Yesterday, I wrote a short open letter-style piece that, as is the case whenever anyone mentions Ron Paul, touched some Paulestinian nerves. The piece was titled Ron Paul, get out of the Republican Party.

Incendiary, perhaps, but I meant every word of it. The post on Free Republic touched off the longest comment thread I think I have ever seen there: 441 and still going, last I checked.

My post yesterday, along with some previous posts, have generated a fair amount of heat here at Modern Conservative as well. When we broke the news of Paul's possible Constitution Party run, for example, it generated a lot of anger (and even one tacit threat) from Paulestinians.

Interestingly, I discovered early this morning that a similar "Ron Paul please leave the GOP" post went up on Redstate yesterday, titled Republicans to Ron Paul: Seriously, Get Lost. They even wrote it in 2nd person, just as I did. Sane minds think alike, it seems.

Through all of this, I keep noticing that Paul's supporters seem unable to distinguish between their support for some of Ron Paul's appealing libertarian positions and the rest of the neo-Confederate conspiratorial bilge that accompanies it. I noticed that a commenter on the Redstate thread brought up the same point:

It's a persistent characteristic of Paul's supporters that they don't seem to be able to grasp the difference between criticism of Paul specifically and criticism of libertarian ideas generally. You'll say "look, this guy either approved of or was too dozy or disterested to prevent to issuing of a whole bunch of racist, anti-semitic shlock under his name," and their reply is to point to the debt clock and ask you why you don't support cutting the size of government. It just doesn't address the issue, and it happens so frequently that is starts to look less like strategy than pathology.

The commenter is quite right.

I have tried several times, both in posts and in comment threads, to make the important distinction between the principled people who support libertarian positions and the fringe people and ideas swarming like flies around Ron Paul's stinking midden. And yet, again and again, many of the people who protest themselves to be a part of the former group issue their protestations in a buzzing manner far more consistent with the nature of the latter. And yet, there is a perception of hurt and desperate anger to to be heard in some of these comments, a sense of betrayal by the GOP...

I am a lifelong Republican. And the attacks and the smears on Dr. Paul have turned me into an active enemy of the GOP. I will vote against any candidate the GOP nominates this year. In the future, when the issue of hate crimes legislation is debated. I will smear any Republican candidate who speaks out against it. I will smear them with the same racist, homophobic, anti-Semite smear used against Dr. Paul. I will also actively post far and wide about any forum, blog or web site that opposes such legislation. The GOP has become a police state, socialist party and the Democrats are now the nanny state, communist party. There is no hope and I leave the party with Dr. Paul.

 

I get the sense of betrayal thing. I may not entirely agree that the situation is as severe, but I understand at least some aspects of the complaint, especially on matters of fiscal conservatism and size-of-government issues. What I do not get is the notion that it then follows that Ron Paul is the answer. One of the sections of the Redstate post reads as follows:

At this point, I'd favor action by the Congressional Republican Caucus to extricate you from their ranks. There are lots of reasons for this: the fact that you were, ahem, apparently totally unaware of the racist contents of numerous eponymous newsletters (I swear, that's believable, really), the fact that you thought that the way that Pol Pot cleaned up the mess after we left Vietnam was great, the fact that you've publicly stated that we should not defend South Korea if the North Koreans attacked, the fact that you see Jack Kemp and Bob Dole as terrorists, but not the PLO, and well, we could go on and on. I think there are plenty of reasons listed above that the Republicans in Congress wouldn't want to be associated with you - and it appears that Republican primary voters are also not comfortable with you being associated with our party.

Several of the points therein are hyperlinked to the source, which will allow for further research if you so desire.

I have some sympathy some of the positions taken by some of Paul's supporters. And, for moments, I feel a bit of the pathos ringing from their expressions of betrayal by the GOP.

Then, I realize that in spite of all the confirmations of Paul's unsavory aspects, ideas, and associations, many of his supporters double-down on their support for him. That appears to be indicative of one of two things.

It may be pathological, as the Redstate commenter said.

Or, it may be that the commenter is not ONLY interested in Paul's ideas on limited government, but also holds some sympathy for some of Paul's......other views.

If you fall into the former category, you have my sympathy, and my suggestion that further research and reflection may reveal a better way to bring about your dreams of a more libertarian America.

If you fall into the latter, then your threats to leave the GOP are not only not scary, they're welcome.

A political party is only as good as its members, and I did not join the Party of Lincoln (whatever its problems may be today) to support neo-Confederate ideas or the notion that America—the greatest force for good of all nations in history—is somehow a malefactor on the world stage.

If we need to adopt positions pleasing to people who hold such views in order to hold power, then we deserve to lose power.

 

Post Script:
One of the comments on an earlier post deserves notice and promotion, in my view. Here it is:

Chris, I see you have attracted an infestation of Paulisites. Let me stir the pot. Dr. Paul's foreign-policy positions started their slide towards obsolescence the day the first Boeing 707 broke contact with the ground .... sliding right alongside the first container ship, down the ways. The economic interconnections that have improved the quality of life worldwide -- and as a result, furthered the cause of world peace -- preclude a return to the de facto isolationism Ron Paul promotes. So do the technologies and prosperity now available to friend and foe alike, that allow them to sidestep the time and discipline it used to take to raise armies and threaten free people. Wake up, Paulisites ... the oceans no longer protect us; waiting for an enemy to strike here before taking them on is FOOLISH in this day and age. The basic premises of neoconservatism were proven decades before our present conflict in Iraq ... ... in the post-WWII successes of Western Europe and the Pacific Rim, wherever people adopted rights-respecting governance ... ... in the dysfunction and/or collapse of nations that have not adopted rights-respecting governance ... ... and in the peace between the nations in the first group, and the conflict between nations in the second group and everyone else. It is the Leftist/"realist" approach that has been weighed and found wanting by history ... for all it did was maintain a lethal status quo at best. The Big Lie is not the word of the neocons ... the Big Lie is "War is Never the Answer". As I always say, the real peace song is neither Kumbiyah, nor The Sound of (paleocon) Silence ... ... it is the Yippie-Ky-Ay-A of cowboy diplomacy. And history proves it.

There has been some debate here about the stated intentions of bin Laden ... that if we were to just leave Israel and the Mideast to his tender mercies, things would turn out ok. I have a Google search for those of you who believe this: Lebensraum. Then, tell me how many totalitarians (not authoritarians who operate in the open, albeit harshly, but totalitarians on the order of AQ and Saddam), once they decided to expand their reach, ever stopped doing so ON THEIR OWN, in the absence of either lack of resources or CREDIBLE confrontation by opponents. At your core, you Paulisites lack confidence in the very principles stated in the Declaration of Independence to be "self-evident" ... for you don't seem to believe that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is the purview of ALL MEN ... ... and you lack the wisdom to see how imposing respect for those principles upon those regimes who refuse to respect them, IS PROMOTING PEACE FOR ALL, AND MAKES AMERICA MORE SECURE! In this regard, the Iraqi people are way wiser than you, for they realize ... ... this war is not for oil. ... this war is not for corporate "empire". ... this war is for the defeat of totalitarian rule by the fanatics of radical Islam, and the "encouragement" of others of like mind regarding life and liberty to change their ways. This realization is why many Iraqis now refer to us as the "al-Ameriki" tribe, instead of "infidel Crusader".