Indiana Political Review

Comment from Karl
Time: 25 July 2007, 11:28 pm

Oooh. The comments are a love-fest for Ron Paul. Except Ron Paul is a nutter. Apparently, 9/11 was our own damn fault and the blame can be placed squarely on the United States of America. American foreign policy brought on the attack on 9/11, according to Paul, to which I say: B.S.

As to the the actual column about which everyone was putatively commenting (although, I think the comments had more to do with the initial comment than the column), it seems to me that Pat did well in Iowa when he sought the Republican nomination and I know he did well in South Carolina, and yet, he didn\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\’t win the nomination. How can the Iowa caucus be that important if those who do well there fail to win the nomination? It seems to me that Guiliani and McCain may be playing this right. (God forbid.)

The first real test is South Carolina, and even then, the winner of South Carolina is not guaranteed the nomination.

Comment from Birdy
Time: 26 July 2007, 1:28 pm

Two problems with your analysis, in reverse order:
Buchanan scared the crap out of the establishment after his early victories in Louisiana, New Hampshire, etc. That’s when the neocon and mainstream media began the “anti-Semite” assault in earnest. Only then did the smear campaign really kick in, and only then did the tide turn against him. Nobody likes to be associated with a “racist,” a “kook,” a “fringe fanatic.” Also, Buchanan received a fair amount of campaign money from textile manufacturing initially due to his strong rhetoric condemning unfair trade. The corporate welfare mothers (the same ones financing GWB) who depend on both cheap illegal immigrant labor and American consumerism for their existence began to shove money into media markets in the form of increased campaign contributions for Buchanan’s opponents and in the form of anti-Buchanan adverts and stoking the “whisper campaign” keeping the negatives alleged against him in the press of the so-called right.

Second, Paul is no more a kook than you are. This defamatory language against a remarkably cogent and consistent constitutionalist of paleolibertarian bent is precisely the kind of calumny which sunk Buchanan. You ought to realize this. As to the specific you attempt to use to “prove” Dr. Paul’s “kookiness,” you haven’t been paying attention. For one thing, nothing Paul has ever said denies the primary culpability of the terrorists who launched the attacks of 9-11-01. What he has said, and consistently, is that the interventionist foreign policy which the neoconservative intrusion into the right has introduced into American politics ever since they left the left has been a primary motivating factor. If I walk across the street and start boosting your power to supplement my electricity needs, in the process spend lots of my money on your next door neighbor whom you can’t stand ever since he moved in last year, which allows him to buy a really loud stereo system he blasts all night and a wrist rocket with which he zaps you and your kids, and concrete barriers so you can’t leave your driveway to get to work, and you then chuck a Molotov cocktail across the street at me….

You get my point.