Andrew Sullivan endorses Ron Paul.
If you are an Independent and can vote in a GOP primary, vote Paul. If you are a Republican concerned about the degeneracy of the GOP, vote Paul. If you are a citizen who wants more decency and honesty in our politics, vote Paul. If you want someone in the White House who has spent decades in Washington and never been corrupted, vote Paul.
Just returning the favor, Andrew.
See David Frum for the best response.
Paul has had an outsize appeal to writers and intellectuals dissatisfied with the present state of Republicanism.
Some see him as a corrective to militaristic nationalism. Or as a principled champion of limited government. Or as a leader who can curb the excessive influence of social conservatives.
Those perceptions are not very realistic, but leave that pass for now. More to the point–even if true, which they are not, these are not the correctives present-day Republicanism most needs. The thing most wrong with present-day Republicanism is its passivity in the face of the economic crisis, its indifference to the economic troubles of the huge majority of the American population, and its blithe insistence that everything was fine for the typical American worker up until Inauguration Day 2009 or (at the outer bound of the thinkable) the financial crisis of the fall 2008.
Really, go read David Frum’s entire post for the rest. He nails it.
OMG, did David Frum of all people point out why Ron Paul shouldn’t never get beyond a Congress Seat? Wow, am I agreeing with David Frum?! The world is coming to an end….
….or, like sensible people on either side of the political spectrum, David Frum is calling out the obvious, Ron Paul’s views (and those of his Tea Party pandering son) are almost evangelical embrace of arcane, covertly racist and simply wrong headed ideas that stem from being Objectivism. Ron Paul is the Dennis Kuicinich of the Republican Party, a ridiculous purity candidate who’s allow to spew his crank nonsense on the House Floor because many Americans who support him don’t follow his logic to its disastrous conclusion and being unopposed in his district.
“…Ron Paul’s views (and those of his Tea Party pandering son) are almost evangelical embrace of arcane, covertly racist and simply wrong headed ideas …”
It’s worse than that for Paul. He has a reputation for overt racism that has not been adequately disseminated.
Texas newspapers began exposing Ron Paul’s shocking and overt racism back in the 90s. Moreover, Jamie Kirchick published an in-depth exploration of Ron Paul’s racist writings in The New Republic a few years ago. Today, Jonathan Chait posted a blog entry that expressed dismay with his lefty peers who express approbation for Paul while failing to point out his lengthy and disgraceful written record of racist bile.
Wow, David Frum hits another one out of the park and Andrew Sullivan has found a new way to talk out of his ass. Libertarianism is to me a weigh station for sociopaths and pot heads – Ron Paul only makes sense if you have a myopic and mean view of the world and you can read “Atlas Shrugged” and not go WTF…
Sullivan said:
“This kind of rigidity has its flaws…”
Ya THINK?
And when I start to like Andy, he does this to me
You disappoint me, Sullivan
Ron Paul has one or two good ideas, but when you delve more into it, it like music that sounds good from a distance, but gets real annoying and shitty the closer you get to it
Also, this hurts republicans more then anything, FOX is trying to take him down now
He’s done that to me a few times too.
Sullivan is a lot of things — but to me he is always, first and foremost and forever, the guy who proudly published “The Bell Curve.” So I’m incapable of being disappointed by him, because he starts the bidding in Credibility Poker with “lying racist scumwad.”
It’s a bit like that scene with Bogey and Peter Lorre in “Casablanca” — “You despise me, don’t you?” “I would if I thought about you.”
OK, so Sully is still off his nut. Good to know.
have you noticed how easy it is for white intellectuals to dismiss people of color by endorsing a notorious bigot like Ron Paul?
Us: “Ron Paul is a racist who feels ending slavery violated the property rights of slaveowners and wants to restore states’ rights, eliminate the Department of Education, abolish the government safety net and gut federal regulations so corporations can run roughshod over the consumer by ‘letting the free market decide’ who deserves medical care!”
WI: “Well, yeah, but he won’t send our kids to war and he’ll let us smoke weed!”
And did I mention he still has an onion on his belt? (Blows kisses at ABL)
That’s what’s so freakin’ infuriating with the admiration people on the left bestow on this guy. In my opinion, his neo-Confederate positions and his written record of racist ravings automatically disqualify him from serious consideration about public policy in any context, full stop. Seriously, if everybody outside the Paul-ite/TeaParty base got a look at the stuff that was published for over a decade under his name, they would conclude that this guy has NO BUSINESS in national politics.
it was the style at the time.
Us: If you got sick and couldnt afford it, he’d let you die in the name of “liberty”
Dumb asses: But I still get to smoke weed and shoot heroin, right?
I’ve been surprised by Frum since he left the Heritage Foundation. While I do disagree with him on many things, at the least he’s trying to stem the tide of idiocy that currently taking down the Republican Party. He’s pointing out something that’s important: The debate should be on solutions to the problems, and not having to fight to get them to acknowledge that the problem exists. Unfortunately, I think he’s fighting a losing battle.
It is sad that smart conservatives are either running away from this clusterfuck of a party or sitting on the sidelines like ineffectual Cassandras, issuing warnings.