Posted on 06/15/2007 7:24:20 AM PDT by Fiji Hill
The Conservative Case Against Ron Paul
By John Hawkins
Friday, June 15, 2007
Even though he's not one of the top tier contenders, I thought it might be worthwhile to go ahead and write a short, but sweet primer that will explain why so many Republicans have a big problem with Ron Paul. Enjoy!
#1) Ron Paul is a libertarian, not a conservative: I have nothing against libertarians. To the contrary, I like them and welcome them into the Republican Party. But, conservatives have even less interest in seeing a libertarian as the GOP's standard bearer than seeing a moderate as our party's nominee. In Paul's case, his voting record shows that he is the least conservative member of Congress running for President on the GOP side. So, although he is a small government guy, he very poorly represents conservative opinion on a wide variety of other important issues.
#2) Ron Paul is one of the people spreading the North American Union conspiracy: If you're so inclined, you can click here for just one example of Paul talking up a mythical Bush administration merger of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, but you're not missing much if you don't. Reputable conservatives shouldn't be spreading these crazy conspiracy theories and the last thing the GOP needs is a conspiracy crank as our nominee in 2008.
#3) Ron Paul encourages "truther" conspiracy nuts: Even though Ron Paul admits that he does not believe in a 9/11 government conspiracy, he has been flirting with the wackjobs in the "truther movement," like Alex Jones and the "Student Scholars for 9/11 Truth." Republican politicians should either ignore people like them or set them straight, not lend credence to their bizarre conspiracy theories by acting as if they may have some merit, which is what Ron Paul has done.
#4) Ron Paul's racial views: From the Houston Chronicle, Texas congressional candidate Ron Paul's 1992 political newsletter highlighted portrayals of blacks as inclined toward crime and lacking sense about top political issues.
Under the headline of "Terrorist Update," for instance, Paul reported on gang crime in Los Angeles and commented, "If you have ever been robbed by a black teen-aged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be."
Paul, a Republican obstetrician from Surfside, said Wednesday he opposes racism and that his written commentaries about blacks came in the context of "current events and statistical reports of the time."
..."Given the inefficiencies of what D.C. laughingly calls the `criminal justice system,' I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal," Paul said.
...He added, "We don't think a child of 13 should be held responsible as a man of 23. That's true for most people, but black males age 13 who have been raised on the streets and who have joined criminal gangs are as big, strong, tough, scary and culpable as any adult and should be treated as such."
Paul also asserted that "complex embezzling" is conducted exclusively by non-blacks.
"What else do we need to know about the political establishment than that it refuses to discuss the crimes that terrify Americans on grounds that doing so is racist? Why isn't that true of complex embezzling, which is 100 percent white and Asian?" he wrote."
Ron Paul has since claimed that although these comments were in his newsletter, under his name, he didn't write them. Is he telling the truth? Who knows? Either way, those comments don't say much for Paul.
#5) A lot of Ron Paul's supporters are incredibly irritating: There are, without question, plenty of decent folks who support Ron Paul. However, for whatever reason, his supporters as a group are far more annoying than those of all the other candidates put together. It's like every spammer, truther, troll, and flake on the net got together under one banner to spam polls and try to annoy everyone into voting for Ron Paul (which is, I must admit, a novel strategy).
#6) Ron Paul is an isolationist: The last time the United States retreated to isolationism was after WW1 and the result was WW2. Since then, the world has become even more interconnected which makes Ron Paul's strategy of retreating behind the walls of Fortress America even more unworkable than it was back in the thirties.
#7) Ron Paul wants to immediately cut and run in Iraq: Even if you're an isolationist like Ron Paul, the reality is that our foreign policy isn't currently one of isolationism and certain allowances should be made to deal with that reality. Yet, Paul believes we should immediately retreat from Al-Qaeda in Iraq and let that entire nation collapse into genocide and civil war as a result. Maybe, just maybe, Paul's motives are better than those of liberals like Murtha and Kerry, who want to see us lose a war for political gain, but the catastrophic results would be exactly the same.
#8) Ron Paul excused Al-Qaeda's attacks on America: In the single most repulsive moment of the entire Presidential race so far, Ron Paul excused Al-Qaeda's attack on American with this comment about 9/11,
"They attack us because we've been over there. We've been bombing Iraq for 10 years." In other words, America deserved to be attacked by Al-Qaeda.
This is the sort of facile comment you'd expect to hear from an America-hating left winger like Michael Moore or Noam Chomsky, not from a Republican running for President -- or from any Republican in office for that matter. If you want to truly realize how foolish that sort of thinking is, imagine what the reaction would be if we had bombed Egyptian or Indonesian civilians after 9/11 and then justified it by saying "We attacked them because those Muslims have been over here."
#9) Ron Paul is the single, least electable major candidate running for the presidency in either party: Libertarianism simply is not considered to be a mainstream political philosophy in the United States by most Americans. That's why the Libertarian candidate in 2004, Michael Badnarik, only pulled .3% of the vote. Even more notably, Ron Paul only pulled .47% of the vote when he ran at the top of the Libertarian ticket in 1988. Granted, Paul would do considerably better than that if he ran at the top of the Republican Party ticket, but it's hard to imagine his winning more than, say 35%, of the national vote and a state or two -- even if he were very lucky. In other words, having Ron Paul as the GOP nominee would absolutely guarantee the Democratic nominee a Reaganesque sweep in the election.
Summary: Is Ron Paul serious about small government, enforcing the Constitution, and enforcing the borders? Yes, and those are all admirable qualities. However, he also has a host of enormous flaws that makes him unqualified to be President and undesirable, even as a Republican Congressmen.
Mr. Hawkins is a professional blogger who runs Conservative Grapevine and Right Wing News. He also writes a weekly column for Townhall.com and consults for the Duncan Hunter campaign.
Copyright © 2006 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
Every time a thread is posted about it here, no one seems to be able to say why it isn’t true versus tinfoil hat references.
I like to know why.
Is Bush a conservative?
yes
Occasionally. On national defense ... certainly. Taxes ... usually. Immigration ... not so much.
A
“A lot of Ron Paul’s supporters are incredibly irritating
I think that comes from the fact that his supporters, or people who just stick up for the guy, are incredibly tired of the Republicans and the Democrats being the same party. In other words, they are pissed from the get go.”
That, and they are generally insane, and crazy people are bothersome.
The two computer geeks who are his silly poll-spamming Internet campaign should be along ANY MINUTE NOW.
Then again - George Bush isn’t really running for office anymore ... so the question is pretty irrelevant at this point.
A
The only thing in this article I agree with.
John Hawkins runs Right Wing News (www.rightwingnews.com) and Conservative Grapevine (www.conservativegrapevine.com) and writes a weekly column for Townhall.
He’s the blogosphere’s premier interviewer and has interviewed big name conservatives like Jed Babbin, Michael Barone, Sam Brownback, Mona Charen, Linda Chavez, Bob Corker, Ann Coulter, Tom DeLay, Larry Elder, Milton Friedman, David Frum, Newt Gingrich, Bernard Goldberg, David Horowitz, Mike Huckabee, Duncan Hunter, G. Gordon Liddy, David Limbaugh, Dick Morris, Richard Perle, Mark Steyn, Thomas Sowell, Tom Tancredo, Tim Walberg, and Walter Williams.
Mr. Hawkins’ work has been linked and discussed in numerous publications and on TV and radio shows including ABC News, BusinessWeek, C-Span, The Chicago Tribune, CNN, Editor & Publisher, Fox News, Hannity and Colmes, The Laura Ingraham Show, Minneapolis Star Tribune, MSNBC, National Journal, National Post, Newsmax, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Rush Limbaugh Show, The Tammy Bruce Show, Time Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The Hugh Hewitt Show, The Washington Post, Salt Lake Tribune, Scarborough Country, U.S. News & World Report, WorldNetDaily, and Human Events, where he had a weekly column. Right Wing News has been studied by college classes and inspired an urban legend that was covered at Snopes (http://www.snopes.com/politics/satire/withdrawal.asp).
John Hawkins also founded and led the Rightroots group, a grassroots effort that collected almost $300,000 for Republican candidates in the last 3 months of the 2006 election cycle.
“I worry about the “North American Union” conspiracy about as much as most of us at Free Republic worry about global warming.”
You are obviously a Freemason Jooo/Diest who rides a black helicopter to work and wants to sell American interests out to the the tripartite banking conspiracy of Israel.
/sorry, channeling Ron Paul/
Besides that, he’s a Clown. Quit wasting debate time Ron and go be the goofball for the Liberetardian Party.
Pray for W and Our Troops
Who is this guy?
I wasn't thrilled by Ron Paul anyway but, Has John Hawkins been asleep? The President is, at this moment, trying to make this happen by erasing the boarder with Mexico and granting citizenship to Mexico's citizens who are here ILLEGALLY.
Let me see if I got this right, The Kennedy assassination conspiracy is a conspiracy because there is no supporting evidence but North American Union formation is occurring before our eye in real time and it is a conspiracy theory?
I will ignore this person's opinions in the future.
At one time the saying was the lesser of too evils. now it's he's not all that bad.
ROFLOL
I’m not impressed.
Perhaps he should interview Dr. Paul?
For your ping list? It’s an anti-Ron Paul blog entry, but it’s fairly inaccurate.
The point is saying someone is or isn’t a conservative is an opinion based on your own priorities regarding foreign policy, limited government, cultural issues, etc. My personal priorities are limited government and fiscal responsibility. At any rate, the original post is nothing but misleading spin. If Paul truly is such a poor candidate, why do his detractors feel forced to resort to such tactics?
1)Saying a libertarian is worse than a moderate is very telling of where the Republican Party has been headed in the last few years. That's the fault of the party, not Ron Paul.
2)The NAU conspiracy may or may not the boogie man some are making it out to be. But there is some semblence of cooperation and unity going on that should be at least a little unnerving to American citizens.
3)Truther conspiracy nuts may be nuts but that doesn't mean all that they say is false. One world government claims come to mind. These people were dismissed as complete kooks 20 years ago. Would be hard to argue today that they were completely off base in their suspicions.
4)I can't speak to his racial views but I doubt that he is an out-and-out racist. Seriously, it would have been discovered by now and he wouldn't be in elected office.
5) What do Paul's supporters have to do with him as a candidate? A classy team with bad fans is still a classy team.
6) Isolationism may be impossible in today's world, but stepping back in that general direction would probably not be a bad idea. The more we meddle in international affairs, the murkier the waters become.
7)Cut and Run is probably not a good strategy, but then neither is our current one. Iraq is a real problem with no easy answer(s).
8) I refuse to believe that Ron Paul thinks the USA "deserved" 9-11. I am sure that he did utter the words quoted, but they had to be in a different context than they were presented in the article.
9) Paul is only the least electable candidate if we deem him as such. We really need to stop handicapping candidates chances at this juncture in Presidential races. We're only hurting our nation by doing it.
it's not a conspiracy, they're doing in right in front of our face.
Blind loyalty won’t get you very far.
“Libertarianism simply is not considered to be a mainstream political philosophy in the United States.”
Which is why this country is in such deep shit!
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