America to the great Constitutional Republic that it once was. And I hope you know that I would never support a candidate who didn’t love America, the Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence as much as I do. So I hope you’ll evaluate what I’m about to say while keeping that in mind.
The concepts I’m going to touch on are tough. It takes an open and curious mind to get beyond the knee-jerk, emotional reaction the Democrat-Controlled Media is counting on you to have upon hearing a sound byte like this. Members of the Ruling Class are counting on a dumbed-down electorate who are incapable of critical analysis, and ignorant of even recent history, to keep them in power. I would ask you to take a deep breath and consider this as dispassionately as you can, given the loss of your friend.
Ron Paul has said repeatedly that he’s NOT a “truther” and does not believe that 9/11 was somehow an “inside job.” Dr. Paul has, however, called it (accurately) a massive failure of our intelligence agencies. In a statement before the House of Representatives in February of 2004, Dr. Paul said,
“There is plenty of blame to go around for the mistakes made by going to war in Iraq, especially now that it is common knowledge Saddam Hussein told the truth about having no weapons of mass destruction, and that Al Qaida and 9/11 were in no way related to the Iraqi government.
Our intelligence agencies failed for whatever reason this time, but their frequent failures should raise the question of whether or not secretly spending forty billion taxpayer dollars annually gathering bad information is a good investment. The administration certainly failed us by making the decision to sacrifice so much in life and limb, by plunging us into this Persian Gulf quagmire that surely will last for years to come.
But before Congress gets too carried away with condemning the administration or the intelligence gathering agencies, it ought to look to itself. A proper investigation and debate by this Congress– as we’re now scrambling to accomplish– clearly was warranted prior to any decision to go to war. An open and detailed debate on a proper declaration of war certainly would have revealed that U.S. national security was not threatened– and the whole war could have been avoided. Because Congress did not do that, it deserves the greatest criticism for its dereliction of duty.
There was a precise reason why the most serious decision made by a country– the decision to go to war– was assigned in our Constitution to the body closest to the people. If we followed this charge I’m certain fewer wars would be fought, wide support would be achieved for just defensive wars, there would be less political finger-pointing if events went badly, and blame could not be placed on one individual or agency. This process would more likely achieve victory, which has eluded us in recent decades.”
And this is the key point I want to make, Kevin. Ron Paul’s foreign policy comes from the same philosophical basis as his domestic and economic policy…Enlightenment traditions of individual freedom, personal responsibility, free market economics, and the Golden Rule. Treat others as you wish to be treated. His foreign policy views are based on the Constitution and advice of the Founders, including George Washington, who warned the young country to avoid “entangling alliances” in his Farewell Address in 1796. It’s also based on the concept of “just war.”
America was a colonial outpost of a Imperial superpower on which the sun never set, and where the King’s word was law. One of my ancestors took up arms against the British Empire and fought under George Washington’s command, creating what was, at the time, the only country on Earth where citizens held free elections to choose their leaders.
A scrappy, ragtag band of rebels fought and died to found the United States of America, defeating the world’s greatest superpower at the time. And their fight was based on ideas and ideals, one of which was “just war,” a very old concept that had been discussed extensively in the 13th century by Thomas Aquinas. To many who believe in the “just war” concept, pre-emptive war is considered immoral in nearly all cases.
If you went to government schools (as I did), this may be hard for you to comprehend. It’s astonishing how ignorant and unschooled we all are, compared to our forebears.
Here’s where I admit that I didn’t vote for Bush. I’m a libertarian, and Bush was a big-government, big-spending conservative. Not my cup of tea. And my personal feeling is that George W. Bush is an honorable man who loves America, and loves the military, but made some really bad policy decisions that I can’t support. (Even so, he was a vastly better president than our first postracial, non-Muslim, Marxist and probably gay president, Barack Hussein Obama.)
I think any American with a heart still has a little PTSD about September 11th. And because September 11th was so horrifying and traumatic, it’s very hard for us to remember anything that was happening in the Bush administration prior to that date. Frankly, most of us (including me) weren’t paying much attention.
But several members of the Bush administration have said that from Day One, a number of Bush advisors and members of his administration were, in fact, eager to go to war and affect a regime change in Iraq, and were looking for any excuse to do so.
This goes against everything Ron Paul, and libertarians like me, believe in–the initiation of the use of force in the absense of a a confirmed, imminent threat to national security. And it goes against what I think America stands for.
In an interview on “60 Minutes,” former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill said “From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go….For me, the notion of pre-emption, that the U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do, is a really huge leap.” [emphasis added]
And this is the beef I have with George W. Bush. As a libertarian, I don’t believe in pre-emptive war, just as I don’t believe in pre-emptively executing people who might commit crimes but haven’t actually done anything yet.
A story on CNN continues [emphasis added],
O’Neill and other White House insiders gave him documents showing that in early 2001 the administration was already considering the use of force to oust Saddam, as well as planning for the aftermath.
“There are memos,” Suskind told the network. “One of them marked ‘secret’ says ‘Plan for Post-Saddam Iraq.'”
Suskind cited a Pentagon document titled “Foreign Suitors For Iraqi Oilfield Contracts,” which, he said, outlines areas of oil exploration. “It talks about contractors around the world from … 30, 40 countries and which ones have what intentions on oil in Iraq.”
In the book, O’Neill is quoted as saying he was surprised that no one in a National Security Council meeting asked why Iraq should be invaded.
“It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying ‘Go find me a way to do this,’” O’Neill said.
Paul O’Neill’s assertions are backed up by former CIA director George Tenet in his book, At the Center of the Storm. In a 2007 article in the Washington Post, Karen DeYoung writes [emphasis added],
White House and Pentagon officials, and particularly Vice President Cheney, were determined to attack Iraq from the first days of the Bush administration, long before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and repeatedly stretched available intelligence to build support for the war, according to a new book by former CIA director George J. Tenet.
Although Tenet does not question the threat Saddam Hussein posed or the sincerity of administration beliefs, he recounts numerous efforts by aides to Cheney and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to insert “crap” into public justifications for the war. Tenet also describes an ongoing fear within the intelligence community of the administration’s willingness to “mischaracterize complex intelligence information.”
“There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraq threat”…The debate “was not about imminence but about acting before Saddam did.”
According to Ron Paul–who is in a position to know, as a civil libertarian having served 10 terms in Congress–various provisions of the PATRIOT ACT had been floating around Congress for years prior to September, 2001. And after the attacks, in the tradition of Rahm Emanual, Congress “didn’t let a good crisis go to waste,” bundling up a number of privacy-killing, civil-liberties-killing chunks of legislation that had been seen as too extreme into a bill that most Representatives didn’t actually read before signing, and wouldn’t have voted for had it not been called the PATRIOT ACT.
So, in the eight months before the September 11th terrorist attacks, several members of the Bush administration were eager for an excuse to invade Iraq. Several members of Congress were eager for an excuse to start spying on Americans without due process.
I have no reason to believe that members of the Bush administration were happy that nearly 3,000 Americans died on September 11th. None at all. And that isn’t what Ron Paul said, though that is what “news” coverage has implied.
But the record and several contemporary accounts support Ron Paul’s statement, made to a packed house of over 1,300 at the University of Iowa:
“Think of what happened after 9/11, the minute before there was any assessment, there was glee in the administration because now we can invade Iraq, and so the war drums beat…That’s exactly what they’re doing now with Iran.”
Dr. Paul discussed his statement in an interview on Fox News, starting at about the 5:00 mark:
The money quote is:
“This doesn’t mean [the administration] had glee about 9/11, that’s a total misinterpretation. They had pleasure in knowing that they had an excuse now to do what they’d been wanting to do for so long and what did they do? They marched into Iraq based on lies, there was no Al Qaida, no weapons of mass destruction, and look at the tragic outcomes from that effort. Undeclared war…matter of fact, that is carried over into Afghanistan, it looks like it won’t ever end unless we change the administration.”
Kevin, I sincerely hope that you’ve taken the time to read this whole letter, which, I grant you, is probably only of interest to other liberty wonks like myself.
Most people won’t have read this far. Most Americans–if they’re paying attention at all–will still make their voting decision as though they’re watching an episode of American Idol, thanks to decades of hard work by the teachers’ unions.
But I hope, at least, that you hold me in enough regard to know that both Ron Paul and I recognize the September 11th attacks for what they were–horrible, gutwrenching tragedies. And I hope you believe me when I say I’m terribly sorry for the loss of your friend Jane.
But I think that the loss of civil liberties, and endless, unconstitutional, undeclared wars are equally tragic. Because that means that the sacrifices of those who fought and died to protect those hard-won liberties–including my Revolutionary War ancestor, Moses Gee–were in vain.
Kevin, I know you aren’t going to vote for Ron Paul, but I hope that after reading this, you don’t respect me any less for my decision to do so.
Sincerely,
Kathleen Gee
********************************************
Dear Kathleen,
I’ve never censored anything from you as a Ron Paul supporter and have given you free rein to write as much as you want about him, even though I am not a supporter of his. This generates considerable hatemail for me from people out there who think Ron Paul supporters should never be given a forum, but I’ve never interfered with your making your case for Ron Paul.
The reason I’ve done this is because not only do I respect you on a personal level as a friend and as a writer, but because like him or not, Ron Paul is a phenomenon and he attracts scores of devotees coast to coast. There’s a reason that so many people are so excited by his candidacy…and I want to understand what they are so excited about.
I have tried numerous times to understand this excitement, but every time I try to dig deep and appreciate what Ron Paul is all about, something horrifying jumps out like his feelings toward 9/11.
In the debate tonight, Dr. Paul went on a tear about how we should close the Embassy in Baghdad and bring troops home from shuttered bases all over the globe, with America withdrawing all personnel to the continental US. That’s madness. Pure and utter madness.
While I do believe there are bases that are no longer needed and forces should be shifted in many cases, I don’t think Dr. Paul has a real appreciation of the ripples his dream plan would cause. I do think the US needs to start charging hefty fees for the protective services the country’s military provides, so that American taxpayers are not footing the bill for this ourselves. But I can only listen to Dr. Paul for a few minutes before he goes off the deep end with me.
I don’t think I’m alone in this, and in fact feel I’m more fair to Dr. Paul than 95% of people out there because I do keep trying to understand him and the phenomenon that surrounds him.
But 9/11 is sacred to me, as it’s sacred to many Americans. And Ron Paul’s comments on 9/11 are horrifying to me. So much so that he’s really crossed a line this time. These remarks lost a good deal of whatever credibility I had for Dr. Paul. I’m not sure why his supporters will continue to stand with him after these 9/11 remarks, but I certainly will never see Dr. Paul the same way after this.
I encourage you to keep writing about Dr. Paul and the clear media push against him (which is indeed real). I also think you may be right that Dr. Paul will win the Iowa Caucuses, since ground game is everything there and Dr. Paul’s supporters certainly are motivated to head out into the cold and vote for him. If Huckabee won in 2008, and his “I Heart Huckabee” supporters were only a fraction as devoted as the Paul supporters are, then there’s a very good chance that Paul could, indeed, win Iowa.
To be totally honest, I hope Paul DOES indeed win Iowa…because this might be the final straw that forces the parties to remove Iowa as the first in the nation state come primary season. It’s high time Iowa lost this honor, and a Paul victory following Huckabee’s the cycle before that could be just what’s needed to change the nomination calendar in the future.
I love Ron Paul’s zeal for cutting spending, but am horrified by more of what he says than I’m appreciative of his willingness to go out on a limb. Just as I see the need to recognize the fact that Ron Paul generates such fervent support amongst his supporters, Paul supporters like yourself need to understand the horror Dr. Paul strikes into the hearts of many when he talks about his dreams for American foreign policy.
Ron Paul has a very real problem, in that I am certainly not the only person horrified by his 9/11 remarks. Dr. Paul has a very real communication problem since there always seems to be such a solid disconnect between what supporters like you say he really means as opposed to how non-supporters like myself interpret the words he says.
Respectfully,
Kevin DuJan
GOP Debate Watch Thread: Des Moines, IA – ABC News
GOP Debate sponsored by ABC “News,” local ABC affiliate WOI-TV, The Des Moines Register, Yahoo and the Republican Party of Iowa
TIME: 9:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m Eastern time tonight
LOCATION: Sheslow Auditorium, Drake University, Des Moines
CANDIDATES: Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Mittens Romney and Rick Santorum.
SPINMEISTERS: ABC “News” anchors Diane “Republicans are Nazis” Sawyer and George “Obamatron” Stephanopoulos
WATCH: ABC-TV (check your local listings)
LIVE STREAM: http://www.DesMoinesRegister.com/caucus
PREDICTIONS:
All questions will be “gotcha” questions along the lines of “When did you stop beating your wife?”
Most debates up to now have arrayed the candidates onstage based on poll numbers. However, with Ron Paul in second place, the organizers will be forced to come up with a unique and unusual seating chart that puts him all the way on the end.
Mittens will get 75% of the questions and follow-ups.
Newt and Mittens will rip each other to shreds, and will be giving unlimited time to do so. Ron Paul will laugh inside, where it counts.
Ron Paul will get three questions total. Despite polling at #2 in Iowa and New Hampshire, Diane Sawyer will ask Dr. Paul when he is going to announce his third party campaign. The second question will be about Dr. Paul’s “nutty” statements that the U.S. shouldn’t tell Israel what her borders should be. And for his final question, George Snuffleupagus will ask Dr. Paul when he’s going to announce his third-party campaign.
Rick Perry will nod off, but will receive more questions than Bachmann, Santorum and Paul combined, even though his poll numbers are in the basement.
Michelle Bachmann and Rick Santorum will pile on to both Mittens and Newt, mainly about Obamacare. Rep. Bachmann will remind the crowd that she was born in Iowa. About 100 times.
UPDATE: Here’s a benchmark by which to judge the TelePrompTer-free performances by GOP candidates…
