Summary (posts follow):
Libertarian congressman from Texas. I mostly support the parts of his ideology that involve sovereignty and opposing the corrupt establishment; mostly oppose his domestic agenda regarding things such as social welfare spending; and mostly don't take a position on his foreign policy. I'm willing to defend him against those who are even worse, such as Reason Magazine, James Kirchick, Dave Weigel, and a long list of other establishment and/or Koch family-linked hacks. Support him or not, Paul is a lightning rod for establishment hacks, and defending him against their lies, misleading statements, and smears can be an effective way to oppose the corrupt establishment. One certainly interesting thing about Paul is that he isn't willing to go after the establishment on immigration, the area where they're the weakest. He apparently believes in the libertarian fantasy of loose or open borders, even if he's been willing to make pro-borders noises.
And, I have no time for his glassy-eyed followers, most of whom put other cultists to shame and who have no idea about how to do things that are effective.
Last modified Feb 25, 2010
... CNN
PARTICIPANTS: Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, and Rick Santorum.
MODERATOR: Wolf Blitzer
TRANSCRIPT: When available.
WHAT TO WATCH FOR: For a preview of this debate, see debates. As with all the rest, this debate will feature weak, superficial questions and few follow-ups. Any immigration ideas the candidates present will be flawed, and the moderators won't press them on their actual...
... Tampa
PARTICIPANTS: Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, and Rick Santorum.
TRANSCRIPT: When available.
WHAT TO WATCH FOR: For a preview of this debate, see debates. As with all the rest, this debate will feature weak, superficial questions and few follow-ups. Any immigration ideas the candidates present will be flawed, and the moderators won't press them on their actual policies but instead...
... four: Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, and Rick Santorum. Rick Perry dropped out earlier today.
TRANSCRIPT: When available.
WHAT TO WATCH FOR: For a preview of this debate, see debates. As with all the rest, this debate will feature weak, superficial questions and few follow-ups. Any immigration ideas the candidates present will be flawed, and the moderators won't press them on their actual...
... Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, Ron Paul, and Rick Santorum. Jon Huntsman dropped out earlier today.
TRANSCRIPT: When available.
WHAT TO WATCH FOR: For a preview of this debate, see debates. As with all the rest, this debate will feature weak, superficial questions and few follow-ups. Any immigration ideas the candidates present will be flawed, and the moderators won't press them on their...
... Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, and Jon Huntsman.
TRANSCRIPT: When available.
WHAT TO WATCH FOR: For a preview of this debate, see debates and Facebook. As with all the rest, this debate will feature weak, superficial questions and few follow-ups. Any immigration ideas the candidates present will be flawed, and the moderators won't press them on their actual policies...
... Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, and Jon Huntsman. Michelle Bachmann won't be attending as she recently dropped out of the race.
TRANSCRIPT: When available.
WHAT TO WATCH FOR: For a preview of this debate, see debates, Diane Sawyer, and George Stephanopoulos. As with all the rest, this debate will feature weak, superficial questions and few follow-ups. Any immigration...
... appears to have been made by a Ron Paul supporter. Entitled "Jon Huntsman's Values" and in the Youtube account NHLiberty4Paul, it has the subtitle "The Mancurian Candidate: What's He Hiding", asks if he has "American Values: Or Chinese?", features him speaking Mandarin, has photos of him with his adopted Chinese and Indian daughters, and has a drawing of him dressed as Chairman Mao.
Now, if you'...
... Rick Perry, Michelle Bachmann, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, and Jon Huntsman.
TRANSCRIPT: When available.
WHAT TO WATCH FOR: As with all the rest, this debate will feature weak, superficial questions and few follow-ups. Any immigration ideas they present will be flawed just like at the debate five days ago. None of the moderators will ask as many trivial gotcha as others, but they won't "cross-...
... Rick Perry, Michelle Bachmann, Ron Paul, and Rick Santorum.
NON-PARTICIPANTS: Jon Huntsman didn't meet the minimum qualifications. Herman Cain recently "suspended" his campaign.
TRANSCRIPT: When available.
WHAT TO WATCH FOR: Stephanopoulos will, of course, attack the candidates in scurrilous ways. The candidates won't be able to do much about it and won't engage him in debate with the goal of...
... quiz them. Instead - aside from Ron Paul - those on stage will fundamentally agree with both Heritage and AEI, and the supposed debate will be little more than an echo chamber. Expect Paul's concerns - some of which might be valid - to be marginalized by all others present.
Feel free to leave comments below before, during or after the debate. This post will be updated after a transcript becomes...
... Michelle Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Jon Huntsman, and Rick Santorum.
Suggested reading: the links in the list of candidates above, debates, and most importantly of all the alternative to bogus political debates. That plan would ensure that the presidential candidates promote vetted policies with only known side-effects. All the debates so far simply allow candidates to give their stock...
... Michelle Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Jon Huntsman, and Rick Santorum.
Suggested reading: the links in the list of candidates above, debates, and most importantly of all the alternative to bogus political debates. That plan would ensure that the presidential candidates promote vetted policies with only known side-effects. All the debates so far simply allow candidates to give their stock...
... Michelle Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, and Rick Santorum. Jon Huntsman won't be attending out of protest against Nevada moving up the date of their caucus.
This debate will be even more bogus than others, because the host will be Anderson Cooper. The debate will feature regular citizens asking questions. Some of those selected might not just be uninvolved voters, and all the questions they...
... Huntsman, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, and Rick Santorum. Questions will be asked by Karen Tumulty, Charlie Rose, and Julianna Goldman.
Suggested reading: debates for past examples of bogus debates and each of the names in the last paragraph except for the last two.
UPDATE: A transcript is here. The debate was just about economics. There's no mention of immigration, which is a...
... Huntsman, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, and Gary Johnson. Note that the last two major debates didn't include Johnson.
Suggested reading: debates for past examples of bogus debates; popular voting systems for an explanation of the flawed system Youtube uses to choose the questions that are asked; Youtube corporate and Google corporate for past bogus debates they've been...
... for Liberty is affiliated with Ron Paul
* Tony DeMott, Michigan State Coordinator
Campaign for Liberty
* Downsize DC
Jim Babka, President
* Rutherford Institute
John Whitehead, President
* Floridians Against REAL ID
Paul Henry, Executive Director
* Secure Arkansas
Jeannie Burlsworth, Chairwoman
* November Patriots
Richard D. Fry, Founder
* Taxpayers Protection Alliance
David Williams, President...
... hypothetical posed by Wolf Blitzer to Ron Paul about a previously-healthy 30-year-old who had decided not to buy health insurance. The 30-year-old fell ill and required long-term care. Paul's first answer was that he should have bought insurance, and when pressed he suggested pawning off the problem on churches.
Obviously, not even the Catholic Church is wealthy enough to deal with all the...
... Huntsman, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, and Rick Santorum.
Suggested reading: Tea Party Patriots admit immigration "isn't an issue for us", all the dozens of other posts showing why the tea parties are a pernicious group, the links in the list of candidates above, CNN, Wolf Blitzer, debates, and some questions in my Twitter feed: @24AheadDotCom. There's no chance at all that CNN is going...
... immigration question (no surprise), and Ron Paul answered in a way that was even more confused than usual. I'm not even going to bother discussing Paul's comments since it doesn't really matter.
What does matter is a source that presents themselves as the home of real journalism asking a question like this (transcript link):
And so, Dr. Paul, to you on this one, the question comes up, though,...
... Michelle Bachmann
* Rick Santorum
* Ron Paul
The debate is sponsored by CNN, WMUR, and the New Hampshire Union Leader, with John King as the moderator. Note that Gary Johnson was not invited to the debate because he wasn't considered a viable candidate.
See the CNN and King links and the posts on the debates page for coverage of past debates. It would literally be insane to think that this...
Ron Paul's latest book ("Liberty Defined") shows that his position on immigration is not only bad, but in the book he uses some of the same old immigration talking points as other Beltway hacks. People don't use canards like jobs Americans wont do naturally; either Paul has been compromised, or he's corrupt (selling out his principles for political gain), or someone else wrote the immigration...
... issue.
The SPLC lists Glenn Beck, Ron Paul, and Andrew Napolitano as other enablers and has many others on their list; discussing the credibility of those entries is left as an exercise.
Yesterday, Rep. Ron Paul quizzed Ben Bernanke of the Federal Reserve about that group's involvement in relation to Watergate and to the funding of Saddam Hussein of Iraq (video: peekURL.com/vqxfnme ). Bernanke called that questioning "absolutely bizarre", and several sources (some listed below) joined in.
As it turns out, the Fed in fact did have some sort of involvement with both Watergate and...
... 2009" (link).
1. His #1 choice is Ron Paul, about which Weigle says "at the close of 2009, Paul seems less like an outsider and more like a pioneer... [h]is rhetoric and some of his imagery (like Revolutionary War re-enactment) have been copied wholesale by the Tea Party movement". That fails to note that Paul's post-campaign organization is involved with tea party organizing and that many "...
... apparently libertarians who support Ron Paul. I only watched the first part of the videos above, but based on that and the story above, I'm going to guess that Graham completely "p0wned" those in attendance. Instead of asking him questions designed to make him look bad, they just ranted, chanted, and in general threw a rolling tantrum. In other words, they were not effective. They just acted out...
... things, they've got speakers from Ron Paul's "Campaign for Liberty", the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, and the Free State Project. They've also got speakers from two race-based groups: Mario Lopez of the Hispanic Leadership Fund and Hector Barreto of the Latino Coalition. The latter was a signatory to an infamous letter demanding amnesty for illegal aliens. That and all the rest...
... supporters of presidential candidates Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin, and Bob Barr as "militia" influenced terrorists and instructs the Missouri police to be on the lookout for supporters displaying bumper stickers and other paraphernalia associated with the Constitutional, Campaign for Liberty, and Libertarian parties...
Now it appears that at least part of the document was based on material from the...
... incoherence and insular nature of Ron Paul supporters, but this says:
Here is a video where the newly elected Chairman of the St. Charles Missouri Republican Central Committee, Tom Kuypers, claims credit for preventing properly elected delegates from being seated. It was recorded a couple of weeks before the November election...
...No delegates from St.
... leave a grass-roots group of Ron Paul supporters in Brazos County, Texas, group leader Dustan Costine said. He said Ms.
Yesterday I posted to FreeRepublic exhorting people to visit Time's Swampland and discredit house hacks Joe Klein, Karen Tumulty, and Ana Marie Cox, saying in part (link):
...almost all of the posts read like something from DailyKos, and almost all of the comments do as well...
... appeared with Papa Bear, aka Ron Paul, to sign on to four principles uniting all their disparate movements and to urge others to support third party candidates instead of the Democrats or Republicans. They also announced that all of them are going to be touring the U.S.
... Iraq Veterans Against the War, a Ron Paul supporter, and a future Bob Barr voter. Kokesh held up a sign (per this interview with him) reading "McCain Votes Against Vets" and yelled "Ask him why he votes against vets!"
That's a good question: why didn't Kokesh ask McCain a specific question along those lines at a designated Q&A session, get it on video, and then upload it to Youtube?
The...
... some very important tips for Ron Paul supporters who are going to "Ronstock '08" in Minneapolis, aka the Rally for the Republic. That's the competing event to the Republican National Convention (held in St.
Ron Paul has suspended his presidential campaign and will be transferring $4.7 million in donations to a new group to be called "The Campaign for Liberty".
Showing intense, heroic bravery, Libertarian Party candidate Bob Barr has denounced two white nationalists who endorsed him, including one who is just a commenter on a message board (reason.com/blog/show/126790.html). Barr's campaign manager says:
The Barr campaign is not going to be a vehicle for every fringe and hate group to promote itself. We do not want and will not accept the support of...
Buddy Witherspoon is a dentist from Columbia, South Carolina who's challenging Senator Lindsay Graham, and he's apparently basing his campaign around opposition to illegal immigration and also opposition to the North American Union.
Rather than asking for evidence of plans for a NAU and doing research, Beth Brotherton from WYFF News 4 turned to Graham:
"I think most Americans would find it...
The results 0.2% of the country have been waiting for are finally in: Bob Barr has been nominated as the Libertarian Party's presidential candidate. It's unfortunate that the loons at the LP couldn't have nominated someone entertaining.
Now that it's apparently official, this means that Bob Barr can finally get a sane immigration position that would be different from John McCain's.
... purported ghostwriter of some of the Ron Paul newsletters - supposedly spoke about his views on immigration on a radio program of some kind: bkmarcus.com/blog/2006/01/lew-rockwell-on-immigration.html I'm going to assume that the transcript is accurate and that those reflect his current views on the matter, but he might have other views or he might have changed his mind since then. In any case:
1.
... with modified positions such as Ron Paul have a definite ceiling of support. Most Americans want the welfare state to be tweaked, they don't want it abolished. And, very few Americans would be comfortable with the level of immigration that most libertarians support, with some of those even supporting open borders. Which brings us to this:
Grant amnesty -- er, citizenship -- to illegal immigrants...
The Ron Paul, Mike Huckabee, and John McCain campaigns were apparently in on a deal that caused Huckabee to win West Virginia's delegates.