Ron Paul

Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) has come out of nowhere to be one of the most buzzed about primary candidates of the moment. His breakout moment was in the second GOP debate when he upset Guiliani by acknowleding the effects our foreign policy may have had in causing 9/11.

But Paul Mania has become so ubiquitous in the blogosphere (which, ultimately, doesn't exactly decide elections, but is still influential)... his small, but intensely loyal, group of followers seem to be in every comment thread on blogs and YouTube. I've even seen some naive liberals saying "Hey, this Ron Paul's a great guy!" I guess the primary season needed a Ralph Nader.

But they're just latching on to a few good positions and not seeing the real ideology underneath. Not everyone comes to a position from the same direction.

Yes, everyone likes that he didn't support the stupid war in Iraq and that he supports civil liberties. But why is this considered a big deal? Has American politics really devolved so low that this makes someone a big deal? Wait, I think I know the answer to that one.

But Ron Paul is not exactly a Texan Dennis Kucinich; quite the opposite.

Ron Paul is a classic far-right, anti-government isolationist... picture Pat Buchanan without the shame. His lack of support for the war wasn't based on concerns of morality, national security, etc. It was because he doesn't think the United States should be involved with foreign affairs at all, or hell, even deal with other countries. He supports civil liberties, yes, but only because he sees the concept of government as inherently bad.

Ron Paul has stated that he would abolish basically every federal agency... the IRS, Department of Education, Social Security, Environmental Protection Agency, FEMA, etc. Is this really what people want? For example, remember how many people died in the Gulf Coast because FEMA was run by George Bush's cronies? Now imagine what it would've been like with no FEMA at all and no federal rescue agencies. Remember how insane the concept of George Bush's Social Security privatization plan was? Now imagine no Social Security at all. Etc.

Welcome to Ron Paul's America.

And most people all agree that Rep. Tom Tancredo is a bigot and a loser, and then many of these same people praise Paul. Ask yourself why Ron Paul is the candidate of choice for David Duke (see here and here) and I think you will see that the real Ron Paul is not the one who is marketing himself to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

There's a lot of crazy folks running on the GOP side. Ron Paul's just the most interesting.