No Grasp of Your Reality

As a young man, though, [Ron Paul] did not protest the Vietnam War, which he now calls “totally unnecessary” and “illegal.” Much later, after the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, he began reading St. Augustine. “I was annoyed by the evangelicals’ being so supportive of pre-emptive war, which seems to contradict everything that I was taught as a Christian,” he recalls. “The religion is based on somebody who’s referred to as the Prince of Peace.”

Just read it.

Hmm… my politics category is drowning out the others. Oh well.

Good article by John Nichols talking about a political race that on the surface didn’t look too important in the big scheme of things, but, as the author points out, could be a microcosm for the large distaste that the conservative Republicans are showing for the GOP. His article, Slapping Down the “GOP Establishment”, describes a race between Jim Whitehead and Paul Broun for the 10th Congressional Seat in Georgia. Georgia has a runoff system, where the two people receiving the highest number of votes go into a runoff. Whitehead is described as a “rubberstamp for the Bush White House and Republican leaders in Congress”, while Broun was running as simply “fighting the entire GOP establishment.”

Whitehead was a shoe-in for the election.

Well, Broun has won Tuesday’s election by less than four hundred votes.

Broun’s message sounds suspiciously like Ron Paul’s message during his Presidential run (and Paul’s message during his entire political career). Nichols describes this in the meat of the article towards the end:

As evidence of his independence, Broun emphasized a Ron Paul-like committed to “work to restore government according to the Constitution as our Founders intended.” While the Georgia appears to be a more cautious constitutionalist than the maverick Texas congressman who is making a longshot bid for the party’s presidential nomination in 2008, Broun borrowed one of the most popular of Paul’s principles, promising that if elected he would assess any new legislation by first asking: “Is it constitutional and a proper function of government?”

No one was going to confuse Broun with a liberal, but he did display a Paul-like libertarian streak, suggesting that the federal government ought to stay away away from issues gay marriage and legalizing marijuana — matters that the candidate suggested are best handled at the state level.

“I believe in the 10th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which clearly says that all powers not specifically given to the federal government, or prohibited by the Constitution to the states, are reserved to the states and the people,” Broun said. “I am not a person who believes that our lives should be controlled by politicians in Washington. I do not believe that the states are merely administrative units of the federal government, to do its bidding.”

I’m hoping that this message is going to resonate outside of George, to the rest of the country. I know there are many Democrats who are switching their party affiliation in order to vote for Paul.

Finally, one of the big news channels is covering a Ron Paul news story. Could this be the dam breaking in terms of the apparent media blackout?

For those of you who didn’t hear, out of all presidential candidates, Ron Paul received the most campaign contributions from military employees, even more than John McCain. It looks like it hit a nerve with Fox News.

Richard A. Viguerie has penned an article on Fred Thompson asking whether he should be the choice for conservatives in the upcoming presidential election. After describing Thompson’s history in politics as senator and as a lobbyist, and going through issues like McCain-Feingold Bill and the Asia fundraising scandal, his answer is a resounding no. Here are some excerpts from the article:

Senator Barry Goldwater became the first political spokesman for the conservative movement because, out of all the Republican politicians who claimed to be conservative in the 1950s, he and he alone was willing to confront the sitting Big Government Republican in the White House. President Eisenhower’s policies were “a dime store New Deal,” he said on the floor of the Senate. He spoke truth to power.

Well, again we have a Big Government Republican in the White House, and now it’s no longer a dime store New Deal—it’s a supersized Wal-Mart of a New Deal. The Republican welfare state is far worse than anything the Democrats achieved.

And what has been Fred Thompson’s response these past seven years as the GOP massively expanded the federal government? If he’s said anything to warn us about the direction of the Republican Party, he’s said it so quietly that nobody—not just us, nobody—has noticed. And by his silence he has become complicit. (emphasis mine)

For six of his eight years as a Senator, Thompson ranked in the bottom half of Republican Senators in terms of his commitment to conservatism. What makes this more remarkable is that he served as a Senator from Tennessee, winning his two elections by hefty margins. He didn’t have the excuse that his electorate was liberal, like the electorates of RINO Senators from Oregon, Maine, or Rhode Island. He had a safe seat with a conservative electorate. So when he voted liberal, we have to assume it’s because that’s what he believed. (emphasis mine)

Read the rest of this entry »

Can someone please explain to me what appeal Fred Thompson has to conservatives? I’ve heard some people out there salivating at the idea of Fred running for president, and I don’t really see anything about him that appeals to me. My impression is that he’s a cookie-cutter conservative Republican, in Ronald Regan sense, but I don’t see much that distinguishes him from anyone else.

Of course, he was the man in The Hunt for Red October.

I can’t believe what little coverage Ron Paul is getting in the “mainstream press”. Running for political office seems to be a chicken and egg game, where the media ends up deciding who is viable. Think about it:

1. The press only cover “viable” candidates.
2. Viable candidates are those who poll well.
3. Candidates can only poll well if the electorate are aware of the them.
4. The electorate only know about people whom the press cover.
5. When people are polled, they choose a candidate they know about.
6. Lather, rinse, and repeat.

Thankfully, the Ron Paul campaign, like the Howard Dean campaign during the 2004 election, is working as a true grassroots campaign, despite the lack of coverage. Now, the numbers are showing it! According the campaign fundraising disclosures, the Ron Paul campaign has raised more money than the McCain campaign, this puts him at number three amongst the Republican candidates, although he is admittedly well behind the Romney and Giuliani.

I was talking to a friend of mine who made a very interesting comment about the people where he grew up in western Pennsylvania. He said that the people out there tend to want to support the winner. It’s almost like betting on horses… their goal is to go in and vote for the person they think is going to win. I don’t think this thinking is limited to Western PA. Once you wrap your head around the recursiveness of this thinking, you start to see how much influence the media has in who gets elected in this country. If the media projects an idea that a person like Paul can’t win, people will conclude he can’t win, and end up not voting for him.

Kinda sad, really.

A meetup group has been formed in Chester County to support Ron Paul’s presidential campaign. The Chester County Meetup Group currently has 20 members, and is growing pretty quickly. The neat thing about the meetups is that they’re totally grassroots in their organization. People in different areas start their own groups, to get the word out in their communities. The Chester County group has plans to meet on the fourth Wednesday of every month in Glenmoore.

If you’re not in the Chester County area, you can use the website to find a meetup group in your area.