Ron Paul's Former Aide Announces Intent To Challenge Him In Next Election

...on Red State.

I have spent the early morning scanning the major political blogs, and news sites. It's unanimous. Ron Paul got slammed by Rudy Giuliani last night for suggesting that we - the United States of America - are to blame for the attacks on 9/11. He even had the audacity to cite Osama bin Laden.

While everyone is hailing this as a "Great moment" for Rudy Giuliani, I think just as importantly, it was a horrible moment for Ron Paul. My former boss looked like a complete nutcase. He looked frail. His hands shaked. He showed his age. He was completely unprepared for Giuliani's romping response.

He's calling on three or four other Republicans to challenge Paul but, in absence of such a challenge, he'll run.

Ron Paul's Biggest Fans: ...seem to be our own rho, Andrew Sullivan (who writes that only two candidates are acceptable to him, McCain and Ron Paul, and then (scroll up) dedicates his entire day to defending/boosting Paul), and of course the very-reasonable, very-conservative "Alternate News Sources:"

Fox News Rigs Entire Debate To Savagely Attack Ron Paul

Posted on May 16th, 2007 (3 hours ago) by blogger

Texas Congressman targeted by Giuliani, Hannity & Colmes as pre-screened audience applause torture and warmongering, Fox limits post-election polls to three hours and no Internet voting yet Paul still successful.

In a sickening display of cronyism and as a consequence of the sheer terror elicited amongst the establishment after his previous success, Fox News rigged last night’s entire presidential debate in a crass effort to smear Ron Paul - yet the Texas Congressman still beat Rudy Giuliani in Fox’s own poll.

If you thought the MSNBC debate was somewhat unfair towards Ron Paul, then this was an absolute debacle.

The audience for the debate was clearly pre-screened and pre-selected to include only mainly geriatric 75 year old plus Fox News viewers who are scared of their own shadow. How else can the bizarre applause for warmongering and torture, which polls show are both clearly opposed by the majority of American people, be explained?

...

Are these audience members robots or did Fox News dub the audio to include the applause?

Giuliani clearly endorses torture and the mindless drones in attendance rapaciously lap it up!

Ron Paul seems to excite the excitable. Count the exclamation points in that bit -- must have been a fire sale on 'em.

More Debate Round-Up: From Hugh Hewitt and Dean Barnett.

Hewitt criticizes the Fox panel for not allow the candidates to debate Ron Paul's absurd claims about the motivations of Al Qaeda. I'm of two minds on that. The FoxNews team did a good job of pushing hard questions on the candidates and provoking them to separate from each other on the issues, not merely pledge devotion to the spirit of Ronald Regan. (Chris Matthews and the Politico's guy couldn't do this, as they are so dyed-in-the-wool liberal they have no idea what to ask a conservative, the same way they have no idea of what would be an intelligent question to ask of a monitor lizard.) If the Fox team had permitted that particular debate to go on, the responses from nine of the candidates would have been predictable and similar (and correct, of course, but nine guys merely stating the obvious in different ways doesn't really allow voters to differentiate between them).

On the other hand, some times the obvious needs to be said, and small differences to make an, um, difference. Plus it really wasn't entirely fair to let Rudy Giuliani, and only Rudy Giuliani, take a big swing as this high hanging curveball that never curved.

Then again, the candidates were more than willing to avoid the questions posed to them and answer questions they wished they'd been asked, or revisit questions posed to someone else that they'd like a crack at. So everyone on stage could have, if they wished, taken the time to ask Ron Paul if he believed the bombing of Iraq was the cause of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, or if the Khobar Towers bombing, etc.

On the third Beebroxian hand, allowing that to go on would have elevated the crank crackpot simpleton Ron Paul more, and given him additional time to expound on the philosophies of 40s and 50s legislator Robert Taft, and basically diverted the debate away from those who deserve to be on stage and are qualified to be President to a doctrinaire fool who doesn't and isn't.

Subcontracting Our Foreign Policy To Al Qaeda: In a long, thoughtful, well-cited rebuttal, Allah notes that Ron Paul's foreign policy basically boils down to submitting our goals to an Al Qaeda review board and acceding to their veto.

Which is strange in and of itself-- after all, Ron Paul insists, along with every other left-wing ninny, that Osama bin Ladin wants us in Iraq. If Al Qaeda wants us in Iraq, why are they always propagandizing for us to depart? Shouldn't they be trying to keep us there, since they want us there and all?

And also, if our foreign policy is, as Ron Paul asserts, exactly what al Qaeda wants, what sense does it make to, as he suggests, craft a foreign policy more amenable to Al Qaeda, less likely to anger them?

His fundamental starting premise is that we already have just about the optimum foreign policy from Al Qaeda's perspective; what additional measures is he thinking of when he calls for us to try to please Al Qaeda more in our foreign policy decisionmaking?

posted by Ace at 02:18 PM

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