Redstate has made a mistake in dealing with the Ron Paul Internet phenomenon. Instead of dealing quietly with trolls, the excellent conservative blog has announced a blanket policy banning supporting diaries and comments for Ron Paul from the site. Leon Wolf, who had worked for Sam Brownback for a while, announced it on the site today:
Effective immediately, new users may *not* shill for Ron Paul in any way shape, form or fashion. Not in comments, not in diaries, nada. If your account is less than 6 months old, you can talk about something else, you can participate in the other threads and be your zany libertarian self all you want, but you cannot pimp Ron Paul. Those with accounts more than six months old may proceed as normal.
Now, I could offer a long-winded explanation for *why* this new policy is being instituted, but I’m guessing that most of you can probably guess. Unless you lack the self-awareness to understand just how annoying, time-consuming, and bandwidth-wasting responding to the same idiotic arguments from a bunch of liberals pretending to be Republicans can be. Which, judging by your comment history, you really don’t understand, so allow me to offer an alternate explanation: we are a bunch of fascists and we’re upset that you’ve discovered where we keep the black helicopters, so we’re silencing you in an attempt to keep you from warning the rest of your brethren so we can round you all up and send you to re-education camps all at once.
It’s their community, of course, and they set the rules. However, this doesn’t hurt Paul’s credibility as much as it does Redstate’s. While Paul’s supporters tend towards the annoying and repetitive, they have less impact because we can easily engage them and counter their arguments. Banning them simply for their support for a candidate seems more like an admission that Redstate lacks that ability.
I’m no Paul supporter by any means. However, Paul’s statements can be addressed and rebutted fairly easily, at least those with which I strongly disagree. I don’t fear the commenters nor the debate, even if it does grow tiresome at times. It certainly can’t be any more tiresome than the S-CHIP debate, or the Iraq War debate, or the FISA debate — and I’d have less sympathy for opponents on those issues than the people who support Ron Paul.
Having been to the CLC, I disagree with Leon’s assumption that these Paul supporters are all or mostly cryptoliberals. Plenty of libertarian-leaning Republicans exist in the party, along with the former Buchananites and isolationists of the GOP. Instead of cutting these people off, it might be better for Redstate to keep engaging them. After all, Paul will not be in the race all that much longer, and we need those voters to stay in the GOP when Paul disappears. There are worse impulses than libertarianism.
Heck, I’d even interview Ron Paul, just to get a chance to challenge him (respectfully) on some of his positions and see how he responds. I put in a request yesterday to do just that, and if we can make it work, we’ll have Rep. Paul on the Heading Right Radio show, where listeners can ask their own questions and continue engaging the Paulites. Engagement can be understandably frustrating, but in the end, it forces us to sharpen our own arguments and challenge our own assumptions — and both are good processes.
UPDATE: Michael van der Galien understands the impulse to ban the Paulites, but won’t do it:
We have written about Ron Paul on several occasions, and although there certainly are / were some Paul supporters who added a lot to the comment sections at this blog, there were sadly also quite some who spammed our comment sections with “go ron go” and that was it. Such commenters add nothing, and I mean nothing, to the debate, which is why I understand Red State’s decision to ban all of them. Having said that, we won’t change this into a ‘no Paul-zone.’ Paul is a phenomenon and to ignore this phenomenon is silly. Furthermore, as said, quite some of the commenters do add something and do have something to interesting to say.
It’s better to stay engaged than willfully disengage.
UPDATE: Redstate responds, and in the same friendly manner in which I intended this post. I count Moe, Leon, and Eric among my friends in the blogosphere, and I hope they feel the same way. And they spelled my name correctly, too, which I appreciate…
I am a strange combination of warmonger and libertarian. I used to admire Ron Paul prior to his anti-Iraq-war comments. Oh, well. It’s not like he’s going to get anywhere. As the Captain might say: The best way to answer Mr. Paul is with a yawn.
So is Wolf saying libertarians = “a bunch of liberals pretending to be Republicans”? I consider myself more libertarian than anything else. I tend to lean Republican when voting because Rs allegedly are for smaller government, at least in some areas. The Democratic party not only wants economic control but also seems now to want to mandate social liberalism according to the flavor of the day.
Am I happy about making concessions to social conservatives? No, but while staying “pure” might make you feel good about yourself you wind up not getting much done.
Wolf should be trying to build allegiances, not have a litmus test.
Oh, and one other thing I can’t stand about the Libertarian Party is the head in the sand approach to foreign policy.
I gotta disagree,Cap’n. I think Redstate recognizes his whale better than you do.
Here in LA, the Paulistas march with ANSWER and the MoveOnBots under the Ron Paul Revolution 2008 banner.
At a lefty town hall I recently attended, a man identifying himself as a “disaffected Republican” demanded to know what the Dem Congresswoman on the dais was going to do to save the country from the Jews. Now, he was obviously a real Republican, since he was wearing a suit…
The problem is not with the issues of Pauline Doctrine. Redstate addressed them (time after time after time after …you get the point).
The problem is the willingness and ability of the Pauline Trolls to dominate the blog. They have been warned many times, but, much like a Code Pink or Moveon true believer, just had to keep up the trolling.
Charles Johnson has much the same policy, though his ridicule of the Trolls is much more direct (and funny).
Begone.
These people are the message board equivalent of Amway Salesmen.
Give them an inch and they’ll pester you for weeks.
Eventually, the whole country will consist of either a) Ron Paul supporters or B) People who are sick and tired of hearing about Ron Paul.
“Eventually, the whole country will consist of either a) Ron Paul supporters or B) People who are sick and tired of hearing about Ron Paul.”
Or c) people who get a kick of Ron Paul supporters inability to convincingly subtantiate most Paulista positions. I have met people who really believe we would be better off without the Federal Reserve and being allowed to produce our own precious metal based currencies. I don’t think there is enough gold and silver in existence to back a $15 T economy.
I’m not really sure why people engage Ron Paul supporters anyway. Their arguments seems to be no more than supporting the person, not any sort of ideas. To engage them is a waste of time. They are not going to be convinced of my opinion, and I will not be swayed to theirs. Its much like talking to a hard core liberal who loves Hillery just because she’s Hillery. It’s Ron Paul! Don’t you understand? He’ll save us from the sky falling! Don’t ask why! He just will!
I don’t think I need to engage a Ru Paul supporter to make me know and understand my position(s) better. I do that with moderate repubs I have to engage with already.
Cheers!
Oh, for registration and an “ignore” feature …. 😉
It’s better to stay engaged than willfully disengage.
The fact that software engineers are writing ever-better codes to deflect spam, and that courts are starting to prosecute senders of spam would indicate that many many many people disagree with you. You, Captain Ed, are seeing Ron Paul-ites as having something worthwhile to say politically. The rest of us see them as being the equal to penis-enlargement spam which can and should be blocked for the sake of sanity and good vibrations.
The Paul “supporters” are a plague. They have latched onto him and are riding their own hobby horse for all it’s worth at the expense of any forum they invade and yes, to the detriment of Ron Paul.
There is no discussion with them. They are broadcasting at maximum volume as though volume is substance. Begone.
In principle you’re correct, Cap’n, but being free from the RP supporters’ yapping is such an attractive idea. It’s one thing to contribute to a discussion, but Paulistas proselytize.
A few weeks back the traffic on a local 7-lane highway was backed up for miles during a peak drive time. The cause was the gaggle of Paulistas who were enjoying hanging over an overpass to wave signs at motorists. It seemed so in-character.
The best cure for Ron Paul is the upcoming primary in his home district in Texas.
Let him become ‘former’ Congressman Ron Paul.
Give to the most credible candidate to liberate his district from this phony baloney wackjob posing as a congressman.
If Redstate.com is tired of getting spamed by RP bs, so be it.
If others want to tolerate Paul and his trolls, so be it.
Red State should have learned a lesson from the Saul Anuzis flap, when the MI GOP chair called for Rep. Paul to be excluded from the Republican debates. This move makes Wolf look like a petulant child sticking his fingers in his ears and yelling, “La la la, I can’t hear you!”
I agree with the Captain that plenty of libertarians exist in the Republican party. You can see them on this board for instance insisting that the government should not provide anyone with health insurance.
Interestingly, my husband says that amongst the young people at the small, mainly conservative college he teaches at that Ron Paul is all the rage. The only signs he sees on campus are Paul signs. Probably pretty typical of idealistic youth. (But these students are not Move On types in any way.)
They’re not just on political boards either – I go to the ESPN college football boards to discuss my Nittany Lions, and there are numerous posts there from Paul supporters.
Note that RS hasn’t actually banned ALL Ron Paul content. Only Ron Paul content from NEW USERS is banned.
Established community members (I think 6 months is the cutoff) are welcome to talk about him, and new members are welcome to stick around and establish themselves before taking up the subject.
It says a lot, though, that RS’s pre-election user base has maybe two Ron Paul supporters in it, though, thus making it LOOK like a complete ban on prp-RP content. It says quite a lot.
Hey Ed,
How are things?
As I think many of your commenters here have pointed out, RedState is more of a community-function message board than it is a single-author blog like this one, so it may be impossible for you to realize just how thoroughly the moRons (as we not-so-affectionately call them) can dominate such a community. And we don’t *want* to become another Ron Paul message board – there are plenty of those already. And since we have a limited number of moderators – all of whom have jobs, it just became impossible to find the wheat in the tons and tons of chaff – so we said, “Anyone who has survived for six months must be worthwhile, everyone else has to prove themselves first.”
But, that is neither here nor there – you will have your policy and we will have ours.
I *will*, however, disagree with your characterization of Ron Paul supporters – as you noted, I worked for SSB this year, so I saw them numerous places on the campaign trail – 3 different debates, Ames, etc. etc. While there are certainly some paleocons and libertarians in there, the vast majority of them are liberals. Just look at the people complaining right now:
http://www.dailypaul.com/node/4132#comment-24336
http://www.dailypaul.com/node/3952#comment-23204
We’re well-shed of them.
He’s right about one thing: Wars on Vice will end up violating every citizen’s liberties.
Truth be told, the GOP will not “keep” most Ron Paul supporters (including me) for the general election. Nobody who has any interest in a smaller Federal government could possibly vote for either Romney or Giuliani. Even with Clinton as the alternative.
No, it’s a lie that RedState is only banning new users who support Ron Paul. They said that, but what’s really going on is that for those who have user accounts supposedly old enough to be “grandfathered in”, Moe Lane is going through and disabling user accounts and banning IPs (before editing posts to add his own snark directly into them instead of leaving a comment).
Heck, they banned me for supporting Giuliani over there last month. They are pretty fascistic and obviously are far right conservatives who won’t allow any other viewpoints to be expressed.
They might as well rename it to FredState because their site is simply propping up his candidacy. They are the same as Daily Kos- just right wing ideologues rather than left wing ones.
i think that this ron paul thing is only at most maybe two dozen people.
all of the comments that i have seen on other blogs etc. indicate that the ron paul stuff is being done by a tiny number of very sophisticated programmers (like maybe 2 or 3) and about a dozen and a half of dedicated keyboard tappers at a couple of college library open terminals.
i would hate to see the conservative politicians hooked in the nose by a ridicously small number of bloggers like the democrats have been.
this ron paul thing has all of the earmarks of that.
C
I agree with Ed’s post that engagement and dialogue are the most reasonable route, but predictions that Ron Paul will be out of the Republican race any time soon are laughable.
He has followed up his $5 million haul in the third quarter with another $1.7 million online in the first three weeks of October. He has over 50,000 volunteers signed up in over 1,000 Meetup groups around the country — more than all the other candidates combined.
With healthy fundraising and an active volunteer base, Ron Paul is going to surprise a lot of people in the early contests. Primaries are all about turning out your supporters, and this is where Ron Paul excels.
Certainly his anti-war and pro-civil liberties positions appeal to liberals, but he hasn’t watered down his bedrock conservative values in the slightest. Republicans ought to be thankful for a candidate who can bring new and energetic supporters to the Party.
No mas, no mas…
Redstate neocons threw in the towel. Gotta love it!
L – O – S – E – R – S!!!
Dude, Captain Morrisey totally looks like Sloth from “The Goonies”
“HEY YOU GUUUUUYS!!!”
To be quite honest, I have seen users banned from simply expressing a different point of view and refusing to back down when one of the “honchos” of the site has a differing opinion. I used to post there, not so much in the last couple of years.
As for Ron Paul supporters, they can all go straight to Hades without passing Go or collecting $200. I have never seen such a bunch of political morons in all of my life as those people. They aren’t even Libertarian, really, they are Lunatarian.
When I read the Red State blog, the not very worm memories of the USSR come to mind.
Nobody who has any interest in a smaller Federal government could possibly vote for either Romney or Giuliani. Even with Clinton as the alternative.
Oh, that’s rich. Neither Romney nor Giuliani is currently proposing nationalizing health care. How much additional spending does that put us on the hook for? Can you say tens of trillions of dollars over the next 30 or so years as the baby boomers retire and get old and demand their health care and their Social Security?
Oh, so health care is the only place we can trim the pork?
As a frequent Redstate poster – same name – and one who has frequently taken on the Ronettes, the is not banning Ron Paul “supporters”. The problem is that we’ve managed to attract a group of RP “cultists” who refuse to discuss issues and will not discuss plans required to implement RPs policy ideas, they will only toss out tired nostrums on their man.
In point of fact, a great many Redstaters (me included) are very open to libertarian ideas and ideals. We just require some kind of roadmap to implementation that goes beyond electing RP and having him veto everything in sight for four years.
The problem with Redstate is that you’ve managed to attract a group of neocon “cultists” who refuse to admit that their only interest is maintaining a liberal interventionalist foriegn policy.
It you and the other 10 whackos on RS that make all of you look absolutly insane.
So will you close down RS when Ron Paul wins the nomination or will you go back to your liberal roots and turn it into a pro-Hillary site?
See, they’re only banning the “cultists,” not the “supporters.” How do they define the difference? People who support Ron Paul for President are cultists, whereas people who will talk about policy without supporting Ron Paul by name are supporters.
This is exactly like the Anuzis gaffe. RedState has decided that one of the candidates is beyond the pale of the Republican debate, despite him being a 10-term Republican Congressman that has raised a ton of money for the Republican nomination.
It’s absurd, but it’s fun to watch.
Paul and the Paulians are ill-informed people who are out of touch with reality. Unfortunately, that makes them vulnerable to the call of the dhimmicrats, as soon as Paul is eliminated from the race. Just as dangerous is the possibility that Paul, being rejected by the Republicans, will declare his independent run and, as Perot did to GHW Bush, siphon off enough votes to allow another clinton to win with less than 50% of the popular vote.
The problem with RedState is that there are a few people running it who have egos the size of Montana; and who get some sort of power/pleasure rush out of banning people, as if it’s some sort of punishment to the person that they personally meted out. it’s a power trip on their part.
When it comes to Ron Paul, they don’t want to admit that significantly large portions of their ‘base’ are against the Iraq war. Period. It would force them to admit that they can’t count on these people’s votes next presidential cycle, and that’s too scary a thought for them to handle. Better just to censor them then to face reality.
Uncle Jefe,
The Ron Paul third party run thing is getting old. That is the neocon wetdream so they can blame Hillary’s win on RP. Well, he isn’t going to run third party and you know no one else can beat her, so who will you blame then?
go ron go… please.
RedState should just abandon comments altogether. They ban people with abandon from all across the political spectrum.
It seems to be more a Republican party website than a conservative or libertarian one.
It seems that RS has the right to include/exclude anyone or anything they like.
As I see it this creates issues, like the “echo chamber”. But none the less it is their perogative.
After having been on RS for the better part of 10 months I can tell you that , yes, it would seem (IMO) that some moderators are very happy to “pull the trigger” on anyone or anything they feel is out of line, some things are justified , others not so much (again IMO).
This new rule by them should come as no surprise to anyone following the site, RP supporters are kinda kooky when you push them into a corner with facts. But then again, I can say the same thing about many of the RS posters/moderators.
Save it, David.
I’m an independent (finally quit the dhimmicrat party), not anywhere near neo-con.
The only one having a wet dream seems to be you, longing for your dominatrix !Hillary!
She’s emininently beatable, but with the MSM running interference for another clinton, and with clowns like yourselves trying to convince Americans of her inevitability, it will be close.
mbecker908
How come there are no blogs on Redstate on the amnesty vote tomorrow? Don’t tell me they intimidated you all into silence.
Ed, I tend to agree with you. For a blog to be effective it must have as many perspectives as possible. Paul is a Republican and while his ideas are totally goofy, debate of them is the perfect place for a blog especially one like Redstate. What I find peculiar is that many of their most popular blogs are in fact in one way or another related to Paul. Furthermore, when you cut off an entire niche of audience a la Paul supporters that is the height of hubris. You are basically saying that you are fine not trying to reach the potential of your political reach. By putting down the hammer on Paul supporters you are saying that your club is not for them. That is nonsensical. Redstate is on the verge of exploding and becoming a serious player in politics, and more than anything, they need as many people in their community as possible.
What I have never understood is why anyone engages nonsensical ideas. They say they are tired of going over the same arguement. Rather than banning an entire group just so that the same arguement isn’t rehashed, just don’t respond to nonsensical ones. Once you open the can of the perverbial worms, it is open. If you keep it closed it does no harm.
The Paul supporters could add a nice niche to the blog and they are shutting them out.
Paul has plenty of ideas that a blog is a perfect forum to debate, and I agree with you the best thing to do is to allow them to debate in that forum.
Had the opportunity to talk with a few Ron Paulistas on campus this past week. Kids age 18-22, with access to the internet. A lot of bulk message forwarding and a lot of onlne time spent searching for any forum that contains anything that even looks like an anti-Ron Paul entry. They are nuts, by and large. Most will not vote. Most look at this as a game to stick it to the establishment controlled by Dems and GOP. Seems to be a lot more exciting for them than playing video games. I tried to engage a few of them in a real question and answer dialog on the issues…wasn’t going to happen…just a constant repetition of the same old same old from these kids.
Piss them off and you get spammed. Try to engage them in face to face dialog and you get spammed as well.
Frustrated by the establishment? Lots of people are. This Ron Paulista phenomenon has no substance other than vitriol, or trying to screw with the works. And this is supposed to improve the system how? This vitriol, spamming, and gang actions are to compel rational people to join their ranks how?
And Ron Paul, with his own delusions of grandeur, urges them on.
Frustrated by the establishment? Lots of people are.
That does not seem to stop them from supporting it.
You can see in this thread the very kind of behavior – milder, of course – that got the Paulites banned from RedState.
It wasn’t the right decision, but I can understand it perfectly. Ron Paul supporters are universally rude and refuse to engage in constructive discussion. Any conversation with a Ron Paul supporter will, without deviance, go something like this:
Paulite: The Fed is bad (and possibly a conspiracy, sometimes it’s just bad). Muslims hate us because we invade their countries. Dr. Paul is the only real conservative. Dr. Paul is the only chance to save America. Dr. Paul is the only man of principle in the race. Dr. Paul is the only man running who truly believes in the Constitution.
Non-Paulite: I disagree (for whatever reasons).
Paulite: [Invariably, the Paulite will misrepresent what you have said, construct and attack strawmen, etc.] You are a neo-con warmonger. Dr. Paul stands for nothing but the Truest, Greatest Principles Ever. How dare you impugn the name of this great man. He is the only candidate who believes in the Constitution. He is the only chance for the GOP to get elected and he is the only chance to save this country from ruin.
Non-Paulite: You misrepresented what I said, and you just repeated yourself after that.
Paulite: Why don’t you go sign up and fight yourself in this imperialist war that is ruining our country. Dr. Paul is the only candidate who believes in the Constitution. The Fed is evil.
…
…
Non-Paulite: …Hello?
Paulite: Please turn tape over to Side B to continue.
Ron Paul speaks to the disenfranchised and the people who have given up on politics.
He is someone who hasn’t been “bought” by any special interest, and it is quite appealing.
His message of personal liberty and freedom resonates well with all those I’ve mentioned and more.
I may not agree with him on all issues, but the remaining Republicans all seem to be running on George W Bush’s coat-tails, they all agree with him on most issues- yet they will be the first to try and make up reasons as to why they are “ohh soo!!” different from him.
The Democrats if not running on fake “We’ll get the troops out” rhetoric, are out there deciding that we all want socialized health care. “Sure more Government is the key to an area the Government already has to much of its head in.”
You see now why many American’s would rather vote for Paul?
It’s either more government and huge spending over seas (Republicans), or more government, huge spending over seas and HUGE Socialistic spending here! (Democrats)
Unless the “Conservatives” can offer something different than the last 8 years of huge spending and end-less war I’ll vote for Paul.
Wont go democratic though that if anything im very sure of.
Shame, they are running off lies about the Iraq war, bigger shame is that American’s actually believe that the Democrats can get us out… That lie will be what leads to Hillary in 08.
GS just provided a perfect example of what I’m talking about. Ron Paul is a saint, his hands pure as the driven snow, unlike all those other nasty neo-con warmongers and closet Communists who call themselves Democrats.
No, GS, I don’t see why “many Americans” would want to vote for Ron Paul, since all the polls make it clear that almost no Americans want to vote for him. The man gets crushed in head-to-head matchups with the Dem candidates and he can’t get above 2% in any GOP national poll. So excuse me if people take the arrogance of Ron Paul supporters as some kind of mental illness.
Cycloptichorn wrote:
The problem with RedState is that there are a few people running it who have egos the size of Montana; and who get some sort of power/pleasure rush out of banning people, as if it’s some sort of punishment to the person that they personally meted out. it’s a power trip on their part.
Let me guess Cyclop….you got banned at Redstate? :giggle:
Don’t feel bad, I’d ban you from my blog too.
flenser… on the Dream Act.
Nobody’s intimidated. And feel free to sign up and post a blog about it. We’d welcome the discussion.
And, BTW, Redstate IS a Republican site. We happen to have mostly conservative posters, but a large number of us have libertarian leanings.
And Mr. X… I’m the one who coined the term “cultists” for the Ronettes. I am not in any way affiliated with the management of the site, I’m just a lowly poster. On that subject, please go back to my original comment, which you obviously didn’t bother to read, and note that I said that these folks – not ALL of them, but a sizable number – waltz in and will not discuss issues, everything is about RonPaul™. There are some folks who post for Paul and are willing to discuss issues and implementation plans who are very welcome and an appreciated part of the RS community.
Fight,
Not yet – though it would be fun to go try my hand at PaulMania over there!
It’s a website struggling to match the results of Dem sites. Every now and then you see this admitted by those who run the place, but they just don’t understand that such heavy-handed message control/banning is antithetical to rising popularity as a site.
It’s sort of a microcosm for Republican thinking, actually; coming to some sort of accord with the Paulites would likely lead to profits for everyone involved. Instead, they alienate those who would be their allies in many ways, and send them over – to my side 🙂 I can’t say that I am dismayed by this move. But it isn’t an intelligent one for Republicans.
Fight, when you get a blog worth posting on, let me know so I can come over, and you can ban me – it’ll be a fun time.
Ed, please check Larison reaction, he basically agrees with you, and I basically agree with you both :
The presumption behind the ban that most Paul boosters are liberals is embarrassing to RedState. Sadly, it says a lot more about what passes for conservatism at RedState than it does about the Paul supporters. Rather than reaching some reasonable middle ground, punishing posters who abuse their privileges, their solution is a ban against new members saying anything about Paul. The symbolism of this move is terrible for RedState. It says to all those enthusiastic Paul backers that there is no point trying to talk to most Republicans, and after this I would be hard pressed to contradict such a view. It also puts the lie to the oft-repeated myth that the conservative coalition is brimming with intellectual diversity and thrives off of energetic and spirited debate, when it has been clear for some time that a great many Republicans have wanted Paul himself gone from the debates. Were I tempted to participate in a RedState forum, this move would cure me of that temptation very quickly. This is a move that represents a stagnating movement that is shedding supporters and gradually breaking to pieces on account of its own ideological rigidity and brittleness.
Unfortunately, this latest is just a symptom of the broader conformism on the “mainstream” right, particularly on matters of foreign policy, and represents the mentality of a movement that has been losing its ability to maintain and grow its political coalition. Paul’s campaign has thrived on the message that conservatism and Republicanism can and should still mean respect for the Constitution, liberty and a sane foreign policy–the very kind of rejuvenating and reforming message that the GOP needs if it is to retain the loyalty of millions of disaffected small-government conservatives and libertarians–and where Paul is making converts the folks at RedState, to adapt a phrase, are interested in finding heretics. It is a great irony this year that it is the purists who are actually swelling Republican ranks, while the pragmatists and big-tent folks are doing their best to empty that tent. Republicans will object that new Paul supporters will not support the GOP once Paul’s campaign is finished, and they may be right. RedState has just given Paul supporters one more reason to stay home or vote third party.
Rather than translating the energy and excitement that Paul generates into an advantage for the GOP and the movement, the response is to recoil in horror and send Paul’s people packing. Morrissey is making the sensible, pragmatic case for accommodation, but it seems to me that the impulse to ban newly arrived Paul supporters is much more representative of the state of the movement and the GOP these days.
No, Ron Paul is not a saint. Frankly, some of his arguments against the Federal Reserve do not impress me at all.
But the chant of the other Republicans running for President this year is “I won’t make the government as big as Hillary will make the government” Color me unimpressed.
Yeah, Ron Paul’s numbers in the polls are small. Partly this is due to the MSM ignoring him (remember when conservatives did not trust the MSM)? Partly this is due to the fact he has not spent money. Instead he has amassed volunteers and cash. And now those volunteers and that money can get translated into increased poll numbers.
The whole Redstate banning thing is just a symptom of Ron Paul finally being taken seriously as a threat.
The primaries should be entertaining. Especially if Paul wins or comes close to winning New Hampshire.
“No, Ron Paul is not a saint. Frankly, some of his arguments against the Federal Reserve do not impress me at all.”
He’s not a saint.
He’s an ain’t.
“The whole Redstate banning thing is just a symptom of Ron Paul finally being taken seriously as a threat.”
More like the Paulians being taken seriously as a threat…much as you SHOULD take stalkers seriously…
You said it all about the Paulians in your 3:02pm admission above, Fritz. Take David with you when you go vote for the hildabeast.
First — it doesn’t matter who I vote for. I live in WA state and the electoral votes here will go to Clinton. The real question is who I would give money to. And there is no way in hell I would give money to Romney or Giuliani.
Paul, for all his many faults, is the only Republican in the field who has any relationship to Barry Goldwater — and yeah that was the first GOP campaign I remember. Although I was a bit too young to work on it. Every other Republican candidate is working to make the Federal beast bigger. That’s not some weird Paulian rant; that is clear and obvious truth.
Oh, boy. If it wasn’t Ron Paul, it would be Pat Buchanan. Or Ralph Nader. For some reason there are people spooked by those who can’t even raise 3% of the vote. When they do run.
At least Ron Paul is “interesting.”
When he came out a few debates ago, and said, that the US had never had an attack on her soil; not in 220 years; Guliani about plotzed. “Where were you on 9/11?” he shot out.
And, Ron Paul is old enough to have been born when December 7, 1941 brought us OUR DAY THAT WILL LIVE IN INFAMY.
What should have been up, though, is this TV show apparatus; where you get to see so many “choices” coming out to answer questions.
Last time out? Wasn’t it McCain’s “aqua tie” on an aqua shirt … that drew the crowds to look? You’re gonna vote for someone based on their wardrobe? Or the color of their matching underwear?
By now, in a much more serious vein, we should have heard about things that are still left unsaid.
What’s stuff?
About Baker, Botts and Moneybags.
About the lunacy of Condi and her Annapolis dreams.
About the stuff that will stick to the republicans. Worth thinking about.
Because in elections? You don’t own the middle!
You’re gonna keep name-calling people? You think if you say there isn’t such a thing as a “normal” democratic voter … that you’ll be tearing votes away from Hillary?
I beg to differ.
Hey, I bet the Clinton’s beg to differ!
We need a better system. Far, far, from the word “troll.”
You know, it’s not easy getting people off their own self-interests.
And, because I read a lot. I’m thrilled to be reading, now, Eric Lane and Michael Oreskes’ THE GENIUS OF AMERICA. How the US Contitution saved our country. And, can do it, again.
Just got back from the vet’s. Where I brought my kitten for his shots. I had this book with me. My vet, who has read it, was as enthused about it as I am.
Ron Paul will be countered by professionals. When he’s on stage at the debates. So, he has supporters (probably in China). Who know how to flood the Internet.
You know? When you used to read newspapers; and this is something I remember. An article would start on page one. Then, there’d be a whole host of ads. And, you’d find your article, if you were following it, at the back!
Ron Paul is not a headliner.
But if a nominee can’t deal with Ron Paul, let me tell ya. That person won’t be able to deal with Hillary.
And, you’re advantages aren’t in name calling, either.
BTW, God bless Ron Paul. Some may have issues with him but at least he’s honest, willing to stick to his principles and cares about the constitution.
Yes, he will not win, but he is holding on and dictating the direction of debate in this country. THAT is good and that is why the warmongering cultists are so scared of him.
As a second-tier Redstate editor, I can understand the decision, Ed. Unlike a one-man operation such as yours, it’s a little different when you have a Kos-style blog with potentially limitless diarists who can blog as frequently as the day is long, especially when there is only one full-time staff member watch things. The editors have put up with the Paulites for months on end, and we have to read every post and comment for civility. This is too time-consuming a task, particularly for a candidate who has no shot at being elected president and who has a foreign policy position to the left of Hillary Clinton.
The directors own their printing press and they have the power to decide the content they want to have. Last week, co-editor Thomas decided to end diaries that touch on the topic of race, genetics and intelligence. It’s a controversial topic and it’s one that, for one reason or another, happens to attract those with a more racist bent. We just don’t want to go there. We also don’t want to there with Ron Paul. His issues diverge too drastically from mainstream GOP positions, and his followers remind me of the Buchananites of the 1990s: highly fervent, strongly opinionated, energetic, and doomed to lose.
Paulites still have thousands of venues for spamming their candidate. As of today, there is just one less site for their advocacy. The nation will survive this.
“Yeah, Ron Paul’s numbers in the polls are small. Partly this is due to the MSM ignoring him (remember when conservatives did not trust the MSM)? ”
MSM ignoring him? Apparently you don’t get out much. Ron Paul is on every TV 24/7. The networks and the MSM are 90% democrat. They are hoping that Paul runs as a third party candidate so Hillary chances are improved. Her handlers know she has the same problem as her husband had. Personal negatives over 50%. Bill got elected with 43%. Hillary needs a third party candidate running to the right of most repubs. Paul is the new Ross Perot.
When the smoke clears on this election I’ll be very surprised if Soros and crew aren’t behind the curtain when it comes to Paul, without his knowledge. If they are not then Soros and crew are idiots.
Red State has been quite Stalinist and has been for a while. This isn’t out of character for them. I hope you recognize that, Ed.
I couldn’t care less about “free speech” when it comes to Ron Paul.
He is NOT a Republican; he’s a libertarian. Let’s see him run as one.
Red State, or no one else, has the obligation to cater to someone who calls himself a “Republican” just because he says he’s one. If we use that logic, a Nazi could run as a “Republican” and a Stalinist, ANSWER-supporting nut case could run as a “Democrat”..oh, sorry, some already have.
Get rid of him NOW. Let him set up his own website and run as what he is – a libertarian who has NO support from ANY major party.
As a fiscal conservative, a low tax, smaller government Republican, I can say clearly that Ron Paul represents nothing I stand for and nothing I care to support.
Get rid of him now.
I couldn’t care less about “free speech”( wow, great-S.L) when it comes to Ron Paul.
He is NOT a Republican; he’s a libertarian. Let’s see him run as one.
Red State, or no one else, has the obligation to cater to someone who calls himself a “Republican” just because he says he’s one. If we use that logic, a Nazi could run as a “Republican” and a Stalinist (true-Scott, though your weak mind did not intend that), ANSWER-supporting nut case could run as a “Democrat”..oh, sorry, some already have.
Get rid of him NOW. Let him set up his own website and run as what he is – a libertarian who has NO support from ANY major party.
As a fiscal conservative, a low tax, smaller government Republican, I can say clearly that Ron Paul represents nothing I stand for and nothing I care to support(care to elaborate , how R.Paul support for constitution undermines YOUR “republican values”?).
Get rid of him now.
Excellent job, Scott. You showed us what some republican mindless cultists really are.
Who’s “Ron Paul”?
Asked by someone who voted for Harry Browne (RIP) in 2000.
Most of Pauls “supporters” are blog graffiti artists.
MoveOn has made an art of this technique however Pauls kids have made themselves a stain on the walls of the internet blog community.
Dr. Paul’s unique charm is that he is an honest man–a truely rare quality amongst the current crop of Presidential wantabes. All Dr. Paul wants is to be a good American and respect the Constitution. Our current president is a war criminal who thinks that the Constitution is “just a piece of paper”, and he has plenty of support and company amongst the present crop of candidates.
I am not a Ron Paul supporter, but I would be very happy indeed if he manages to gain the presidency.
I care little about “arguments’ and debates. Tell me where a candidate is getting his money, and I’ll tell you where his (or her) heart is.
g Anton is a Ron Paul supporter. I recognize that, because a co-worker just subjected me to a similar kind of talk which started out “I’m not a Ron Paul supporter but…” and continued ad nauseum extolling Paul’s virtues. Not being the kind of guy to falsify my timecard, I had to work an extra 20 minutes to cover that useless time.
This guy is the first conservative I’ve ever seen with a zillion bumper stickers on the back of his car; I’ve had to modify my rule about long distance identification of cars bearing liberals as a result.
As near as I can tell, Ron Paul is the only Republican presidential candidate that is:
I cannot understand how anyone could possibly construe that Ron Paul supporters are anything but a huge positive for the Republican Party.
The RS move is breathtakingly stupid.
My only hope of avoiding the disaster of a single party Democratic government with a 60 vote Senate plurality in 2009, is that CQ is more representative of the GOP than the RS echo chamber.
*sigh*
We are doomed.
This site seems to attract a similar crowd to red state. I am Ron Paul supporter and can back up all of his positions. Please feel free to ask me explanations for his policies.
Many of you here have stated you are not impressed by his alternative to the federal reserve. My first question is what about the federal reserve impresses you? The dollar is at all-time low against the euro and 20 year lows against the pound and gold.
You Ron Paul supporters? You’re totally retards.
What you say is correct.
Many Republicans I know think an EXTREMELY strict adherence to the Constitution is an absolute necessity.
Without Ron Paul, I doubt that reference to the application of the Constitution would have ever been made in this election cycle.
Anyway, he has my $2300 for being the only one who has stepped up to the plate on the only issue that really matters: The Constitution.
Let the Constitution take care of the government, and allow us to care for ourselves.
If he does not win, it will be because the party decides to run whoever is “electable” (popular) instead of running the best man for the position.
“If he does not win, it will be because the party decides to run whoever is “electable” (popular) instead of running the best man for the position.”
Or because the party nominee is actually a republican, rather than a liberal truther in libertarian clothing, with an ‘R’ lapel pin.
First of all, thank you captain. I had read a post you made about Dr. Paul earlier and decided that coming here really wasn’t worth my time. You may have redeemed yourself! Don’t let it get to your head though.
I only want to address one topic, that a user named “D” posted about, and that is Dr. Paul’s position on the gold standard and getting rid of the Fed. I will first say that this isn’t just Dr. Paul’s idea but it is actually Alan Greenspan’s own writings that helped inspire Dr. Paul’s thinking on this matter. You can look them up here:
http://www.usagold.com/gildedopinion/greenspan.html
What’s funny is that Greenspan does a better job explaining it in writing than Dr. Paul does speaking! Of course, Dr. Paul gets very little time at the debates to explain himself. However, “D” may be right that there is not enough gold around to back such an enormous world economy. We do need another precious metal or similarly divisible, intrinsically valuable item to back our money with. Unfortunately, our currency in America today is only as good as the government’s ability to pay off the treasury bills in the coffers of the banks that use it as reserve currency. With a $9T debt load that is increasing at $500B per year, while at the same time we are already paying 25% of our federal budget just for interest on that debt, the ability of the government to be able to pay that debt comes into question. Sure, they could always sell more T-Bills, but to sell them to an ever skeptical world banking system would require higher interest rates and then higher inflation due to the extra reserves flooding the bank coffers. We are already seeing the beginning of that, just go read the newspaper. Canada just hit 1.03 against the dollar. Just three years ago it was at .75! If our currency was backed by something that couldn’t just be printed “as necessary”, such as a precious metal, it would keep our government from, in effect, “printing money”.
Pundits will say that the record debts are not a problem when rated as a percentage of GDP. According to them, by that measure we are at about the same as post WWII debt levels, and they are correct. At the end of WWII, however, our currency was still backed partially by gold and we had so much gold we literally had to give it away to the countries we were rebuilding in Europe and Japan, just so that we’d have a place to market our goods to. We are not in that same situation anymore. We have massive competition for U.S. goods from places all over the globe and we are importing billions more than we are exporting. So instead of stabilizing the debt or reducing it with income derived from exports, we’re forced to borrow more and more and put America deeper in the red. We have to get over this myth that countries “cannot” go bankrupt. They can and they have – post WWI Germany is an excellent example. The government was going bankrupt and their solution was to print more money, in the form of government bonds, and that destroyed the value of their currency.
So there you go, a Ron Paul supporter trying to back up a position of his you call into question with reasonable debate. This, I feel, is the real reason that “Red State” banned Ron Paul supporters – they would have an incredibly hard time explaining why we need a Federal Reserve when presented with this kind of discussion. Even harder if they actually went and read “Gold And Economic Freedom” by Mr. Greenspan and tried to argue with that. I would encourage anyone who disagrees with what I’ve written here to read that excellent article by Mr. G before they comment. If you think that Greenspan has perhaps changed his position on this, you would be mistaken, for when Dr. Paul had Greenspan sign his original 1967 copy of “Gold”, when Greenspan was resigning as Fed chair a few years ago, Dr. Paul asked him “if he still believed in what he wrote”. Greenspan said in replay that “he wouldn’t change a word.”
-Christopher Burch
“We do need another precious metal or similarly divisible, intrinsically valuable item to back our money with.”
Cubic zirconium!!
Ok, just one more topic…
I encourage anyone that actually read this miserable comment board down this far to go back up through the list and count how many posts are “ron paul and his supporters are loonies” posts and how many are “go ron paul” posts. Then count the ones that favor Paul’s positions and back them up with reasonable discussion versus those that are against his positions with reasonable discussions. It is very representative of many of the comment boards that filled Red State. I’m glad they banned us… pretty soon they won’t be showing up in google anymore and they will go back into obscurity like they were before Dr. Paul came around, maybe even more lonely now that they’ve alienated a few of the Paul supporters they may have had before.
All of the discussions about Dr. Paul being a big “L” libertarian are weak since the “anointed” Republican candidate, Rudy Giuliani, was a Democrat and switched to Republican when they started offering him jobs. Look it up in wikipedia. Ron Paul has served 20 years in congress as a Republican. In any case, are there any people running as Republicans today that would have been called Republicans 30 years ago?
What perhaps infuriates Paul’s supporters so much are that fact that most of the posts against him try to discredit him by calling him crazy, a moonbat, a tinfoil-hat-wearer and they discredit the supporters by calling us trolls, paulites, crazy, or some other derogatory name, often with little substantive discourse. The “MSM” is not much better in that regard, from Glenn Beck agreeing with Paul on numerous positions but then showing Paul talking while playing circus music in the background, to Frank Luntz using a hand-picked anti-Paul “undecided” discussion panel to call Paul “certifiably insane.” When people attack Paul’s credibility with personal attacks instead of substance it angers us to no end. It is exactly the kind of ignorance that Paul supporters are trying to free America from. Frank Luntz is particularly frustrating because the man has written books about how to sway public opinion by carefully using choice words and phrases in polling questions to get the results he’s paid to get. He played a huge role in the Republicans gaining control of the congress in 1994, putting Bush in power in 2000, and keeping him there in 2004. I wanted Bush in power both times, not for the Iraq war, which I was and am against, but for changes he proposed to make with social security and anti-abortion laws. The fact that Republicans failed to do either despite having complete control of both houses of Congress and the White House is embarrassing for Republicans in this country.
Finally, somebody put a post in earlier trying to discredit the numbers of Paul’s support. If you run the numbers for donations to the candidates and try to estimate how much support they’ve had from those numbers, at the end of the third quarter Paul was catching up very quickly to the total number of donors that the other candidates have. I’ll chart it here for you:
Romney: 85,372 people
McCain: 82,075 people
Giuliani: 62,978 people
Thompson: 48,463 people
Paul: 45,399 people
If you want my data to back this up I have a spreadsheet that I can email you. My email address is Canadaman005@hotmail.com. These numbers almost completely back up a recent poll by Rasmussen showing that McCain would slightly edge Hillary in a general election matchup. Romney would be a close second. Then Giuliani and Paul were even in the amount that they trailed Hillary followed by a dismal showing by Thompson. I have a spreadsheet for that too! With better name recognition Paul’s numbers would probably go up while all of the others are getting pretty much maxed out on their support levels. The more people hear about Giuliani the less they tend to like him. (Who knew he was once married to his second cousin and divorced his second wife via press-conference? And yet they call Paul crazy? No wonder his daughter supports Obama.)
The reason Giuliani’s numbers are so low, despite his massive donation amounts, is the fact that a large portion of Rudy’s donations are at or in excess of $2000 ($30.5 million in that bracket to be exact). Paul had $4.1 million dollars in amounts at or less than $200 up to the end of the third quarter whereas Giuliani only had $3.8 million dollars from the same bracket. This is despite a huge name advantage that Giuliani had coming into election season this year. Since 2001 we have heard or seen something positive about Giuliani on an almost daily basis from the “MSM”. Paul, however, was a virtual unknown at the start of 2007 and he has been increasing exponentially in both support and campaign contributions all year long despite a large amount of smear tactic on the part of Fox and others. I cite Chris Wallace’s questioning at the New Hampshire debate with Wendel laughing at Dr. Paul in the background as an excellent example of this. But did Paul call them out on their bias? No. Like a true statesman and American he just calmly and rationally explained his positions, truthfully and honestly as always. He’s had a good bit of experience dealing with adversity in his 20 years in Congress I guess. Lesser men would crack (remember Dean Howard?).
-Christopher Burch
*Howard Dean
Thank you “Uncle Jefe” for proving my point. I would encourage anyone to hit “control F” and do a search for jefe’s posts throughout this board. They are the best examples I can give of a no-content, name-calling attack on the sanity of Paul supporters. If you really wanted to ban somebody for their utter lack of desire to post anything useful, I would consider starting with him.
-Christopher
FW: You’re Invited: RedState Action Emails
PS – I will also be posting this as an open letter on my blog.
PPS – Since I was a member over a year ago, I was wondering if I would qualify for an exception to the RedState ban on newbie Ron Paul supporters? Just curious.
Your openness is now bringing the Ron Paul nutbags out in force. Way to go, Ed.
(Seriously, I don’t know what the answer is, but as Ace of Ace of Spades HQ said, “God, I hate these people.”)
I think what annoys a lot of readers about Paul and his acolytes is their “school marm'” attitude toward their “fellow” Republicans. It is their snotty, condescending “instruction” that reminds one not so much of rational discussion as getting berated for wearing dirty shoes in the classroom. Perhaps another apt example is that dealing with Paulists is much like dealing with bible-thumping fundamentalists who insist without doubt that Scripture only permits women to wear dresses and not pants–especially no shorts.
In short:
Paulists are not the only ones practicing rational thought.
Paulists do not own the Constitution. They don’t have the copyrights. They do not necessarily have the final word on what it means.
Give the rest of us a little credit.
There are Paul nutcases, but there are MANY Paulites who are simply dismayed at the state of the “conservative” movement and see Ron Paul as a welcome change from the seemingly inexorable drift toward statism, be it from the left OR from the right.
I grew up with the religious right, and have been instrumental in helping form Metro RTL centers, have registered Republican voters, have worked as a pollwatcher, and participated to the point of helping to count votes in Carter’s “White House Conference on the Family” debacle (remember that?). My cultural credentials go way way back.
I resent the hamfisted and UN-Reagenesque methodology of many traditional conservatives in dealing with the potential acolytes to the conservative/libertarian coalition. I myself have been banned from Free Republic simply for stating that I believed we would bankrupt ourselves if we continued to engage our military with every “sand monkey” with an AK-47 and the ability to scream “Allahu Akhbar.”
I fear that conservatives are headed for a self-righteous corner where they will simply become a mirror image of the fringe Paulites they profess to despise. 90% of what Ron Paul has to say is very very very good. I am not sure if the recent successes of Petraeus can overcome my antipathy toward the Iraq nation building exercise (I refuse to call it a “war”), but I find the insistence of Ron Paul to at least give a passing wave to the Constitution as our legal rubric to be extremely refreshing.
It is a crying shame that conservatives view this attitude as mere self righteousness, or worse, a threat
I respectfully disagree.
My personal experience with several people who have become Paulies leads me to believe it is an illness. Before this phenomena, some (not all) of these people were normal libertarians you could engage in a fairly coherent debate. Not after the Ron Paul rEVOLution. No sir…these guys are now out painting bedsheets with various messages of support for Ron Paul, and going to Ron Paul meetups.
I believe it is a mental virus of some sort, and frankly, I am worried at what these people will resort to when it become evident that they have been following a pipe dream with no merit whatsoever, nada, zip, zero.
These idiots truly believe that if we disengaged from the world, that all would be well.
Good Luck on your engagement of Ron Paul in an interview. I hope he is more amendable than his rabid supporters.
Before this campaign, I had some respect for the man…now I despise him, and am in the process of re-examining every thing we agree on from a philosophical point of view to see if I am being pulled to the dark side.
Google “Ron Paul’s Supporters Are Idiots”
Those who think that Ron Paul is “all over” the mainstream media should go and count references. For example, look at the “2008 candidates” page on msnbc.com. Look for articles on Ron Paul. Can’t find any. Then go to the Ron Paul page under there. Note that the latest MSNBC article, the “breaking news”, is from August 10th.
At least big-government conservatives are up to “hostility”. The MSM is still in “if we ignore him, he will go away”.
I think what annoys a lot of readers about Paul and his acolytes is their “school marm'” attitude toward their “fellow” Republicans. It is their snotty, condescending “instruction” that reminds one not so much of rational discussion as getting berated for wearing dirty shoes in the classroom. Perhaps another apt example is that dealing with Paulists is much like dealing with bible-thumping fundamentalists who insist without doubt that Scripture only permits women to wear dresses and not pants–especially no shorts.
Exactly.
And Chris Burch’s posts are typical of the “I’m being reasonable but if you disagree with me your very act of disagreement is unreasonable” attitude that Ron Paul nutjobs take. I don’t care how nice and fluffy and tolerant and inclusive you think you are, you come off as stand-offish, arrogant, and generally intolerant of dissent.
I’ve gotten a lot of enjoyment out of reading what going on. The reason for RS to ban Ron Paul supporters is quite obvious. All you have to do is read the comments like the idiotic one above by thunder pig.
They have no alternative to offer over Paul.
Never to you hear one explain why so-and-so’s policies are better and back it up with reasoned debate, they can only rant like lunitics against Paul.
When have you ever seen one explain why Giuliani’s policies are better, or Romney’s, or Thompson’s, or anyone elses?
That is why the Wredstate ban. It’s the old, if I can’t win I’m taking my ball and going home. Says a whole helluva lot more about the weakness of the other canidates, not Ron Paul.
I’ll explain why Ron Paul’s policies are inferior, if I thought that it would be a constructive argument carried out in good faith by both sides. But since Ron Paul supporters are universally incapable of arguing honestly, I’m not going to waste my time. There’s not an honest Ron Paul supporter I’ve met yet. Strawmen, distortions, omission, misrepresentation, badgering, ad hominem, annoying proclamations of virtue and right, it’s not worth my or anyone’s time talking with anyone who supports Ron Paul. Boo hoo, you guys are assholes and consequently you’re getting ignored or booted out wherever you show up. I love how it plays right into your martyr complexes.
“I’ll explain why Ron Paul’s policies are inferior, if I thought that it would be a constructive argument carried out in good faith by both sides.”
Chaos,
Go for it! Dont’ worry about converting me. Convert the readers. Tell us who you like and why his policies are better.
BTW, so far everything you have said has been “strawmen, distortion, omission, misrepresentation, badgering, ad hominem, and annoying proclamations of virtue and right”. How are you any different from them?
Redstate is always banning people who question the direction the Republican party is going in at the moment. If you’re not in favor of big govt conservatism, creationism, nation building and military interventionism, ignoring the constitution, doing anything about addressing the economic concerns roiling middle America, and preserving the brain dead, you’re a dangerous liberal or worse. The Red State approach is going to put Hillary in the White House and the Republican party in the wilderness for twenty years. By comparison with this their silly little bans are not very important.
…and the crowd goes silent.
Thanks for proving my point, chaos.
Everyone knows that the Ron Paul “Revolution” is actually funded by George Soros and Teresa Heinz Kerry and consists of a small handful of Daily Kos and Democrat Underground members who drive around the country in a modified Ethanol-fired hybrid Winnebago, illegally put up Ron Paul signs on the freeways, and take pictures of them. They also use sophisticated hacking programs like “Firefox” and “PHP” to rig polls in favor of Paul, and post numerous comments on websites that are dedicated to mature discussion of serious presidential candidates. Their efforts are focused on distracting the attention of good conservatives from supporting someone who’s strong on second amendment rights like Giuliani, or a real social conservative like Romney.
When a group of only like minded individuals get together to discuss an issue, there is a “group think” dynamic that shuts down any dissenting opinion and turns the discussion into just patting each other on the back or cheer leading, whether it’s Daily Ko’s, Red State, or the Bush Administration.
To all who hate Ron Paul and think he doesn’t represent the republican party: Get a clue! He is the original Goldwater Republican. He represents what the republican party used to be before we allowed the religious fundemenatalist morons and their psuedo machisimo chest thunmping brain dead bretheren to usurp the party and take it over. The social conservatives and war mongers are the bain of the party and Ron Paul is the only real hope for a party that espouses limited government and then proceeds to tell everyone how to live based on their own delusion religious beliefs. They espouse limited government and then proceed to create the biggest deficit ever,
News flash to you religious freaks: Our Founding fathers were deist not theists and they were for limited government not hegemonic government and they were for not getting us into foreign entanglements based on emotions and lies.
To the Paul Haters, get your head out of your ass and open your eyes. Just as you are familiar with with the phrase Ron Reagan republican, get used to the phrase Ron Paul republican because we are going to take the party and country back from you religious nut cases, henny pennyies, and war mongers. Oh, and thanks for supporting a war on lies and thanks for pissing on article 1 section 8 of the constitution and thanks for costing this country a trillion dollars with no end in site. You have ALL been wrong over and over again. NO MORE!!!!!
You just gotta wonder about the kind of delusional thinking that believes Republicans can win the 2008 Presidency by alienating other Republicans.
As I recall, with rare exceptions, you still need more votes than the other guys to win an election.
Lol Steve… I thought you were talking about Ron Paul supporters until the end of your post. No, seriously, that got a belly-laugh out of me.
Personally, I don’t care if Ron Paul is the second coming of Jesus Christ. Anyone whose supporters spam polls, spam comments and reliably behave in a frenzied, fanatical or rude way, will not get a moments consideration from me. I don’t think I’m abnormal in that regard.
I am turned off by people who are entirely too convinced of their own infallibility. I am turned off by people who are willing to “game the system” to increase their impact. I am turned off by people who cheerlead and ignore the obvious to avoid having to cope with a reduction in enthusiasm.
Ron Paul is unique among candidates for the Republican Presidential nomination. He is the only candidate with whom I disagree with on more than half of the issues.
Captain… I agree with the poster above who warned that your decision to make this post is a dangerous one. If word gets around to these yutes, we’re going to show up for a topic two hours early just to get a ticket.
MW, this election is really about the soul of the party. The republicans aren’t going to win anything so teraing the party apart doesn’t matter to this election. In my view, it needs to be torn apart and re-tooled. Espousing morals only to be found out a hypocrite is no way to run a party.
Unfortunately, for this election, it looks like the war monger religious wing is going to win the primaries and lose the general election. At that point, the party will have to reeveluate what it stands for because for the next eight years we will have Hillary. My life will have been led by a Bush or a Clinton for 28 years and judging by the stupidity of the middle of the bell curve voter that decides elections we will probably see Jeb Bush, and then Chelsea and the George P. Bush. Unless we have proportional representation and complete public financing of elections, democracy will stay dead and any semblence of it will be a fraud.
Once again, only attacks on Paul and no alternatives.
Immolate: “Ron Paul is unique among candidates for the Republican Presidential nomination. He is the only candidate with whom I disagree with on more than half of the issues.”
Please do tell us the half of the issues you disagree with. Please do tell us who’s issues you do agree with and why.
Of course we will get no answer.
“The whole Redstate banning thing is just a symptom of Ron Paul finally being taken seriously as a threat.” – Fritz
Bwah-hah! Damn, I love blog comments. If you look long and hard enough, you can find someone out there who will say simply anything. What a great world.
Ed, they have a response for you:
http://www.redstate.com/blogs/moe_lane/2007/oct/23/nothing_personal_ed_morrissey
I’ve never left a message there, but some guy had a technical question about bandwidth in one of the commment threads, so I went to answer him and couldn’t find an edit box. I figured you had to sign up first, so I’m reading over the Posting Rules and came across this simply unbelievable statement:
On recommending blog posts: It is against site policy to recommend your own blog posts and doing so may result in the locking of your account.
In other words, “We’re the only ones who get to stand up on the soap box and spout off. You can leave your pithy little comments and that’s fine, but if you’ve put together a page full of facts and figures that counter something we’ve said, we could care less. Go open your own damn blogsite.”
Nice.
“Thank you “Uncle Jefe” for proving my point. I would encourage anyone to hit “control F” and do a search for jefe’s posts throughout this board.They are the best examples I can give of a no-content, name-calling attack on the sanity of Paul supporters.”
AWESOME.
Now THAT is an endorsement I will be happy to accept.
Indeed, I question your sanity.
I’m sorry I have things I have to go do and can’t sit at my computer waiting breathlessly for someone to reply to what I said, Dave.
But sure, I’ll try with you.
Ron Paul’s opinions on foreign policy are not neo-isolationist, non-interventionist, or even paleo-isolationist. His opinions are too vague, ignorant and naive to be classified as anything but vague, ignorant and naive.
Ron Paul does not have a coherent, comprehensive foreign policy. All he has is, essentially, “We are a bully and it’s our fault that people want to kill us, we should leave everyone alone and out of the goodness of their hearts no one will take advantage of the consequent power vacuum in so many areas of the world. Everyone will become our friends if we just trade with them and don’t do things that make them mad at us.” If you disagree, feel free to say so, but that is basically what I get from Ron Paul’s foreign policy talking points and those who try to defend his foreign policies.
The framework of contemporary international relations is based the assumption that nations all have a common self-interest in peace, liberty, and prosperity for all human beings. It’s what the UN is based on. You cannot name a single world body that is not, in principle, dedicated to those three things.
Is that assumption accurate? No. Nations like Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, etc., are dedicated wholly to what their governments perceive as their best self-interest. If that means running interference for the government of the Sudan so they can continue the genocide and ethnic cleansing in Darfur, so be it. What does Beijing care? It’s not as if Khartoum is killing Chinese.
It takes a powerful, vigorous foreign policy on the part of the United States to keep many nations to continue, at least, giving lip service to liberal ideals. And in the last half-century, we have indeed seen the greatest expansion of personal liberty in the history of man.
Let’s give an example. Russia has been, for the last decade, trying to re-exert its influence on the former Soviet satellite states, and has essentially Belarus into a province. We have seen how Russia operates: arrest, harassment, and even murder of dissidents or potentially powerful rivals to the current ruling group in the Kremlin, shutting off gas pipelines that provide large amounts of fuel to Europe as part of a diplomatic war, poisoning presidential candidates in foreign countries, things like violating Georgian airspace and generally acting bellicose towards her smaller neighbors. This is unconscionable behavior straight from the 19th century. When Russia shuts off a gas pipeline that supplies a large percentage of Eastern Europe’s natural gas, who will protect the rights of those people? The EU? The EU didn’t do anything. They expressed outrage. Russia got what it wanted and the pipeline was turned back on. How would Ron Paul deal with such behavior? According to his own words, it’s none of our business when large countries bully small countries like that.
In Africa, we see China quietly buying up influence via money and diplomatic support right and left, propping up regimes with human-rights records just as odious as Beijing’s. How will Ron Paul’s foreign policy address that? It won’t, because Ron Paul says it is none of our business.
But it is our business. It is both a moral obligation and in our self-interest to “entangle” ourselves in these issues. First, we advance the cause of liberty by becoming more closely allied with states like the Ukraine and Georgia. Their people are able to live their own lives without fear of becoming, basically, economic assets for the benefit of Russia, or China, or whoever. Because what these close relations bring is economic opportunity. There are businesses in countries all over the world that are either being invested in by Americans, or investing in American businesses, or buying American products or selling products to America. Economic activity that is putting food on the tables of American families, sending American kids to college, allowing young families to buy their first house, buy a second or third car, whatever.
What would happen in Ron Paul’s world? First, many of these economic opportunities would instead be enlarging the coffers of Russia and China or other nations who do not have America’s best interests in mind when they act. Second, it would destroy the moral order of international relations. That moral order only exists because of the credible threat of harm as a consequence of violating it, either by international condemnation, economic sanction, war, whatever. The power of the United States is vital in maintaining that credible threat of harm. Without our contribution, such things are laughable, empty threats.
Ron Paul’s foreign policy is based on a completely naive assumption: that everyone is basically like his idealized view of Americans. Everyone wants to trade fairly and get rich and otherwise mind their own business. Sorry Ron Paul and sorry Paulistas, but that isn’t how it is. A lot of the time in international relations, the game is zero-sum. What one country gains, another loses. Nations like Russia and China do not form their foreign-policy with the collective good of anything in mind. They form it based on what they think will make them and those useful to them more rich and powerful.
Everyone will like us if we get our noses out of their business! Yeah, maybe. Some of them will like us because of why Ron Paul says they will. Some of them will like us for being such huge suckers. And some of them will hate us because their government that could have been attached to the long, loose leash of America instead was forced to allow the tight, short leash of Russia or China be put around their country’s necks because America, their only alternative, stood aside and said “Not our business!”
Thanks, but no thanks. I’ll take ten Iraq Wars over standing aside and allowing Russia and China to play the same game, with much more brutality and with bad goals, simply because of the stupidity of the Paulites.
And just look at bluehaze’s post, chock full of hubris and completely devoid of any kind of civility or respect, to see why I will never even consider supporting someone like Ron Paul. His campaign is based on anger and intolerance and punishing the “brain dead,” in bluehaze’s words, instead of moving forward.
David, to finish it off with an attack, Ron Paul is an authoritarian and so are his followers. You don’t believe in free speech; every one of your comments here, along with all the comments by Ron Paul fanatics, is conveyed in a tone that shows that you’d rather anyone who disagrees with you shut up than try to discuss those differences. You turn dissent, in and of itself, into a reprehensible act. Populist soft fascism is what Ron Paul is all about.
Every day I read the Anti-Ron Paul BS that most of you spew on your blogs and in comments like these, and I just have to ask: What makes you think that those of us who support Dr. Paul for President don’t seriously understand the issues, and are merely supporting the man? Sorry, but you could not be more wrong. We know what we want, and that is not more of the war-mongering, out-of-control federal government with which we are now beset. And by some amazing stroke of luck, we now have ONE candidate who honestly and candidly represents us. So please excuse us for being a little excited!
Listen to all you guys debating. Do you honestly think any candidate has our interests in mind?
They ALL serve the corporations who are sucking us and this country dry. They use your patriotism, fear, and pride to continue their schemes
America has spent and borrowed enough to sink the ship.
Like Paul or not, you have to admit – our foreign policy cost will be the end of America.
Hope you can swim, cause Guiliani, Clinton and the others will be in liferafts…
“After all, Paul will not be in the race all that much longer…”
-Ed Morrisey, 2007
DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN
-Chicago Daily Tribune, 1948
I think we should invade other countries under false pretenses, then stubbornly decide to stay there for a completely different set of false ideals. Trouble is, some folks think, and so they might want to know why we really went there, but fat chance of having that disclosed. Anyway, we should open by denouncing activities that we didn’t give a rats ass about for 30 years or so. Before we even get to any of this, I think we should create a legacy of industry minded decisions and appointments, to lessen the impact of the pesky human population and the selfish interests of nature to industry profits.
.
.
Seriously, does anyone really still believe that we are in Iraq to (place Flag and crying bald eagle here) install a democracy?
.
.
…and since we went to Iraq, supposedly, to get rid of evil, when are we going to get rid of the other evil folks who protect our overseas interests?
.
I’m only asking because, as you know, I am the asker. That’s what askers do. They ask questions. So, I’m the asker.
Chaos — thank you for responding.
It is absolutely unclear to me what “right” Ukrainians have to Russian gas. From what I read the Russian complaint was that Ukraine was tapping off gas that was being sent to European customers and then was not paying for it. Of all the reprehensible actions the Russian government has taken, that one doesn’t really upset me. It reminds me of Cleveland when I was growing up and Dennis Kucinich (yeah, that Kucinich) decided that Cleveland didn’t have to pay for the electricity that was being delivered to the city.
Once we decide that we have a right to militarily intervene wherever we want to correct injustice and stabilize governments, we have signed on to an agreement for constant war. If that is the way we want to live and need to live, then so be it — but that is the death knell for the American tradition of limited government. And if we are going to do that, then at least we should extract sufficient payment for our, er, services.
chaos,
Seriously, do you not see what I am saying?! You keep proving my point over and over again.
YOU GIVE NO ALTERNATIVE TO PAUL SUPPORTERS.
For every “what-if” you come up with, I could come up with more for the other canidates.
If a liberal foriegn policy of pre-emptive war and nation building is your only issue, VOTE HITLARY. She has no intention of changing the current foriegn policy.
Unless you give an alternative, you come off as a wacko ranting nutjob. You posts are no different than what comes from a liberal spewing anti-conservative philosiphy.
Next I almost expect you to start telling us how the bastard isn’t going to give us free health care or grant amesty to the 20 million illegals.
Simple fact. Not ONE anti-Paul person here has offered a viable conservative alternative to Ron Paul.
Which brings us back to exactly why redstate banned Ron Paul supporters. If you can’t beat’em, ban’em.
It is absolutely unclear to me what “right” Ukrainians have to Russian gas.
Typical Paulite misrepresentation. Russia did not cut gas off just to the Ukraine. They shut down the whole pipeline at the border so significant parts of Poland and other countries had their supply significantly curtailed.
From what I read the Russian complaint was that Ukraine was tapping off gas that was being sent to European customers and then was not paying for it.
The situation was that Russia paid reduced or no transit fees for sending gas through Ukrainian-owned pipelines and the Ukraine got gas at a cheaper-than-market price from Russia and even free natural gas, up to 15% of what was going through the pipeline. Both sides wanted to renegotiate the deal and Russia offered terms unacceptable to the Ukraine, then instead of not creating a dispute that effected the public, Russia strong-armed the Ukraine into negotiating a new deal that gave Russia everything it had originally demanded by shutting off gas flow and creating a diplomatic furor by saying the Ukraine was stealing gas that was supposed to go farther west into Europe.
Russia did the same thing after the “Orange” parties won the latest Ukrainian elections. As soon as the election results were clear Gazprom claimed that the Ukraine owed them 1.3 billion and threatened to shut down the gas flow again. Yuschenko told them to get stuffed and the threat disappeared.
Observers noted that Gazprom’s actions during the whole affair were economically inconsistent but rather curiously coincided with periods of political tension between the Ukraine and Russia. Whenever Kiev and Moscow got frosty with each other Gazprom would suddenly announce that there was some dispute over the natural gas and threaten to shut down the pipeline. What Gazprom was doing was entirely consistent with acting based not on market forces but on whatever the current level of political tension was between the Ukraine and Russia.
RandallAnderson and bush2008’s posts are the typical Ron Paul spiel: “We’re right, you’re wrong, we’re super cereal about this, we’ve thought long and hard about this, we support Ron Paul, if you disagree with us you aren’t as sincere as we are about saving this country (sorry, the country doesn’t need to be saved) shut up.” The factual inaccuracies of bush2008’s comment are particularly hilarious.
A universal characteristic of the paranoid, delusional crank is the overwhelming feeling that unthinkable disaster is coming and only the crank’s cause can prevent it. Talk to a Paulite and you’ll be guaranteed to hear some histrionic wailing about how America is doomed if Ron Paul isn’t elected, how Ron Paul is the only man who can “save” America, and a whole bunch of other bullshit. I thought you guys were of the opinion that the country can run itself – so why does it need Ron Paul to save it? Seems to me that Ron Paul is just another one in a long line of Statists who claim to be anti-Statist – the system is the problem, so we must take it over!
All the doublethinking that one has to do to be a Ron Paulite has to be a strain.
Just more of the same from chaos.
All the doublethinking that one has to do to be a Ron Paulite has to be a strain.
Even worse is the strain it would take to be a Giuliani supporter.
Or a Romney supporter.
Or a Thompson supporter.
Or a McCain supporter.
Or a Huckabee supporter.
In every case, much more than is required to be a Paul supporter.
David,
You must have had trouble learning to read as a child and still have it, because your statement that I gave no alternatives is simply inexplicable.
To digress for a moment, I don’t need to give alternatives to what is clearly a bad foreign policy to reject it. I don’t need to provide “alternatives” to folly to know it’s folly and reject it.
Your comments are pathetic. Completely misrepresented what I said, and it’s deliberate. You can’t keep up with I am actually saying, so you’re lying about it. Seriously, learn to argue. It’s painful to read you histrionic, badly-reasoned remarks. For example, I did not mention pre-emptive war or nation building once. I mentioned allying ourselves with countries in return for their government setting policies that further our self-interest. That neither excludes war and nation-building, nor makes war and nation-building the sole ways to accomplish that.
It’s just amazing that literally all Ron Paul supporters have this problem, where they can’t reply to what people who disagree with them actually said. Any foreign policy opinion that is not 100% in lockstep with Paulism is responded to as if it (the opinion) consisted of nothing more than “America should invade whatever country it wants and re-make them how it wants,” regardless of whether or not that is actually what was said.
A slightly tougher form of Reagan’s general foreign policy, which was essentially maintained by both George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, doesn’t seem like a bad idea to me. Which is essentially what Hillary and all the GOP candidates except Ron Paul are saying they will do.
I give an alternative to Paul supporters: get some fucking intelligence and support a candidate who isn’t an ignoramus about foreign policy.
Once again.
I’m sure the next post from chaos will tell who is the better conservative canidate and why. He certainly couldn’t be intent on sounding like a rambling anti-Paul spammer. He’s just building up the suspense for when he blows us away with his choice of canidates and why. He’ll show us that there is somebody better than Paul that doesn’t require all that hard doublethink.
We’re on pins and needles, chaos. Please tell us!
Whatever you may think of Ron Paul, please keep an open mind – be very tough-minded and rational, but don’t shut him out. And I appreciate the fact that Captain’s Quarters is unafraid to engage in ideas.
I would like to humbly submit to you that people stumble over Ron Paul because he’s against war in Iraq. Their eyes glaze over and they turn him off when they hear that. But being tough-minded and rational means listening to the argument, not reacting viscerally. This is nearly impossible to do after America was attacked on 911 and is busy defending herself.
But Ron Paul is not our enemy – far from it. But I understand perfectly, and agree that unless and until Ron Paul can justify his nearly-treasonous-sounding-to-many-Republicans position on Iraq, many Republicans will refuse to hear him.
Does he have a satisfactory argument? I can only tell you what I think. Here goes:
1. Our global interests were threatened by 911 and continue to be threatened by nuclear proliferation.
2. We can deal with it by policing the world.
3. We can deal with it by defending our borders. 4. We can deal with it by declaring war.
5. We can deal with it by spreading, freedom and democracy via free-trade and friendship with friendly nations.
I respectfully submit to you that if you listenly carefully, Ron Paul agrees with everything above except for #2.
This is all about censorship. After all, censorship is becoming America’s favorite past-time. The US gov’t (and their corporate friends), already detain protesters, ban books like “America Deceived” from Amazon and Wikipedia, shut down Imus, stifle Ron Paul and fire 21-year tenured, BYU physics professor Steven Jones because he proved explosives, thermite in particular, took down the WTC buildings. Free Speech forever (especially for colleges).
Last link (before Google Books caves to pressure and drops the title):
America Deceived (book)
Come on chaos, the suspense is killing me. Tell us who the intelligent people are voting for.
At least tell us who isn’t an ignoramus about foreign policy. You sure seem to like Clinton’s. Is it Double Gitmo Romney? Nuke Iran Giuliani? Israel First Thompson?
Tell us about their wonderful domestic policies as well. Running other countries certainly couldn’t be more important than running America, right?
You know, I read through these posts and my first reaction was, “Is this ship the Titanic?” because as soon as the anti-Paul attackers showed up and started in with their namecalling, it went down real fast.
But then I got to thinking, you know, that wonderful thing that these anti-Paul people seem to not do while accusing us of not doing. Never mind that most of us Paul-unteers are very highly educated and have thought these things through very carefully before deiding to support him.
Let’s make it simple.
Take a thread. Post verbatim one of Dr. Paul’s positions there and let people explain why it’s right or wrong. Then do it again for another position, and another, etc. Rather than these blanket generalizations and stupid namecalling that degrades the situation, make into an opportunity to actually dig into the issues. Lincoln-Douglas, blog style.
So is anyone up to the challenge here?
chaos,
I don’t agree with everything Paul says either, and I think you are right to say that some of his foreign policy is naive in assuming that everyone will start loving us for some reason.
However, David has a very valid point. The mainstream GOP has not given us a candidate who isn’t for just “more of the same” outrageous spending and military activity. If it had, it wouldn’t be so worried about Hillary Clinton.
Can you convince me that one of the mainstream favorites is more worthy of my limited gov’t, low taxes, reduced foreign entanglement vote than Paul? I’m being serious. Please don’t just say “pick a candidate who isn’t crazy.” I need specifics.
Which exactly of Ron Paul’s positions do you “strongly disagree with”?
Given that virtually all of his positions are either supported by Nobel economics, or the philosophy of the Founding Fathers, you must be one ultra brilliant individual to rebut the arguments “fairly easily.”
So when can we expect to see your Nobel Prize coming through?
Never? Oh, then you must be self deluded, right?
Ron Paul Watch: The Red State Ban
Conservative Blog RedState.com has banned pimping for Ron Paul on their site.
Flap has been slow to reporting this since he has been involved with his own Ron Paul Flap and stormfront.org.
Leon Wolfe at RedState:
Effective immediately, new users may *…
I haven’t made it through the whole thread, but I’ve seen many interesting comments going both way. I find the discussion fascintating, not the least of which is that the blog I participate the most at is Reason’s Hit and Run, which is more libertarian than anything else, but allows conservatives and liberals to speak their minds to their heart’s content. In fact there are many regulars at both of those extremes, and they are welcome participants in discussion, and as long as they make interesting debatable points one can see some lively, thought-provoking comment threads.
I am incapable of debate..waah!!
You’re a dooty-head!
Seem to left out one part of Ron Paul’s foreign policy: diplomacy. I guess I’ll put in another concept for you to consider: force projection. Don’t forget that Paul has the most contributions for the military. People talk about use of strawman and ad hominem. That is all we see in the attacks on Ron Paul. Do you think the Bush administrations democracy at the end of a gun has been effective to deal with the war on terror? From a proproganda driven, FAUX News analysis, most warmongers would say yes, but a deeper analysis of Bush’s and for that matter all the other neocon, American Empire, warmongering, such a policy has much to be desired. Oh well I guess for the uninformed and sound byte reality believers, Paul’s positions won’t get much traction. The good thing is that those individuals are just as lazy physically as they are intellectually to go out and vote and hopefully the Paul supporters who are high motivated about Paul will go out to vote with their friends, coworkers and family. The narrow minded are a small minority thank god. We shall see at the ultimate polls who is ultimately correct on this debate.
And don’t think about who has supported the US Patriot Act, Military Tribunals and other wonderful acts in the name of security. Just follow the orders of the State, don’t dissent too much and you’ll just be fine. You’ll have security for sure, but not much else. Don’t think about NAU and erosion of US sovereignty, (think Julie Annie and Thompson). Cheers (and yes I am American). You should hope that Ron Paul gets elected, but unfortunately, you probably will not be able to comprehend why people all over the United States are for Paul.
Ad Hominem away my friends, I prefer to support rule of law, and the Constitutional Republic know as America. Constitutial government and rule of law, what a concept.
The Constitution is an “Archaic” document according to those over at RS. Maybe here at CQ they have a little more respect for “just a damned piece of paper”..
I’ll make it simple for you idiot Paulites. If you vote for Ron Paul, Hillary wins, and so does Al-Qaeda.
“When he came out a few debates ago, and said, that the US had never had an attack on her soil; not in 220 years; Guliani about plotzed. “Where were you on 9/11?” he shot out.”
He was talking about an imminent attack. An attack that we knew of in advance. Pearl Harbor does not qualify unless you are a conspiracy theorist that believes FDR knew about Pearl Harbor in advance.
Ed, If you do interview Ron Paul, I would suggest you read his book “A Foreign Policy of Freedom.” His book is mostly a collection of his speeches in congress he made in the 70’s and early 80’s and later in the 90’s to the present. What I found interesting was that he supported the taking out of the Osirak reactor. He states that our foreign aid to Israel probably constrains them from doing what they should do to defend themselves. He questioned why the US rescued the PLO twice. When he insisted on a declaration of war on Iraq be put to a vote, the reasoning against it were surprising: It would invalidate insurance contracts and prevent us from trading with those that trade with Iraq.
Maybe if Ron Paul had bent his knee and groveled before the Lords of AIPAC he would be found more acceptable to the Big People That Matter.
If kissing the butt of Alien nation’s Agent of Influence is good enough for Rudy and Hillary, Ron Paul should just accept that powerful Jews control who the public is allowed to discuss and vote for.
Everyone see how chaos could not come up with a single conservative candidate better than Paul? He had all day to come up with one name and couldn’t. That is EXACTLY why the Ron Paul ban on RS.
They lose EVERYTIME.
Can’t beat’em? BAN’EM!
I’ve read about 45 messages here and I think I have the whole problem pegged. Here is an example:
A mature example of why to support Ron Paul:
Ron Paul wants to incorperate a currency based on gold, much as it was before we left the gold standard in 1971. FDR created a similar executive order “11110” to allow the treasury to print money based on silver. Over 4 billion dollars were circulated before his assasination. This competing currency would allow us to counter inflation created with the federal reserve system of borrowing we have today. All Ron Paul needs to do is give the OK to the treasury, and inflation will dramatically decrease under his system.
An immature example of why to support Ron Paul:
Ron Paul 2008! He’s gonna save this country, how can you not support the constitution! Ron Paul Revolution Baby!!!!
It seems most people only are seeing the immature responses and this has obviously turned off many voters. It’s really a shame. There are a lot of us who have decided to support Ron Paul based on researching his ideas. Not just skimming the surface.
Many people see him in a FOX debate where they give him 30 seconds to say “I want to get rid of the Federal Reserve”, and naturally you think he’s crazy. Of course you would if that’s all you know of the man. I also at first thought he was loony. Then I wondered – why are so many supporting this guy?
So in short I think that with such short air time to explain his positions, and with many passionate people who don’t fully understand Ron’s ideas – people turn against him.
I really recommend people look past these bad points and try to get your information from YouTube videos of Ron Paul being interviewed. Go to his web site, and use google. It’s worth your time in spite of the negativity that comes with the internet.
Chaos definitely has one thing right. When I vote for Ron Paul in the WA Republican causus, and then when Hillary goes on to beat either Rudy or Mitt next November, the big-government Republicans will blame Ron Paul and his supporters for the loss. Because anyone who actually wants less Federal government should have shut up and waved the GOP flag in order to defeat a *shudder* Clinton.
I do hope the Republicans keep enough seats in the Senate to stop another Ugly Rifle Ban. Because that is basically all they are good for.
Fritz, that last sentence was a cheap shot. You will not persuade anyone by insulting people.
Marc, I think you meant JFK not FDR as the signer of EO 11110. I don’t think this had anything to do with the assassination of JFK as many seem to believe. This EO was enacted to satisfy an 1868 law that required a fixed level of outstanding US Notes. Reagan rescinded this EO in 1987. You can find more details in G. Edward Griffin’s “The Creature From Jekyll Island” which, incidentally Ron Paul has praised.
I don’t want to use my RedState handle here, because what I’m about to say could get me banned. I’m a respected member of the community there – any of you who are fellow RedStaters and friends will know who I am.
Some of the more prominent members of said community have resorted to creating puppet accounts and posting inane, poorly spelled, frothing at the mouth pro-ron paul cheerleader style comments. I think this is disgraceful, especially since (I won’t mention names) certain members of that community are perfectly capable of intelligent debate. I’m not sure what’s going on..
I’m still waiting for a response to my article on the Federal Reserve. I’ve had two responses.
Uncle Jefe wrote:
” “We do need another precious metal or similarly divisible, intrinsically valuable item to back our money with.”
Cubic zirconium!! ”
and chaos wrote:
” And Chris Burch’s posts are typical of the “I’m being reasonable but if you disagree with me your very act of disagreement is unreasonable” attitude that Ron Paul nutjobs take. I don’t care how nice and fluffy and tolerant and inclusive you think you are, you come off as stand-offish, arrogant, and generally intolerant of dissent. ”
Neither of them address whether the Federal Reserve is good for America or whether we should go back to a currency backed by a precious metal. These two response serve to validate my second post, where I state that the return argument that most anti-paulites have is that “the Dr. Paul supporters are crazy but I don’t have any content to really add.” It is odd that Giuliani also has used the “you are mentally unsound” argument to discredit a ferret owner who was upset over the ferret ban that Giuliani put in NYC. Go you youtube and find “Giuliani Ferret” where he belittles a radio call-in guest rather than providing a decent argument as to why ferrets should not be allowed in NYC. He could have argued that ferrets carry disease that is harmful to the public, that ferrets often escape and become a harm to themselves and other domestic animals, or any number of other arguments that may or may not have been valid. But he doesn’t. He just calls the caller mentally unsound and goes on and on about it – just like an anti-paulite.
To answer chaos, I apologize for acting like a know-it-all. I don’t. There are many Paul positions that I took an opposite side on initially and even one that I still have problems with, immigration. I had to go re-educate my own pre-conceived notions about many different things, including the Federal Reserve, to realize that Paul might have a point. I cite Alan Greenspan’s article “Gold and Economic Freedom” in my discussion on the Federal Reserve because Greenspan is an expert in that field and I am not. I don’t think anybody will get a lot of dispute by saying that Greenspan might actually “know-it-all” when it come to the Fed and currency issues.
-Christopher Burch
And yes Jefe and chaos, I would still love to see a reasoned debate supporting the need for the Fed or a precious-metal backed currency.
Why not back our dollar with Joules of energy?
This is sad diatribe, really. As a Republican voter for 25 years, I can’t really understand how narrow-minded and infantile this party has become. Go on, attack Paul, call his supporters Paulites, Paulistas, whatever, if that gives you a charge.
We can all play at this game: Ghouliani, Thompsonistas, Hucksters, whatever. Come on, this is a farce. So where does that get us?
Defend the Redstate blog, which I have found to be the most juvenile, dismal penal colony to be trapped in. Nothing intellectual on that site, to be sure. That site is loaded with “phony Republicans.”
Real Republicans will at least argue for or against the ideas. There are a lot of directions for this country to go in. That’s the debate. Empire or Republic? Financially solvent or not? Another version of the EU or a nation built on principles? A country being run into the ground or able to survive in the new world economy? People who want to have some control in their government or a bunch of sheep that want to be herded around like goats?
If only the debate would come without all the ridiculous epithets.
Douglas, you are correct. That was a cheap shot. But honestly that is the best I am hoping for until 2012 — that 41+ Republicans in the Senate will rediscover their joy in limiting government (now that they are in the minority and not running said government) and will stop some of the Democrats’ more egregious expansions.
Red State was RIGHT to ban the Cult of Ron Paul
Much ado is being made of Red State’s recent decision to ban Paulbots from posting, with a lot of criticism (much of which is not worth reading) being directed at them for it. Here’s my two cents, but first, the ban:
Effective immediately,…
Scott Harmon:
That’s the debate. Empire or Republic? Financially solvent or not? Another version of the EU or a nation built on principles? A country being run into the ground or able to survive in the new world economy? People who want to have some control in their government or a bunch of sheep that want to be herded around like goats?
First you complain about epithets, and then you refer to all those who don’t worship at the Temple of Ron Paul as being “a bunch of sheep that want to be herded around like goats.” Funny.
Your entire argument is a strawman. You think anyone who’s against RP is for “Empire?” (More to the point, do you actually believe any serious adult wishes for an “empire?”) Do you think that we want to become like the EU, run the economy into the ground, or be financially insolvent? And who are you to say who’s the “real Republican” or “real conservative?”
You’re making this completely black and white, as though ONLY Ron Paul has American interests in mind. You, of course, are painfully wrong. The debate is REALLY about how we get to our mostly-shared goals. (I say “mostly,” because there’s a lot of RP ideas that most Americans don’t want, i.e. abolition of the FDA, bringing home the troops from all over the world, etc., but you get my point, I hope.)
And that, you see, is precisely the problem with the Ron Paul disciples: the absolutism, the sheer unwillingness to assume good faith, the negativity, the extremism. Your comment is among the more adult ones from your tribe, and still, you’re missing the point.
One last note: It’s worth remembering that decades ago, William F. Buckley purged the National Review of the extremists who gave birth to the John Birch Society. The JBS has always been considered extreme right-wing, and not THE “real conservatives” or “real Republicans.” To the contrary–the National Review and Buckley are considered the benchmarks of conservatism. And today, the agenda of the Ron Paul disciples is virtually indistinguishable from the John Birch Society. It’s no accident that 9/11 troofers, other conspiracy theorists, white supremacists, and other assorted nutters are drawn to Ron Paul so strongly.
“To the contrary–the National Review and Buckley are considered the benchmarks of conservatism”
That’s one of the problems.
I’v thought of myself as a conservative all my life but today, I don’t think that my understanding of that word is the same as most Republicans use of the word.
A small as possible central govt.
Fiscally responsible.
As little welfare as possible.
SECURE BORDERS.
Strong defense, but no nation building foreign adventures.
Suspicion of power, because power corrupts at both the national and personal levels.
That list is not complete but good enough for a starting place. That agenda doesn’t seem to be of much interest to the current Republican leadership or most of the rank and file membership. Where is someone like me supposed to go with my political support? This is not a rhetorical question. Convince me that anyone other than Dr. Paul has any interest in those ideas and I will consider voting for them.
I’ve looked at the records of Giuliani, Romney and McCain and there is something in all their records that I find unacceptable. I’d be gald to give specifics if wanted.
The old arguement that no matter how bad the Republican is the Democrat will be worse has worn thin. Personally, I think Giuliani would be worse that Clinton.
If you don’t want me to support Dr. Paul convince me, don’t call me names.
Beth:
I am not actually debating my points, above, I am merely saying that these issues are the ones that are front and center.
I had a subscription to NR for some time. I just don’t agree with the expansion and maintenance of Empire at the expense of all else; nor do I feel compelled to follow the Wilsonian mandates of this new version of the Party. Voted for Bush twice–he did not do what he said he would do; in fact, much the opposite.
As for benchmarks of conservatism, and what the Republican Party stands for, we could go round and round on that all day. As proof, there is no Republican candidate who has been able to unify the masses. Hence, my frustration with the attack dogs who don’t want to think through the issues, but would rather be herded around like goats, because NR or some other Party puppet says “this is the way it shall be.”
No, it isn’t. “Democracies,” representative governments, whatever you call them, must move forward or else perish. Technology has given us wonderful capabilities to participate in government and effect a better outcome for the citizens. It gives us a lot more capability to do away with unnecessary bureaucracy, to make for transparency of government, to embrace debate. It also enables the economy to move in different directions.
I don’t claim that Paul is the ideal candidate, that the other candidates ignore American interests, that I am against “global” participation, that there is no need for govt, or any such extremes.
Quite the contrary. I believe it is time for the government to become more fiscally responsible, to take care of the needs of its citizens (in many ways, by reducing its involvement in their affairs), to reduce its footprint around the world, to become less ambitious relative to nation-building, NATO expansionism, and so forth, because we are paying a horrible price for it. Is that extreme? Or is it extreme to advocate radical expansion of NATO (as many participants are loathe to do), to shove the EU down people’s throats (as Brown wants to do), or advocate a 30-years’ war that could grow longer and longer?
The real problem with the Party position is that it has been moving away from technology (except for military purposes), has not embraced the electorate as it should, has advocated too much government meddling (abroad and at home), and has done little to allow for a freer, more robust economy.
In essence, I want the government, and the Party, to begin to hear the voice of the people, in whatever way possible (polling, on-line engagement, and so forth); I don’t want some elite clique of decision-makers deciding on their agenda in a vacuum.
“we have got to accept Big Government for the duration–for neither an offensive nor a defensive war can be waged…except through the instrumentality of a totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores.” William F. Buckley
Enough said.
That’s rich coming from you, Captain. Aren’t you the guy that suggested that Ron Paul be banned from future debates after mischaracterizing what Paul actually said?
Oh yeah, you were…
Banning Ron Paul Supporters
RedState’s recent decision to ban those with new accounts from “shill[ing] for Ron Paul in any way shape, form or fashion” has understandably drawn a strong reaction, including condemnations from conservative Republicans like Ed Morri…
Chaos, you give the example “Let’s give an example. Russia has been, for the last decade, trying to re-exert its influence on the former Soviet satellite states, and has essentially Belarus into a province”.
Assuming that the Russia example is correct, what is the US doing to change Russia’s mind? Have we threatened war? Is the threat of the US military curtailing Russia’s actions? What action is the current administration taking that has fixed this problem? How much has it cost?
Same questions with respect to the example “In Africa, we see China quietly buying up influence via money and diplomatic support right and left, propping up regimes with human-rights records just as odious as Beijing’s”.
How does the current administrations policies address this buying up by China? How much has it cost? Have we stopped China from buying influence? Have we significantly reduced it by threatening military attack? What down side if any is there in our strategy?
The question you pose is: “How will Ron Paul’s foreign policy address that?”
Your answer is: “It won’t, because Ron Paul says it is none of our business.”
The question and answer above implies that there is an answer (a solution, worth the cost in money, time, and lives) among the Republican candidates. Is that answer war? If not war then maybe sanctions? Maybe we can starve their people into attacking their own government so we don’t have to?
I can’t speak for Ron Paul, or anyone really, but I want to know how war and the threat of war and/or other intervention by the US will help solve the examples you gave above in the long run and with benefits that out weigh cost.
Thanks!
uxrdbean
I have a few questions.
How many of you think the Constitution matters any more? All of you who think the Constitution is archaic, don’t waste your time reading anything else I write.
How many of you have sworn an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution? I have. So has the President, and every member of Congress, the Senate, the Armed Forces, practically every Federal employee.
How many of you have actually READ the Constitution? Why not? Would you try it?
How many of you have any idea of Ron Paul’s record of keeping his word regarding the Constitution? How about the other candidates?
How important is honor, integrity, and keeping one’s word, especially in the face of disagreement?
What form of government do we currently have? What form of government were we promised?
Hopefully, thinking about these things might provide some perspective.
The fact that you have the excrecrable mbecker posting here (along with some of the RedState commissars themselves) leads me to think that what I say might fall on deaf ears, but one has to try.
I am a Republican born and bred. NEVER voted Democrat, and still won’t do so in 2008. Mid-30’s, married, homeowner, extremely grounded. I presently serve in the Army as an officer and have for 14 years. I say all this to pre-empt character assassins like becker, who will tend to dismiss the GOP bona fides of those they disagree with, right before they launch into their usual ad hominem jollity.
I did not pay particular attention to RedState before this, and certainly am disinclined to do so in the future, considering the juvenilia I’ve read there recently. Wolf, Erickson, and others in the ideological circle-jerk that RedState has become are doing little more than venting an enormous, time-wasting amount of infantile spleen while alienating half the blogosphere in the process.
Fratricide used to be a Democratic specialty, and generally was a good indicator that they were going to tank at the next general election. The spectacle of Republicans savaging one another with charges and countercharges of “fake Republican” must be thoroughly heartening to our enemies, foreign and domestic.
The stifling posting/membership policy chosen by RedState’s leadership may well reflect the desire of its ground troops there, and that’s fine. RS certainly is a private entity with limited resources — although I must note how swiftly the management has utterly smothered every potential Paul defender with a blanket of sneering disparagment. Talk about your Ron Paul obsessions…
I suppose the most disappointing thing about the RedState nonsense has been the lost opportunity it represents. Our party is not getting any younger, and the complete absence of (unpaid) activist and/or popular enthusiasm for any other GOP candidate but Ron Paul is a clear warning of the demoralized state of our party.
I enjoy the unbridled enthusiasm of young Paul supporters. I’ve met many of them, and it’s not hard to envision what could be achieved with their populist energy, harnessed to a united party machine. But the fanatical insistence on uniformity of Republican thought, coupled with the sheer hostility that has greeted Ron Paul’s insurgent candidacy, is just stunningly stupid.
I won’t dispute that some “Paulites” are adoring fans, unable to articulate the intricacies of his positions. Some are very rah-rah and enjoy being in-your-face about it. Well, so what? Are we to feel threatened by sign-waving college kids? Are we so fragile that we can’t engage and channel Paul’s movement into a long-term positive for the party? Why must we marginalize, belittle, and alienate?
We’re in for a thrashing in November, and from where I stand, it’s much deserved for 8 years of morally and fiscally bankrupt policies. Puritanical holdouts like those at RedState may smugly marinate in denial, but it is high time to repudiate the Iraq war and the ways of big-spending statism, in favor of a return to less government, limited foreign ambitions, and restored privacy and personal freedom.
Ejecting Republicans (and rejecting potential ones) because they do not toe a pro-war, pro-federalist line is a sad degeneration into groupthink that I never thought I’d see from my party. I lament the loss of the “big tent” that once characterized the GOP. If the ideological purity wars continue this way, we will defeat ourselves well before Hillary does.
Andrew Sullivan — Hypocrite
The fine conservative site RedState recently announced its decision to ban comments favoring Ron Paul by newly registered members, based upon a documented problem with the Ronulans. Whether or not this is the correct move is subject to debate, but…
I was one of those banned from redstate.com simply because I (summarily) stated that Americans, including our government, spend like a bunch of drunken soldiers. I voted for Bush and supported the war but it is evident that our human and financial resources are sressed to their limits. We are doing nothing to stem the constant flow of illegal aliens coming in through our Southern border with Mexico. I was born and raised in L.A. and left because California has become a microcosm of our Federal government. Tax, spend, tax, spend, tax, spend and nothing to show for it. I support Ron Paul because he has a sound history and has some ideas to bring fiscal sanity back to this country.
Beth asks if any serious adult wants an Empire.
I think the answer to that is, well, “yes”. Clearly the Emperor wants an empire. And the people who expect to be close to the Emperor. And people who will benefit from the actions of empire.
Even if most people don’t want a completely overt Empire, they will go along with it as long as they have some trappings of input. After all, Rome still had a Senate long after the Senate had any influence. Because Romans felt good about having one. Likewise, we go about voting, even if the choices are carefully managed for us. After all, voters should only have to choose between serious candidates and serious proposals.
And while Americans may not say they want Empire, they are enthusiastically in favor of the fruits of Empire. And if Americans get too concerned about what they are giving up in return, there can always be new reports about new threats (be it Iran or Global Warming or stronger marijuana) that require powerful government response.
WHAT??? How can you NOT see the obvious NEED for banning the PAULBOTS. As clearly as the Illuminati faked the moon landing to encourage the Zionist Plot of NAFTA for Enslaving Humanity it becomes TRIVIALLY obvious that this banning was required.
I’ve tried for an off-topic Paul supporter style here. Since you claim you can easily engage and counter the arguments here… please do. I avoided the every populat “truther” style for a slightly less popular but more engaging “multi-conspiratorial” style. Before claiming this is implausible, please watch the following:
http://hotair.com/archives/2007/10/26/video-noted-ron-paul-supporter-blows-the-lid-off-the-new-world-order/
So, have fun with your easy job of engaging and disputing these “facts”… I won’t bother to return to this link ever (to properly play my role here)… You Foolish short-sighted Zionist dupe you.
Oh, and no deleting this post. That’s the “bad” way out. I’ll come back in a few days in a random post and do this again. If I can get about 20 of my friends to do the same, would it make this more realistic for you?
Around The Sphere Blogging Roundup October 27, 2007
Our link-fest offering readers links to blog posts from websites of many different viewpoints. Linked posts do NOT necessarily reflect the opinion of TMV or its writers.
THE SAGA OF SCOTT BEAUCHAMP’S CONTROVERSIAL NEW REPUBLIC MILITARY DIARIES …
Thanks for addressing Wolf’s recent faux pas, Ed. Since Leon has seen fit to defend his position here, perhaps he’d also like to explain his decision to censor the following post, which makes no mention of his newest bogeyman:
“I Was Republican, When Republican Wasn’t Red
I’ve considered myself a Republican from the time I first became politically conscious (about the time of Nixon’s 1968 campaign). The first presidential campaign for which I was eligible to cast a ballot was Ronald Reagan’s 1984 re-election bid. It was with great pride that I helped the Gipper win a second term. Reagan may not have lived up to all of his rhetoric ( e.g., his promise to dismantle the DOE), but at least he gave the unshakable impression that he genuinely believed what he said, and that he would say the same thing even if the entire world opposed him; he seemed to care less about what was popular than what he believed to be right — which was a large part of his political charm.
The Republican party of today searches vainly for another Ronald Reagan, another candidate that both Republicans and Democrats can rally around, an electoral powerhouse. Although Republican voters are nostalgic for the Gipper, and Republican candidates awkwardly attempt to cloak themselves in his oversized mantle, they both fail to recollect that the Reagan Revolution was the result of a synthesis of paleoconservatives, libertarians, classical liberals, and both Rustbelt and Southern Democrats. Modern Republicans seem also to forget that the Bush wing of the Republican party was in rabid opposition to Reagan’s 1980 bid for the presidency, and made repeated and desperate attempts to paint him as a dangerous lunatic. What few seem able to recall is that the odd-couple paring of Reagan/Bush (the two who were ideological enemies and who had bitterly fought during the primary) was a concession by the Reagan campaign to appease the fascist wing of the party. Yet, that same wing of the party, the wing currently at its helm, begrudgingly claims to be the inheritor of Reagan’s legacy. Who else remembers the bitter complaints of the Bushies that the beloved Gipper refused to give his VP more than the minimal requisite token support in his 1988 bid to ride the popular Reagan’s coat tails into the oval office?
Reagan’s coalition revolution fell apart under the globalist/socialist Bush 41. Learning a lesson from his father’s failure, Bush 43 ran to the right of his father, but has governed far to the left of his father’s immediate successor. Today’s Republican primary candidates seem completely unconscious of the bizarre act of doublethink required to invoke Reagan’s legacy while openly promoting the globalist/socialist agenda of the Bush wing of the party; perhaps they’re just hoping that the new crop of Republican voters is either too young to remember the truth or too intellectually lazy to investigate it for themselves.
While the passage of truth into the forgotten, swirling abyss of the memory hole is disturbing enough, the most troubling part of this current political atmosphere is that most new Republicans (neo-cons) seem to be espousing the idea of nominating the Republican most similar to the likely Democrat candidate. I suspect that, as much as these Republicrats profess to hate Hillary, if she were running for the Republican nomination, they would support her, because “she can win.” After all, let’s face it: Giuliani is just Hillary in a dress….and most of the rest aren’t much better.”
It “seems like” that, does it? It IS that. The Redstate bloggers banned me simply for quoting Barry Goldwater Sr. (to show that Barry Goldwater Sr.’s general political outlook was very compatible with Ron Paul’s), and for pointing out that Barry Goldwater Jr. is very friendly with Ron Paul (in fact, Barry Goldwater Jr. apparently campaigned for Ron Paul in Paul’s Congressional campaign of 1976).
I’ve only been banned on two blogs that I can think of: one was left-wing economist Brad DeLong’s website for pointing out inconvenient facts about global warming. And the other was Redstate blog, for pointing out inconvenient facts about Barry Goldwater Sr’s and Jr’s political philosophies.
Just goes to show you…leftists are all alike. When they can’t debate persuasively, they attempt to silence dissent.
.
Ron Paul has some good ideas, just some that is…
.
absurd thought –
God of the Universe says
just blame Ron Paul
for all the trolls of the world
don’t blame simple moonbats
.
http://absurdthoughtsaboutgod.blogspot.com/
🙂
.
Here’s a recent example of Leon’s “tolerance” of dissenting opinion among fellow Republicans. Notice how he bullies, insults, and threatens his guests:
“Habeas Corpus by Leon H Wolf
You know, whenever I see someone saying that habeas corpus has “ended,” I know for *sure* I’m dealing either with a moron, someone who is easily duped, or a moonbat, and probably a combination of all three. And when someone says it’s “indisputable,” that probably means taht they’re beyond all hope of saving.
But I’m going to tell you what – I’m feeling generous today on account of the Red Sox. So, if you can give me the correct answer to the question: “How many habeas petitions did the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit hear in the last six months?” I’ll keep your account on. I’ll tell you what – if you get within 10 of the correct answer, I’ll still keep your account on.
Next post, please.”
Don’t worry, Leon. We know you’re just under a lot of stress lately. But after the splendid job you did for Brownback, I’m sure those job offers will be pouring in soon. Heck, after you’re done alienating your party’s base, they’ll probably make you chairman…