Time to Leave Ron Paul And His Followers At the Kiddie Table …the Adults are Talking

Ron Paul, as you may know…particularly if you’ve been reading here, was on Meet the Press yesterday. Now I doubtless will be getting reaction from the Paulettes, as I do every freakin’ time I bring the subject up…. reaction not unlike the reaction Britney Spears and her problems initially brought up….

Part of the price of speaking the truth, I suppose.

In any event, here we go.

MR. RUSSERT: So if Iran invaded Israel, what do we do?

Well, first off, Russert seems a bit off his feed, here. The fear, here is that Iran will Nuke Israel, not invade it.

REP. PAUL: Well, they’re not going to.  That is like saying “Iran is about to invade Mars.” I mean, they have nothing.  They don’t have an army or navy or air force.  And Israelis have 300 nuclear weapons.  Nobody would touch them.

If I recall, correctly, BinLaden had an equal amount, and yet managed to do serious damage.

But, no, if, if it were in our national security interests and Congress says, “You know, this is very, very important, we have to declare war.” But presidents don’t have the authority to go to war.

Can it be that Ron Paul has never heard of the War powers act? How can someone so disconnected, ever think about running for President?

MR. RUSSERT: You…

REP. PAUL: You go to the Congress and find out if they want a war, do the people want the war.  But it’s totally unnecessary.  I mean, that, that, to me, is an impossible situation…

A short time ago, Ron Paul was making lots of noise about how GWB considered a 9/11 scenario, an ‘impossible situation’. Now, we see the blindness of Ron Paul.

MR. RUSSERT: If…

REP. PAUL: …for the Iranians to invade Israel.

MR. RUSSERT: This is what you said about Israel.  “Israel’s dependent on us, you know, for economic means.  We send them” “billions of dollars and they,” then they “depend on us.  They say, `Well, you know, we don’t like Iran.  You go fight our battles.  You bomb Iran for us.’ And they become dependent on us.”

Who in Israel is saying “Go bomb Iran for us”?

REP. PAUL: Well, I don’t know the individuals, but we know that their leaderships–you read it in the papers on a daily–a daily, you know, about Israel, the government of Israel encourages Americans to go into Iran, and the people–I don’t think that’s a–I don’t think that’s top secret that the government of Israel…

MR. RUSSERT: That the government of Israel wants us to bomb Iran?

REP. PAUL: I, I don’t think there’s a doubt about that, that they’ve encouraged us to do that.  And of course the neoconservatives have been anxious to do that for a long time.

So, when Russert dares ask Ron Paul for particulars he utterly fails to come up with those particulars. He’s blowing smoke, friends.  He clearly has no clue what it is he’s bloviating about. Or perhaps he’s working based on a prejudice, and trying to justify his nonsense in ways that don’t directly reference that prejudice? That seems to me most likely.

I don’t know about Ron Paul’s fantasy world, and frankly I don’t really care… but out here in the real world, Iran is not just a problem for Israel, but it is also a problem for the remainder of the world, America included, and not just because they want to eliminate Israel.  Does Paul really consider the Iranians to NOT be a threat? I mean, is he really moronic enough to assume that once Israel is out-of-the-way, the “everything for radical Islam” mindset that rules Iran won’t be looking for fresh meat? If so, he’s just disqualified himself (yet again) from the office of President, by his utter stupidity.

That aside, It’s possible that the Israeli leaders want America to Bomb Iran, as he says.  Wouldn’t surprise me at all.  But the bottom line is Ron Paul doesn’t have his facts together and can’t prove his accusations. Throwing around accusations for which you don’t have facts to back it up, does not sound overly presidential to me.  What he claims to be evidence, is that these accusations are based on an article that he read in the papers somewhere.  What paper?  Where?  Who wrote it?  Who was quoted in it?  And what ‘neoconservatives’ here at home have been pushing for our bombing of Iran? What are their names? Has Ron Paul any names to share? Does he have any proof? He certainly offered none.

I suspect, based on what he’s shown us here, that this is nothing more than anti-Israel tripe masquerading as educated policy decisions. His reference to the Neoconservatives is of a piece with his (And more, his supporters) repeated references to the “Jew Lobby”.  Sword at the Ready commented on this last September:

What I keyed in on is his growing usage of calling anyone who disagrees with him, “neocons”. During the last few days, the commentary and debate I’ve had with Ron Paul People has only revealed that slur to be a secondary and motivating factor in wanting Paul for President outside of retreating from the war on Jihadists. The moment you disagree with them, the “neocon” slur gets fired over and over. They have “neocon” on the brain.

It’s amazing to discover that they hate “neocons” more than Jihadists, and some simply suggest there would be no Jihadists if it weren’t for “neocons” like me.

“Neocon” – short for neoConservative – or ‘not really a conservative’ – but a Jew, an Israeli or someone who supports Zionists” is apparently the common definition.

Lots of these Ron Paul People are anti-semites apparently – I’ve not heard such vile depricating bashing of Jews except when reading White Supremacist garbage, hearing Ahmedinejad speak or reading old Nazi propaganda.

So, anyway, back to Russert:

MR. RUSSERT: Would you cut off all foreign aid to Israel?

REP. PAUL: Absolutely.  But remember, the Arabs would get cut off, too, and the Arabs get three times as much aid altogether than Israel.

Perhaps Ron Paul has never heard of oil income… something Israel is remarkably short of.

But why, why make Israel so dependent?  Why do we–they give up their sovereignty.  They can’t defend their borders without coming to us.  If they want a peace treaty, they have to ask us permission.  They can’t–we interfere when the Arab leagues make overtures to them.  So I would say that we’ve made them second class citizens.  I, I think they would take much better care of themselves. They would have their national sovereignty back, and I think they would be required then to have a stronger economy because they would have to pay their own bills.

Does anyone really think Ron Paul has Israel’s best interests at heart? Or is he, as I suspect and suppose, simply responding to the anti-Israel Stromfront goons he’s been associating himself with since the beginning?

MR. RUSSERT: And you actually go further.  You said this.  “Abolish the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency and dismantle every other agency except the Justice and Defense Departments.” And then you went on.  “If elected president, Paul says he would abolish public schools, welfare, Social Security and farm subsidies.”

REP. PAUL: OK, you may have picked that up 20 or 30 years ago, it’s not part of my platform.  As a matter of fact, I’m the only one that really has an interim program.  Technically, a lot of those functions aren’t constitutional. But the point is I’m not against the FBI investigation in doing a proper role, but I’m against the FBI spying on people like Martin Luther King.  I’m against the CIA fighting secret wars and overthrowing government and interfering…

MR. RUSSERT: Would you abolish them?

REP. PAUL: I would, I would not abolish all their functions, but I–the, the, the…

MR. RUSSERT: What about public schools?  Are you still…

REP. PAUL: OK, but let’s go, let’s go with the CIA.  They’re, they’re involved in, in, in torture.  I would abolish that, yes.  But I wouldn’t abolish their right and our, our requirement to accumulate intelligence for national defense purposes.

MR. RUSSERT: But if you…

REP. PAUL: That’s quite different.

MR. RUSSERT: But if you eliminate the income tax, you take away half the revenues for the federal government.  What you’re left with is the Defense Department, Social Security, Medicare and pensions.  Everything else is gone. So you have to start making choices if you’re going to keep…

REP. PAUL: All right.  We can.  The big one is overseas expenditure.  You have to develop a transition.  You have to start paying down the deficit, balance the budget.  But you have to say I believe the most reasonable place to save is in foreign policy, hundreds of billions of dollars.  Because it gets us into trouble, it ruins our national–our defense is poor now.  Then the Department of Education, who–we elect conservatives to get rid of the Department of Education.  We used to campaign on that.  And what did we do? We doubled the size.  I want to reverse that trend.

MR. RUSSERT: What about public schools?

REP. PAUL: That’s what I’m trying to…

MR. RUSSERT: Are you still for…

REP. PAUL: No, I’m not–I’ve never, I’ve never taken the position–is it in my platform?  And…

MR. RUSSERT: It was–when you ran for president in 1988, you called for the abolition of public schools.

REP. PAUL: I, I bet that’s a misquote.  I, I do not recall that.  I’d like to know where that came from, because I went…

 

It’s not in its platform, true, but it is in his history.  It’s in his political thinking.  It’s in his makeup.  It’s a popular sentiment among his supporters.  It is also an unanswered question.  What you see in the box above is Ron Paul dodging the question being put to him.  It’s that simple.

Make no mistake about what I’m saying here.  I have for years complained about governmental largess, including the supposed of educational system that we’ve been suffering under. but if that’s what he really stands for, and I think it is, why does he not have the courage of his convictions? Again; not very presidential.

MR. RUSSERT: Let me ask this.  Term limits.  You ran on term limits.  “I think we should have term limits for our elected leaders.” You’ve been in Congress 18 years.

REP. PAUL: But I never ran on voluntary term limits.  There’s a big difference.

I shouldn’t even have to comment here.

MR. RUSSERT: But if you believe in the philosophy of term limits, why wouldn’t you voluntarily…

REP. PAUL: Well, it’s, it’s one of those, it’s one of those things that’s not on–I mean, you don’t see that out I’m campaigning on that.

Yes, Ron… it’s just one of those things… that seem to pop up rather frequently when you’re around. This is what Ron Paul calls “Principled Leadership”?

Look, can we leave this loser, Ron Paul, and his followers behind, and his distractions and get back to the adult side of the conversation, now?

Others blogging: The Campaign Spot, Los Angeles Times, The Sundries Shack and PoliGazette, Hot Air Conservative Reader