Friday, May 21, 2010

An embarrassing start

Boy, I hope this Rand Paul idiot wins the Kentucky Senate race. So far he is tripping on his own feet, and stepping on his own.... anyway. He's flubbing up on no-brainers like the 1964 Civil Rights Act just to preserve his libertarian street cred. And what will that buy him at a desegregated lunch counter? And then he gripes "where's my honeymoon" to George Stephanopoulos. Embarrassing.

Rand Paul is living in the same fantasy land inhabited by paleoconservatives and other troglodytes―the grad student late night bullshit session. Like Pat Buchanan the Brilliant who never won a single election. You are running for a powerful political office, buddy. Better get your game face on. The victim card is not attractive and neither is the image of you being eaten in November because you refuse to shed your inane libertarian purity.

7 comments:

  1. The acorn doesn't fall very far from the tree.

    P.S. A friend of mine still rants (after a couple of beverages) about how the 2008 GOP primaries were rigged so that Old Man Paul was cheated out of the nomination.

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  2. I soooo hope he wins, nonetheless. The alternative is just too scary. His handlers had better give him a sharp talking-to!

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  3. My favorite Ron Paul moment from the 2008 campaign was listening to him on the Michael Medved show sort of stuttering when asked about the "9-11 Truth movement" and also not having any answer when asked who he'd place in his cabinet if he won.

    If Rand loses it will be horrible for the country, but if one must look for a silver lining in that scenario, I'd say it would provide a good reason to point out the disconnect between the utopianesque thinking of the Pauls and the practical down-to-earth thinking of the American undecided voter.

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  4. my instinct is to defend ron paul. the government is a massive, massive bureaucracy. I think it's unfair of radio talk show hosts to crystallize the issue in one neat phrase ("are you a '9/11 truther' ") and expect someone to give a yes/no answer to that question. You can believe Bush and the administration were good guys, while also believing there were rogue elements in government intelligence or at state who were happy to see this happen and, yes, may even have helped it along.

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  5. Kathleen, Ron Paul went on the Alex Jones show numerous times during the primary, so the question did not come out of the blue.

    "while also believing there were rogue elements in government intelligence or at state who were happy to see this happen and, yes, may even have helped it along."

    I won't deny this, but this is not what is commonly seen as "trutherism".

    Just like Obama was smart politically and dissociated his campaign from Rev. Wright, I like to see conservatives dissociate from the birthers, the truthers and the other crazies on the fringes.

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  6. ok, but does ron paul believe bush knew 9/11 was going to happen? what is "trutherism", and when defined, how does it accord with Ron Paul's stated beliefs? I'm not clear on this, is anyone?

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  7. When questioned, Ron Paul has denied the standard Truther credo "9/11 was an inside job" several times, at least as early as January 2008. But the campaign started back in 2007, and Paul indulged in a lot of what Michelle Malkin called "trutheriness" enough that he was questioned about it. These questions came at his own invitation. He never really gotten "out in front of the issue" as is said in politics, and it ended up harming him with the voting populace. Paul went on to endorse Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party who laughably maintained that he had "no opinion" on the 9/11 Truth Movement.

    Rudy Giuliani used the evidence of his "truther-lite" tendencies as a club to score major points in the one debate, perhaps unfairly. But this was Paul's own petard. Of course Rudy's campaign had other problems and crashed and burned while Paul's was still chugging along.

    However, I think what Rudy did in leaving the stage when he knew his act was over showed more class than the bitter-ender model pursued by the Ron Paul campaign. If you look at the amount of cash spent per delegate scored in the Repub primary, Paul outspent even Romney. I think this almost defines "vanity candidate". If Ron Paul had merely remained a congressman rather than running a hopeless Pres. campaign in a tough year for the GOP, I'd have retained more respect for him. He has a lot of the right ideas, but he is definitely not the right messenger.

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