Remember how a few months ago I said that if he got treated as a serious candidate Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) would be a really interesting presence in the primaries, someone who a lot of Republicans would agree with, and someone who'd be more intellectually honest about what the GOP supposedly stands for than a lot of his opponents? Well, he has been that way in this still fresh campaign season, and it has indeed won him support (he was in 2nd place in Fox's post-debate poll last night). But it's clear that the Republican powers that be want him silenced. Andrew Sullivan has an interesting post up on that topic. Here's the bulk of it:
The conservative pundits are now referring to Ron Paul as a "crackpot." Hannity predictably savaged him last night (see above). The Hewitt site has an image of a man in a tin-foil hat; Dean Barnett and Hugh Hewitt both call for removing Paul from the debates, when he has been the best thing about them so far. Bill Benett wants him out. I'm getting the usual ridicule for taking him seriously from the usual GOP apparatchiks. They're scared, aren't they? The Internet polls show real support for him. Fox News' own internet poll placed him a close second, with 25 percent of the votes from Fox News viewers. We have a real phenomenon here - because someone has to stand up for what conservatism once stood for. Whether you agree with him or not ( and I know few outside doctrinaire libertarians who agree with everything he says), he has already elevated the debates by injecting into them a legitimate, if now suppressed, strain of conservatism that is actually deeper in this country than the neoconservative aggression that now captures the party elite and has trapped the US in the Iraq nightmare. Last night, Fox News tried to destroy him. Today the right-wing blogs will.
And indeed they have, as since he wrote this post earlier today, Sullivan's followed it up with by noting anti-Paul posts and actions by RedState and LGF. Clearly that party "apparatchiks" don't appreciate him going off the party/president's script.
Posted by armand at May 16, 2007 04:14 PM | TrackBack | Posted to PoliticsThe modern Republican Party seems to have thrown any and all ideological beliefs out the window in their continuing attempts to hold on to power. The beliefs of Reagan (who, I think, really didn't actually do what history seems to subscribe to him) would seem to be alien to this field of candidates (Paul excepted). The only exception to this is their social conservatism. I don't believe that that (non-logical and unAmerican) ideology can win national elections.
Of course, I might be wrong.
Posted by: baltar at May 16, 2007 08:17 PM | PERMALINK