I wonder if Ron Paul will simply go away after his campaign finally ends. He’s retiring from Congress, so he won’t have that platform anymore. He’s 76 years old, so I don’t see him running for president again. He doesn’t seem the type to work in the media or to become a regular guest. The Republican wingnut welfare system is funded by folks who don’t like Paul’s political philosophy.
I guess his son is supposed to carry the mantle, but he’ll be voted out of office in four years and that will probably be the end of him. He has none of the charisma of his dad.
Maybe Obama should appoint him Secretary of Defence…
Looks like there will be an opening at State…
I guess his son is supposed to carry the mantle, but he’ll be voted out of office in four years and that will probably be the end of him.
What makes you so sure? Have you seen how nuts the Democratic Governor of Kentucky is? He makes Ben Nelson look like Bernie Sanders.
Yeah, I’m not getting that, either. 2016 will be a presidential election year, when conservatives in Kentucky come out of the woodwork to vote against the latest Stalinist Muslim horror show the Democrats nominate to throw them all into FEMA camps. Won’t an incumbent Republican senator have a pretty commanding position?
I wonder if he might run for President as a third party anyway this year?
Given his inexplicable appeal to 18-35 yo dopeheads, and his apparent ability to pull from racially-oblivious-or-worse Democratic quarters so far, he could plausibly get 5+% of a nationwide vote.
I figure Obama will easily beat Romney, 55-45 minimum, one on one. But with Paul pulling from both sides, it could be a 1996 type affair. Maybe ~50-40-10, Obama-Romney-Paul. That’s about what Clinton beat Dole and Perot that year, if I remember right.
The white supremacist/smaller gubmint now!!1! third party challenge does seem to historically crop up in years when the GOP fails to nominate someone who is effective at race baiting to the southern base’s liking. Yankee Mormon private equity douchebag Mitt Romney fits that bill. He makes George H.W. Bush look like Dubya.
Clinton beat Bush I and Perot in 1992. That’s how he won, Perot took the proto-Tealiban vote from the R column and put it in the P column. Now, if Paul runs, it will do that, but he will also attract idiots on the D side who are stupid enough to fall for Paul’s foreign policy stance. Obama will still win.
According to Pew, if Paul runs against Romney and Obama, the race goes from an Obama win to an Obama blowout.
(Full Pew post here.)
Did you see this shit?
I can’t be the only one who has this vision of Edward Davies’ soul being yanked out of Hell like a trout from a lake, right?
I was thinking cane-hooked off a stage like a bad Vaudeville performer.
methinks ejmw is referring to this little bit of madness. :{)
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"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Ron Paul is such a sweet old man.
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Framing Dr. Ron Paul
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
James Kirchick behind the TNR articles is a paid writer for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies – Fighting Terrorism and Promoting Freedom . Leaders are Woolsey, Judge Freeh, Bill Kristol, Joe Lieberman and McFarlane.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Doesn’t that poll (which is completely fanciful, by the way, Ron Paul doesn’t win 1/5 of the votes cast, that’s crazy) confirm what I just said?
Obama over Romney by double digits. Ten, twelve, fourteen percent margin of victory nationwide. Paul pulls from male voters in each party. Romney will probably do a little better with women voters than the Palin ticket from hell, but he can’t afford to have his white male base cut into in any way. A serious third party challenge kills him outright.
There’s basically no mathematical path to an Obama defeat in any scenario, unless the economy falls off a cliff. And even then, I still like the President’s chances.
Paul does pull young voters, who are important to Obama.
There’s nothing inexplicable about pot smokers turning against Obama. All he promised was to lay off medical marijuana operations, which amounted to continuing the Bush status quo. He betrayed that promise and mocked those he betrayed. He has no claim on their allegiance. Paul does seem to really mean it, his actual stance is far more radical than pot legalization, and he’s obviously not pandering to the Repub base on this.
Now, I don’t think pot is the issue that should decide a Presidential election. But some people do, and most people who would vote on this one issue are pro-legalization. In that sense, it is like the gun issue, where most people are for control, but most votes that flip on this are against it. But the establishment calculus still holds busting medical marijuana to be a political winner.
YOu can’t be serious. Legalization is a total loser.
Recreational use is approaching 50% support. Mostly among the young, which suggest the trend will continue. And that’s legalization for recreational use, not medical marijuana.
How many opposed to medical marijuana would otherwise have voted for Romney or Gingrich, but will now vote for Obama because he busted the pot operations? Very few, I think. How many Obama supporters would have turned against him had he not done this? I don’t think this was a live issue for anyone but pot supporters and very strong conservatives whose votes are not available for liberals anyway. How many pot supporters will stay home, or vote Libertarian, or for Paul if he runs 3rd party (which is the hypothetical at hand)? There certainly are some.
Support for recreational use is one thing. Support for policies which favor recreational use is entirely different. Additionally, you have the “credibility” issue. Only Nixon could open China. Only a Republican can decriminalize drugs. A Democrat simply cannot.
What active support from the government do you think is needed. As for requiring a Republican, Paul is a Republican. Although all Obama had to do was nothing, and there is no evidence that inaction on medical marijuana was hurting him. Where is the data to support that?
also 50% of people does not equal 50% of voters
Plus I think Paul is just talking about federal drug laws, he’ll leave it to the states which for the most part still have it as illegal. So from a practical standpoint it’s an easy stance for him to take because nothing will really change
This is incorrect. Most states defer to the Controlled Substance Act.
However, what is true is that most people are in state prisons for their drug crimes, not federal.
Almost half of voters voted for legalization in California in 2010. Admittedly, that’s CA. But it’s also 2010, the year of the great Republican wave. And CA can go conservative as a survey of the last 3 decades of governors there will confirm.
Leaving it to the states means, at a minimum, medical marijuana becomes secure where it is legal now, and prospects for further legalization are improved because the legalization would be more meaningful and secure.
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Mr. Hathway will provide the proof, well?
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."There are 3 possible interpretations of the newsletters:
It has to be one or more of those 3, and all are devastating.
OK, I guess he wasn’t a sitting Congressman, but he had been and wanted to be again (it has been his primary career), so putting out the newsletters blindly was still foolish. I would not let someone comment on a blog under my name, or even a pseud I use, and I am not in politics.
Are you arguing that it was not foolish, or just making a technical correction?
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"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."This post is total AG bait — where are you, AG?
I keed, I keed…
AG is in the hospital due to acute koolaid poisoning.