2008 Presidential Primaries

[Coy_Roy]

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Just don't feel you suffered a bad beat and tell me the system is rigged after you loose with your pocket 10's candidate when I can tell you it's going to take Jacks or better to win.

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Haha, good one. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[Coy_Roy]

Here's an excellent article from that site you mentioned:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/art...seriously.html

Taking Ron Paul Seriously
By Bruce Bartlett

As some readers of this column may know, the first "real" job I ever had was working for Congressman Ron Paul back in 1976. I went to visit him a few months ago and was pleased to see that he had not changed much at all since the days when I was a legislative assistant on his congressional staff.

At that time, I did not know that Ron planned a run for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. When I later learned of it, I thought he was being hopelessly Quixotic -- tilting at windmills. I thought Ron's views about limited constitutional government and nonintervention in the affairs of other nations were hopelessly out of step with the vast bulk of Republican primary voters. On the war, they remain solidly in the George W. Bush camp -- willing to defend the war in Iraq to the bitter end and highly intolerant of anyone who raises doubts about its wisdom or continuation. Rudy Giuliani exemplified this attitude in the debate two weeks ago when he demanded that Ron apologize for his antiwar position.

However, significant cracks have developed in the wall of conservative support that Bush enjoyed at the beginning of the war. Today, much is known about the lack of verifiable evidence of Saddam Hussein's possession of weapons of mass destruction, and about how the White House bullied those urging caution into reluctant support and thoroughly screwed-up the Iraq occupation. Even Sen. John McCain, still a strenuous war supporter, has become outspoken on Bush's poor management of it. Consequently, more than a few conservatives have gone over to the antiwar side. Unfortunately for Ron, they are mostly former Republicans today, unlikely to vote in a Republican primary.

Among conservatives, another factor is also at work: the growing realization that Bush has never really understood or shared a Goldwater/Reagan vision of the nature of conservative governance. And even those who still cling desperately to the view that Bush is better than the Democratic alternative mostly concede that his performance in office on a wide range of issues has left much to be desired. Following are just a few examples of Bush's actions that have worn them down:

-- The explosion of spending on Bush's watch, his strong support for numerous "big government" initiatives such as the No Child Left Behind Act and the vast expansion of the Medicare program for prescription drugs, and his unwillingness to use the veto to control an orgy of pork barrel spending on his watch. Bush's recent successful veto of the defense supplemental, which yielded a bill close to what he originally asked for, confirms the view that he could have kept wasteful spending under control all along if he had simply made the effort.

-- Bush's extraordinarily poor choices for high-level government positions. The choice of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court was perhaps his worst decision -- rectified only because conservatives finally protested one of his decisions en masse and forced him to choose the vastly more qualified Samuel Alito instead. But since then we have witnessed the gross incompetence of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in the continuing scandal over the unnecessary -- and still unexplained -- firings of several U.S. attorneys; the comically inept actions of former Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown during the Katrina disaster; and the forced resignation of Paul Wolfowitz as president of the World Bank, a position for which he was totally unqualified in the first place and which was given to him purely as a reward for obsequious loyalty to the president. Space prohibits listing many other such examples.

-- The incredible ineptness with which Bush has pursued conservative goals such as Social Security reform, while he has brought to bear every ounce of power at his disposal to ram though Congress an immigration bill that is viewed as abhorrent by most conservatives. If it becomes law, it will only be because of heavy support from Democrats, who correctly view the addition of millions of new Hispanic voters as a major boon to their party. Meanwhile, Bush gives short shrift to his conservative critics, just as he did in the Miers incident. This has led many of his formerly fervent conservative supporters to conclude that he essentially views them and their concerns with total contempt.

All of this has made the Republican soil highly fertile for a dissident campaign based on a genuine conservative message, such as that being offered by Ron Paul. I still don't think he can win the nomination, but he may end up playing a role not dissimilar to that played by Eugene McCarthy in the Democratic nominating process in 1968. He didn't win, either, but forced Lyndon Johnson to retire and ultimately shaped the direction of the Democratic Party for decades to come.

[BluffTHIS!]

CR,

The fact of the wrongness of Ron Paul's opponents on many issues, and his own rightness on many issues, doesn't outweigh Mr. Paul's wacky views on other issues, many of which are more important than the issues on which he is right. He is never going to sell "get rid of the FED" or "don't take the fight to those who attacked us on 9/11 (wherever that place is properly assigned to be)" to the American electorate. No chance.

[Coy_Roy]

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CR,

The fact of the wrongness of Ron Paul's opponents on many issues, and his own rightness on many issues, doesn't outweigh Mr. Paul's wacky views on other issues, many of which are more important than the issues on which he is right. He is never going to sell "get rid of the FED" or "don't take the fight to those who attacked us on 9/11 (wherever that place is properly assigned to be)" to the American electorate. No chance.

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I fully understand where it is you're coming from and I will respectfully disagree.

[Emperor]

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I really doubt we have a clear-cut choice for Pres. Our weight will be behind House and Senate races. Yes, to whoeve said it, Im holding out that a Republican or Democrat gets desperate for votes and comes knocking. Feb 5 will determine the nominee, not interest groups. The work will be after, probably.

What I WANT DESPERATELY TO AVOID is some sort of whacky movement to get behind RP with weight. Vote your conscious or interest or both. But, don't tie RP around our neck like a huge weightstone. We will drown, and ANY cred we build up will be lost with the mainstream parties. "Oh they are just more tinfoil hat TriLat conspiracy nuts, let them vote for Nader or Browne." RP has no [censored] sense. None. He had a chance before the debates started to hone his message, shut up about the stupid [censored], and win some backing. His war message is good, and his poker stance is. Everything else is from some whacky militia conspiracy novella. We need to keep our official distance.

Engineer, just a thing about what you left out on what an average non FoFNazi Republican voter wants.
1A. Competence. You need to be able to trust him to run the government well.
1. Pro Smaller government
2. Pro Lower Taxes
3. Strong on National DEFENSE....

Maybe RP is there with taxes and small gov't but 1A and 3, hell no.

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TE has expressed MANY times that he doesn't support any one presidential candidate. That is completely up to each individual to decide. So no worries of a "weightstone."

He does grade politicians based on their views.

If you have a politician that should be supported TE and everyone else would be happy to hear about it.

That being said, not only is Ron Paul the most competent man to run this country, (Have you read his speeches/statement/legislation? It reads with honesty and integrity that no other politician has expressed in 30years), but Ron Paul is also the strongest on National DEFENSE since Reagan. The defense of our country is to arm the population, protect the borders from invasion, and deport those on expired visas (9/11 hijackers), and stop pissing off the world by meddeling in their business.

[Emperor]

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From last month's Mark Davis article on the RCP website: Ron Paul: Idea-Driven, Decent, Unworthy

[i]The bad news for Dr. Paul and his followers is that their brains are simply too full of nutty things for them to be taken seriously in any grand sense.

For example, there is a corner of American economic thought that is skeptical of the Federal Reserve and laments our departure from the gold standard, now obsolete across the globe. But the Ron Paul take is that the Fed and its various chairmen have acted as sinister puppeteers doing the bidding of an ill-defined elite.

This John Birch-style conspiracy geekdom has sparked appeal among the disaffected of all ages, especially twentysomethings ripe for the artificial know-it-all vibe that often accompanies three to six years of adulthood.

File all that under disturbing quirkiness. But it is the Ron Paul take on fighting terror that makes him unfit for even the briefest consideration for the presidency.

In the now-famous May 15 GOP debate in South Carolina, he stood out among the crowded field by blaming America for 9/11. "We've been over there," he lectured. "We've been bombing Iraq for 10 years. ... What would we say here if China was doing this in our country?"

That phony equivalency rises to the level of sheer moral idiocy, and it doesn't stop there. Dr. Paul's longstanding unfortunate tendency is to rope Jesus into his war objections. Today, the notion of going to war to actually prevent additional terrorism strikes him as antithetical to the concept of a "Prince of Peace."

We should expect sixth-graders to recognize that peace is not the mere cessation of hostilities. Peace is what you get when the good guys win.[i]

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When Nutty = What the founders intended, and what makes sense to someone not brainwashed by skullandbones. Count me in the nutty!

[BluffTHIS!]

Emperor et al.,

Why don't you just sum up Ron Paul's views as "gold standard isolationist" to save space?

[Emperor]

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CR,

The fact of the wrongness of Ron Paul's opponents on many issues, and his own rightness on many issues, doesn't outweigh Mr. Paul's wacky views on other issues, many of which are more important than the issues on which he is right. He is never going to sell "get rid of the FED" or "don't take the fight to those who attacked us on 9/11 (wherever that place is properly assigned to be)" to the American electorate. No chance.

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Getting rid of the Fed is a great idea.

Ron Paul voted to track down and Kill all terrorists having anything to do with 9/11 and even sponsored legislation.

[Emperor]

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I believe we need to identify the Republican party as the enemy.

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...and shut out the one constitutionalist running on either side.

Not bright........EDIT: grr!

You clearly don't get it.



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You clearly don't get the realities of the two-party system and that Ron Paul makes zero difference in the American political system. By being associated with him, its marginalizes us. We should be actively courting the support of someone who has a chance of winning. Not someone with all the influence of the grass-roots party.

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Find us a candidate that supports our views.

Until then, why not support the one who does no matter how fringe?

Supporting a candidate that doesn't agree with our views doesn't make much since to me.

"Yay! Our candidate won! Oh wait! Why the [censored] is he outlawing poker!?!?!" [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

[Emperor]

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The NRA has a constitutional amendment (the right to bear arms) on which to lean. While I certainly think online gambling is a right to which all American citizens over the age of 18 ought to be allowed to partake in if they so choose, there is not an amendment that SPECIFICALLY says we do. Who knows maybe the PPA can become a large lobby in the same vain as the NRA, the oil companies, health care companies, unions, etc., but there is a LONG, LONG, LONG way to go.

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While the Constitution specifically mentions not infringing on the public's right to bear arms. It also mentions the federal government not legislating anything not specifically mentioned in the articles, and the 10th amendment clearly assigns that responsibility and privilege to the individual states.

The Federal government has no more right to legislate poker as it has to legislate bearing arms.

Ok Ok Interstate Commerce. Legislating interstate commerce does not equal making particular commerce illegal though.