Mainstreaming Paulians
By now, you’ve probably already read that Ron Paul won the straw poll at the CPAC conference this weekend for the second year running. Paulians led the jeering at Donald Rumsfeld’s and Dick Cheney’s speech. It maintains the image that we all had of the Paulians during the 2008 Presidential campaign. A small group which doesn’t represent the majority take control of small venues presenting an image that they’re larger and more influential than they really are.
Thankfully, they no longer spam blogs with their “read a book!”
I’ve said many times that although I agree with much of Ron Paul’s domestic policy, but his foreign policies are completely irresponsible and negate anything else he might have to say. I’ve also commented before that the Tea Party movement has a “Ron Paul feeling” to it…just like the feeling I had when I was watching the Oath Keeper movement.
And now that feeling has nearly taken over the Tea Party crowd. In the Guardian yesterday, the lines between the Paulians and the Tea Party have disappeared.
What had been a relatively low-grade domestic dispute between the Republican party establishment and the libertarian-minded Tea Party movement boiled over into the public arena during this week’s CPAC conference in Washington….
Rand Paul’s campaign blindly embraced IVAW member Adam Kokesh’s congressional run in New Mexico until it became a political liability. Oath Keepers embraced Adam Kokesh and Eric Oereski until This Ain’t Hell exposed them (here and here). But who is going to expose the Ron Paul connections to the Tea Party and expunge their corrupt effect on the conservative wing of the Republicans?
Elements of the Tea Party, like the Oath Keepers, hide their true Libertine intents behind pretty words and populist signage. Those elements need to be purged.
Category: Antiwar crowd, Ron Paul, Usual Suspects
Comment from Mrs. Claymore while watching the Ronulans at CPAC: “Wow…those dipshits are nuts.”
Actually, the whole exchange was like this.
Mrs. Claymore: Who is booing Cheney?
Claymore: Ron Paul supporters.
Mrs. Claymore: Why?
Claymore: They’re isolationists who think Cheney and Rumsfield got us mired in Iraq and A’stan.
Mrs. Claymore: Wow…those dipshits are nuts.
I like the term purged and want to use it more in general conversation.
Mrs. Claymore certainly knows how to sum things up properly! KUDOS!
I love how when you start to dig into Paul and his philosophies, you end up finding something that would be more likely to be found on the campus of Berkeley than in any conservatives’ house.
Two years of Teleprompter Jesus made me forget just how annoying were the Paultards in 2007 and 2008.
I would proffer that there are certain folks and media who would very MUCH like to see the Tea Party tainted with the garbage of the PaulBots. To date, I have yet to see any of the actual leaders of the movement, or even any of the major groups, echo Paul’s blithering bloviations.
In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least to find that allegations (and even made-up shit) regarding Paul and the Tea Party came from the Old Guard of the GOP.
Until then, I’ll put as much belief into Paulin infestations of the Tea Party movement, as I do expecting any real objective journalism from Mikey Yon.
Respects,
Where is Debra? Someone needs to come to the defense of the Paulistas.
ronny paul and his brat son randy are gutless, hate-filled, anti-military extremists, and in rabdy’s case, he OBVIOUSLY hihacked the TEA Party movement in KY!!!!!
NEED I SAY MORE?????????????????????????????????????
It don’t take too awful much to draw them out of the woodwork either, lol.
You got THAT right!
Back in 2008 I got one so fired up that the Police had to tell him to leave the venue. The guy was going on and on about Paul and all his many attributes. When he took a breath I simply stated that I thought Ron Paul was a lunatic. The man came unhinged and started screaming that I was some sort of anti-American goon, that no one else was qualified to lead this country, yada yada yada… The guy literally had spit flying out his mouth, and his eyes wide open.
The two cops there placed themselves between us and told him to calm down. He told the cops to get out of his way as he wasn’t finished yet. The cops then informed him that he WAS finished and ordered him to leave or be arrested for trespassing.
It was a good day. 🙂
Gotta go with what Time said, I’ve yet to hear anyone connected to the Tea Party who has a kind word to say about the Paulbots. At least around where I live. Or anywhere else. I think they’re amusing, in an Obamanaut kind of way.
Maybe it’s the media putting that BS out, just like the R’s are splitting, they’re fighting BS they’re trying to convince everyone of.
R. Paul is a mixed bag of good and bad political proposals. Overall, he’s doing the Democrats lots of favors. Being un-electable while still trying to sound as a candidate is bad news for a unified Republican machine.
While the Tea Party has made more than a few mistakes, they’re certainly not being co-opted by the Paulbots.
There’s an old saying in DC: ‘Personnel IS Policy.’ There’s a corollary to that, drawn from much more reputable sources: ‘you’ll know ’em [the Good, and the Bad] from their fruits.’
I had several experiences akin to AW1 Tim’s: some no-time-in-life connoseuir of Representative Paul’s trying to speak down at me like I was some crazed, murder-fueled crap-bot of the Military-Industrial KKKomplex.
Pretty much the same view one gets reading Daily Kos, Huffington Post, and numerous other Progressive Blogs.
So Libertarian, versed in the philosophies, and educated in the social, political, and economic theories that are the engines of libertarianism behaves so. The behaviour and the way Paul’s surrogates behave are not reconcilable.
So why does Paul maintain this cadre of off-putting syncophants? If Personnel IS Policy, then Ron Paul is not seeking a libertarian Utopia, but a dystopian isolationism ruled by powerful, near-insane folks who will do anything, simply anything to make Paul favor them.
The use of webcrawlers to monitor the ‘net for any mention of Paul’s name. The use of spambots, and for more in-depth spewage the use of actual human beings to troll any website that criticized Paul demonstrate a man who is divorced from even the concept of civil discourse. That’s some pretty rotten fruit there.
With the elder Paul, and his minions, I’m not so much reminded of Madison as I am Trotsky.
The Young Americans of Freedom removed him from their board yesterday..for what it’s worth, lol.
http://patriotsforamerica.ning.com/forum/topics/young-americans-for-freedom?xg_source=activity
Steel on target, DaveO. My run-ins have run the gamut from online to some chick who walked for Paul (color me unimpressed) who called my HR department claiming I was stalking and threatening her for having the gall to disagree with her. Where it really hit the fan was when she was down in Florida with Paul and Don Black (runs white supremacist website Stormfront) and I called her on it. It was at that point I got the call to HR asking WTF this psycho bitch was doing calling HR down in Florida.
Perhaps I missed something, but isn’t this guy and his followers just about batshit crazy?
How does anyone think he will stabilize the office, let alone win the election?
#17 USMC Steve: don’t think anyone believes it – believe his folks think just the opposite – that he’ll destabilize it so much, creating the necessary vacuum that anarchy is preferable.
I wonder, how many love letters were sent to the Unabomber?
Many politicians attempt to claim a movement when they see it as successful or popular. The Tea Party is no exception.
Still, I know several people in the Tea Party movement and NONE that espouse Military retreat or cutting the DoD in a time of war. Yes, there are politicians that claim the mantra of the Tea Party, while also calling for DoD budget cuts, but that does not mean they lead a grass roots movement. It means they are clinging to the coattails of something they think will get them votes.
The Pair of Pauls, along with their fanatics, are not representative of the Tea Party People, that I know.
I should also mention that in Tennessee, even the die-hard Democrats are Pro-Troop, even the ones that were fooled by their party about Iraq.
One of the most loyal of Democrats I’ve met, sent me, as a Veteran, her apologies in 2009 for voting for Obama, after she saw what he was doing to the Military and VA. (And TN’s electoral votes did not go to Obama.)