CAN RON PAUL WIN THE REPUBLICAN NOMINATION... FOR HIS CONGRESSIONAL SEAT?

One of the takeaways from the Republican "debate" in South Carolina and its aftermath is that Establishment Republicans don't consider Ron Paul or his ideas any more "Republican" than they do Ru Paul and his ideas. And that doesn't come as any surprise to Dr. Paul, more a Libertarian (on whose ticket he ran for president in 1988) than what the GOP has morphed into in recent decades.

When he gently questioned Bush Regime dogma about the origins of 9/11, the entire GOP Power Elite, led by Rudy McRomney, went ape-shit. A libertarian blogger explains what happened (in case you were on Mars):

Fox New’s Wendell Goler addressed Paul and asked, “I believe you are the only man on the stage who opposes the war in Iraq, who would bring the troops home as quickly as-- almost immediately, sir. Are you out of step with your Party? Is your Party out of step with the rest of the world? If either of those is the case, why are you seeking its nomination?”

Ron Paul articulated, “Well, I think the Party has lost its way, because the conservative wing of the Republican Party always advocated a non-interventionist foreign policy. Senator Robert Taft didn’t even want to be in NATO. George Bush won the election in the year 2000 campaigning on a humble foreign policy-- no nation-building, no policing of the world. Republicans were elected to end the Korean War. The Republicans were elected to end the Vietnam War. There’s a strong tradition of being anti-war in the Republican Party. It is the Constitutional position. It is the advice of the Founders to follow a non-interventionist foreign policy, stay out of entangling alliances, be friends with countries, negotiate and talk with them and trade with them…. [T]here’s a lot of merit to the advice of the Founders and following the Constitution. And my argument is that we shouldn’t go to war so carelessly.”

Goler followed up with, “Congressman, you don’t think that changed with the 9/11 attacks, sir?”

His response: our foreign policy was a “major contributing factor. Have you ever read the reasons they attacked us? They attack us because we’ve been over there; we’ve been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We’ve been in the Middle East-- I think Reagan was right. We don’t understand the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics. So right now we’re building an embassy in Iraq that’s bigger than the Vatican. We’ve building 14 permanent bases. What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? We would be objecting. We need to look at what we do from the perspective of what would happen if somebody else did it to us.”

Goler: “Are you suggested we invited the 9/11 attacks, sir?”

“I’m suggesting that we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it, and they are delighted that we’re over there because Osama bin Laden has said, ‘I am glad you’re over on our sand because we can target you so much easier.’ They have already now since that time have killed 3,400 of our men, and I don’t think it was necessary.”

That was when Rudy Giuliani blew his top-- giving this writer the best reason I’ve seen not to vote for him and to urge others not to support him.

The Bush Wing of the Republican Party-- which accounts for roughly 99.99% of the GOP Establishment but a somewhat shriveling percentage of the grassroots these days-- started demanding Rep. Paul not be invited to future debates and even be written out of Die Partei.

We saw, dramatized on national television and in ensuing media discussion, the two worldviews that may battle it out over the next year or so for control of the Republican Party-- and possibly the country itself-- with ramifications well beyond Election 2008. The one Rudy Giuliani represents (which is that of the Bush clan, the neocons, and the corporatist elite generally): the U.S. is an empire obliged or destined to rule the world, capable of building “democracies” in the Middle East and perhaps elsewhere, relying on a value system based on money and power. Power does not necessarily corrupt. We peons should fall in line behind our leaders.

The second, which Ron Paul represents, sees the U.S. as a Constitutional republic with a limited government, believes that sound economics requires sound money (not our present fiat dollar), would distinguish genuine free enterprise from corporatism, and advocate a foreign policy of trade with all but entangling alliances with none-- i.e., a foreign policy rooted in respect for other nations’ sovereignty and their right to self-determination. Other nations’ internal affairs are not our business unless we are explicitly invited in.

This is not simply a clash between “left” and “right,” or between “liberal” and “conservative.” We may be approaching a major dust-up between those who want freedom and those who want power, between those who believe society must be aggressively centralized and those who wish to see power dispersed. We may see a struggle between those who want policies that allow the common man to live as he sees fit if he isn’t bothering anyone else, and a cadre of oligarchs who view the world as theirs, and who see themselves as unaccountable.

The Republican National Committee and its talk-show fellow travelers are all on the side of power. The latter immediately went into attack-dog mode. After the debate, Paul appeared on Fox News’ Hannity & Colmes show. Sean Hannity spluttered incoherently against Paul to the point where Paul had difficulty getting a word in edgewise; to his credit, he did not get flustered and refused to back down. He stood his ground the next day when Wolf Blitzer on CNN asked if he wanted to apologize for his statements. He retorted that Rudy Giuliani ought to apologize to him. He told Blitzer that Americans have the right to disagree with bad policy. Interventionism is bad foreign policy, he said, and ought to be challenged. Fox News anchor John Gibson tried to associate Paul with the 9/11 Truth movement by crediting Paul with saying “the U.S. actually had a hand in the terrorist attacks.” Paul, of course, had said nothing of the sort. Glenn Beck, yet another neocon talk-show host and Rush Limbaugh wannabe, has repeatedly smeared Paul on his show, calling him “crazy” after the first debate and a “dope” after this one.

Regular DWT readers are aware that we'd take Ru Paul over Ron Paul any day (although we all like Ron's openess to the idea of impeaching Bush).

I doubt the Republicans will officially excommunicate Paul and through him out of the party. They're certainly never giving him a committee chair and they're not going to discourage any wingnuts from running against him in a primary. In fact... have I mentioned the Mayor Pro-Tem of Friendswood, Texas, Chris Peden? He's running against Paul for the seat. So is an ex-aide of Paul's, ultra-loonitarian Eric Dondero (who has called his ex-boss a "complete nutcase" and his views on foreign policy "near treasonous").

Much of Texas' 14th CD was represented by Tom DeLay. It runs along of Gulf of Mexico from Corpus Christi to Galveston and includes many of Houston's southern and eastern suburbs as well as Victoria.
Like much of Texas, this is one of those areas LBJ warned us about when he signed the Civil Rights Act. It went from solidly Democrat to solidly Republican.

Ron Paul was first elected to Congress in 1976, serving 4 terms before running for Senate-- and being crushed by Phil Gramm in the GOP primary, 73-16% in 1984. (That's when DeLay, an exterminator, ran for the House seat.) In 1988 Paul ran for president as a Libertarian and ran for congress again in 1996 after Rep. Greg Laughlin, a moderate Democrat, switched parties after the GOP promised him a seat on the House Ways and Means Committee. Paul beat him in the primary and then eked out a narrow victory against a Democrat in the general. His percentage of victory has been steadily climbing since then and he was unopposed in 2004. Last year he was opposed by a young right-wing Democrat, Shane Sklar, who held him down to 60%.

You might want to watch this video. Paul tries taking the pathetically ignorant Giuliani to school and he also explains how deceptive and disingenuous the Republican Party is. He claims a pro-war Republican-- Rudy McRomney and the rest of the herd-- can't win the presidency.



Clearly, Paul isn't going to be the Republican presidential nominee. Will he back out of the race and go the 3rd party route again? Or, will he back out of that race soon enough to fend off Republicans on his right in what promises to be an extremely bruising primary, a primary that is bound to lead to a contentious battle with a Democrat riding a wave of anti-GOP sentiment?