Paul on an across-the-aisle ally: Kucinich
Last night's vote (producing winners — egad! — Clinton and McCain) had me thinking again about something Ron Paul said during his Q/A with Jay Leno on New Hampshire's primary-eve; once again, this transcript is from the Los Angeles Times:
JAY LENO: I'm just saying which -- if you had to pick someone from the Democratic field, who do you like?
RON PAUL: Well, a good friend of mine that I talk to all the time on foreign policy is Dennis, Dennis Kucinich, because he understands civil liberties. He understands a lot about foreign policy. And sometimes when there's only two of us that will vote in the House against expanding our war in the Middle East, he and I will be voting together. So I have a lot of respect for him, but we would disagree on economic policy. But it's good that you have allies on both sides of the aisle.
Before anyone jumps the gun, Paul namechecking Kucinich isn't proof that the press (in coloring them both with the kooky-colored crayon) is correct. Both Paul and Kucinich, two intelligent men, differ in philosophy in some areas, not in all areas, yet are, as Paul puts it, "allies on both sides of the aisle."
Economic policy is but one facet of running a country. We're a nation obsessed with money and taxes. And while the rest of the candidates debate on whether to give you services or your money back, these two guys actually have their eyes on the world enough to know how we should interact with other countries while protecting our own interests. And isn't that the job of the American president, anyway? If I'm wrong, please tell me, and I may change my mind about who to vote for. But for now, I'm planning to proceed by voting for a candidate who interprets the presidents' job the way I do.
JAY LENO: I'm just saying which -- if you had to pick someone from the Democratic field, who do you like?
RON PAUL: Well, a good friend of mine that I talk to all the time on foreign policy is Dennis, Dennis Kucinich, because he understands civil liberties. He understands a lot about foreign policy. And sometimes when there's only two of us that will vote in the House against expanding our war in the Middle East, he and I will be voting together. So I have a lot of respect for him, but we would disagree on economic policy. But it's good that you have allies on both sides of the aisle.
Before anyone jumps the gun, Paul namechecking Kucinich isn't proof that the press (in coloring them both with the kooky-colored crayon) is correct. Both Paul and Kucinich, two intelligent men, differ in philosophy in some areas, not in all areas, yet are, as Paul puts it, "allies on both sides of the aisle."
Economic policy is but one facet of running a country. We're a nation obsessed with money and taxes. And while the rest of the candidates debate on whether to give you services or your money back, these two guys actually have their eyes on the world enough to know how we should interact with other countries while protecting our own interests. And isn't that the job of the American president, anyway? If I'm wrong, please tell me, and I may change my mind about who to vote for. But for now, I'm planning to proceed by voting for a candidate who interprets the presidents' job the way I do.
posted by Strother | 8:44 AM
5 Comments:
From Captain's Quarters:
Paul's supporters had insisted that the Revolution would launch from Iowa and New Hampshire, but Paul only won marginal support. Even in Iowa, where he ran only against Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson -- and where his libertarianism should have won significant traction -- his campaigning left him without a single delegate to the convention. Last night's election put him behind Rudy Giuliani in fifth place, even though Giuliani didn't exactly strain himself with Granite State campaigning.
The Revolution turned out to be a dud. Even the writers at Reason now wonder what kind of crypto policy Paul may have been hiding, and Andrew Sullivan has (rather bravely) called out Paul for his association with the vile rhetoric published for over seventeen years under his own name.
The green curtain has been pulled back, I think, and rational minds have taken control.
Oh, blow it out your ass, Ed.
As Vox Day indicated, those of us in the unwanted 10% will remember your BS when you start weeping in late October because the polls indicate the paleo-cons and paleo-libertarians are going to sit this one out. When you're sitting in your den, Ed, watching Hillary's coronation with big tears streaming down your ugly mug, just remember that it's the knee-jerk tendency of you and yours to bend over for pragmatism that caused this.
From American Thinker:
I am truly disappointed. By now, I expected Ron Paul to be on his way to the White House, measuring curtains for the Lincoln bedroom.
At least, that was the impression left by the army of Paulbots that never tired of telling me "Wait until Iowa" or "Wait until New Hampshire" when supporters for their candidate would supposedly rise up out of the ground and march en masse to the polls, giiving their hero victory after victory.
Well...we waited for Iowa. We waited for New Hampshire. My own guess is that we could wait for hell to freeze over and Ron Paul would still only be getting a fraction of the GOP vote for President.
Ed Morrissey has noticed a strange phenomenon:
"Almost like clockwork, any time a blogger posts anything remotely critical about Ron Paul, it attracts hundreds of comments, most of them refusing to deal with the substance of the criticism. Instead, they usually contained cap-locked diatribes about the Federal Reserve, the Constitution, and how anyone who doesn't support Paul is a traitor or a fool. Many start off by saying, "I am a Hispanic/Jewish/black voter who cares about freedom ..." as a means of defusing the awkward inks between Paul and his newsletters and donation from neo-Nazi Don Black, as well as his 40-plus appearances on the radio show of Truther and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
But not today. It's been more than 14 hours since I posted about the TNR story, and so far ... nothing. I really expected to find scores of outraged commentary in the Disqus moderation queue when I woke up this morning, but so far, it's been as quiet as a church mouse.
The results from Iowa and New Hampshire may have finally broken the spell. Paul's supporters had insisted that the Revolution would launch from Iowa and New Hampshire, but Paul only won marginal support. Even in Iowa, where he ran only against Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson -- and where his libertarianism should have won significant traction -- his campaigning left him without a single delegate to the convention. Last night's election put him behind Rudy Giuliani in fifth place, even though Giuliani didn't exactly strain himself with Granite State campaigning.
The Revolution turned out to be a dud."
That last is an understatement. Not only was there no "revolution," there was never anything there as far as support for Paul except hot air and paranoia.
Ah! Blessed silence. Hopefully, we've seen the last of those internet gangsters and can go back to rational discussion of the election rather than constantly being bombarded by the idiocies and delusions of some very strange people.
From the Real Clear Politics Blog:
At the risk of infuriating Ron Paul's legions of supporters, I have to ask: What now? The "Live Free or Die" state gave Paul a nice-sized 18,000 votes, but with the amount of money Paul has been bringing in, fifth place is not a moral victory at all; it's last place (excluding the non-competing Fred Thompson).
Looking at the other primary states, New Hampshire was Paul's only chance for making a difference. It didn't happen and, with the race moving to Michigan and beyond, it won't happen.
From National Review Online:
If you live in Further Right World, you may well believe that the Constitution was a kind of NATO between the states. I think that is demonstrably wrong, but it is an honorable view (Jefferson, in some moods, professed it).
Close by that view is the view that the slave power was the historic defender of liberty, which I think is both wrong and wicked (Jefferson, in his old age, found himself driven to it).
Many inhabitants of Further Right World are also gold bugs. That may be a mistaken belief, but again it is honorable. Gold buggery goes off the rails when it breeds an unhealthy suspicion of central banks. ("The necessary secrecy of [bankers'] transactions gives unlimited scope to imagination to infer that something is, or may be wrong"—Alexander Hamilton, "Report on a National Bank," 1790). I was startled, the first time I read Lysander Spooner—and if you have spent any time in Further Right World, you will know exactly who that is—to find a little blast at the Rothschilds.
Ron Paul clearly holds the honorable views mentioned above, and everyone who knows him testifies that he does not hold the wicked ones. But it requires eternal vigilance in Further Right World to keep the two apart, and he has not exercised it.
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