Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul is in a bid to make history in Iowa. Can he become the first marginal, conspiracy-minded congressman with an embarrassing catalog of racist material published under his name to win the caucuses?
In 2008, the surest way to get applause in the Republican primary debates was to excoriate Ron Paul. This year, the Texas libertarian stands much closer to the emotional center of gravity of the party in his condemnations of government spending, crony capitalism, the Federal Reserve, and foreign intervention. He brings 100-proof moonshine to the GOP cocktail party. It can be invigorating and fun, if you ignore the nasty adulterants.
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The fight over Ron Paul isn’t a battle for the soul of the Republican Party so much as for its standards. Throughout his career, Paul hasn’t been able to distinguish between fringy cranks and aboveboard purists. He has taken a principled anti-government position and associated it with loons and bigots. It may be the ultimate commentary on the weakness of this Republican field that it hasn’t even been able to produce a respectable out-there libertarian.
Paul can be a winsome figure in his irritable, absent-minded-professor way. Invariably wearing a suit jacket that looks a size or two too big, he has stood out in the debates for his knowledge and for his entirely consistent worldview applied to any problem, politics be damned. He gives listeners reason to smile or nod a couple of times every debate, and reason to wonder if he has been reading too much Noam Chomsky.
He tends to bring any conversation back to the malignancy of U.S. foreign policy. In the final debate in Iowa, he rambled on about how worries about the Iranian nuclear program are “war propaganda,” but if the Iranians get the bomb that they’re not developing, that’s entirely understandable, since we’re “promoting their desire to have it.” Jeane Kirkpatrick famously condemned the “Blame America First” Democrats; would that she had lived long enough to condemn the “Blame America First” libertarians.
In the debate, Paul went on to warn against a push “to declare war on 1.2 billion Muslims,” as if a country that has resorted to force of arms to save Muslims from starvation (Somalia), from ethnic cleansing (Bosnia, Kosovo), and from brutal dictators (Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya) is bristling with an undifferentiated hostility toward all Muslims. This isn’t an expression of an anti-interventionism so much as a smear. It goes beyond opposition to American foreign policy to a poisonous view of America itself.
Paul never knows when to stop. He lets his suspicion of centralized power slip into paranoia worthy of a second-rate Hollywood thriller about government malevolence. In January 2010, he declared: “There’s been a coup, have you heard? It’s the CIA coup. The CIA runs everything, they run the military.” On his latest appearance on the radio show of the conspiracy-mongering host Alex Jones, he opined that the alleged Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador on U.S. soil was “another propaganda stunt.” He exclaimed that the latest defense bill authorizing the indefinite detention of enemy combatants will “literally legalize martial law” (yes, “literally”).
Paul’s promiscuousness with his ideological bedfellows — he hails members of the John Birch Society for their fine educations and respect for the Constitution — accounts for the disgrace he brought on himself with his newsletters in the 1980s and 1990s. As journalist James Kirchick exposed, they were full of race-baiting and rancid Israel-bashing. Paul maintains he didn’t know what was being written in the first person under his name. To this day, he says he doesn’t know who wrote the copy. Has he asked? During some dozen Republican debates, not one journalist thought to query Paul about the newsletters that would be disqualifying for anyone else.
Iowa caucus-goers are protective of their preeminent place in the nominating process. If they deliver victory to a history-making Ron Paul, no one should take them as seriously again.
— Rich Lowry is the editor of National Review. He may be reached via e-mail: comments.lowry@nationalreview.com.
I do take Rich Lowry seriously; that is why I am so distressed by this sort of hit piece (as opposed to some of the alternative ways of analyzing the flaws in Ron Paul's candidacy).
I know that Mr. Lowry and NRO are capable of far better, which is what makes me so heartsick to watch them trash or dismiss so many of our good conservative candidates. Diversity of thought is one GOP aspect that separates us from the far-left, and a well-fought primary campaign would have winnowed the wheat from the chaff.
Now, that necessary and healthy process has been corrupted by the media, and not just NRO.
This article is garbage. You left out that those newsletters have been debunked. You left out that the head of the Austin NAACP claims Paul is anything but racist.
One should expect this from your misleading, increasingly irrelevant tabloid. You and your neocon buddies are the racist....everyone is catching on to you and your warmongering ways. May God have mercy on your soul.
Everyone knows that Rich Lowry and the NRO are in the bag for Romney.
Any reader that would read this article without humor deserves to be taken less seriously; though Lowry’s condescending contempt for Iowans is still a bit disappointing.
Lowry is not writing an opinion piece here, he is engaging in political campaign activism and advocacy for the selected establishment candidate.
Were it that I believed in big government intervention like NRO candidate Mitt Romney; I would report this article to the Federal Election Commission as an undeclared campaign contribution to the Romney campaign.
I like the one-dimensional approach you used when analyzing Ron Paul's candidacy. It helps to remind me why political commentators who prefer the status quo are becoming irrelevant. To address some of your statements, I submit to you two links which provide some context and a rebuttal to the charges of racism. (see below)
Describing our militaristic misadventures as though we could still legitimately be considered liberators of oppressed Muslims is charming. I suppose the fact that we were wrongly told that they had WMDs and were looking to purchase enriched uranium is irrelevant. I suppose it's not worth digging deeper to find an Iraq, liberated from a dictator, to be sure, but mired in chaos and a looming civil war. An Iraq which now provides a breeding ground for terrorists. An Iraq that may potentially create additional geopolitical problems for us if it develops closer ties with neighboring Iran. The region today appears even more unstable than it had been a decade ago. I suppose you would consider this acceptable?
I suppose the concept of blowback and how it relates to our foreign policy can be ignored, because it doesn't fit into the convenient pro-war narrative which states we are liberators and they hate us because of our freedom. They attacked us and killed 3000 Americans, so we invaded the wrong countries which were not responsible for 9/11, for years ignored Pakistan, lost around 5000 troops, and spent huge sums of money waging our wars of liberation. We should remember that Barack Obama promised to end these wars as they had gradually become unpopular and very costly. Promising this, he managed to secure his party's nomination and went on to win the presidency.
I believe Americans are growing increasingly tired of these wars and the nation building we've been involved in. I also believe Ron Paul gives a voice to these individuals, Republicans, Democrats, and Independents, who seem to be fed up with wars in the Middle East. I think these are voices worth listening to. And if we go to war with Iran, a nation far larger than Iraq, it had better be for the right reasons and using solid information. Otherwise, we may find ourselves faced with another Iraq.
Even as a Santorum supporter this article really disappoints me. I have several close friends and relatives who are Ron Paul supporters and we respectfully disagree on foreign policy. Calling someone crazy because they hold slightly different beliefs than you is the kind of behavior expected from high school girls when the new student comes to class wearing the wrong kind of lip gloss or something. And pulling the race card is behavior I would expect from Keith Olberman. Why not just correct Paul on his short comings and attempt to convince Ron Paul Supporters otherwise rather than create a polemical device which does no good?
Some good points here. A principled libertarian approach would draw a much broader constituency than Paul has amassed. But some of his gratuitous attacks - not unlike those of Rick Perry and others - needlessly push away groups the GOP will need to win in November ... External Link
As someone who hates Iowa going first every four years, part of me wants Paul to win there to discredit the state.
By the way, even if he wins Iowa the safest invest one could make for the return is betting against Paul for the nomination on Intade. It just isn't going to happen.
Iowa is not about credibility; it's about spectacle and filling air time and print space. They elected Huckabee who never had a chance, yet the cameras came back for more.
It they elect Paul, I'll bet you all the cash in Mitt Romney's wallet the cameras will be back in 2016 and NRO will be filling space talking about it.
"Paul’s promiscuousness with his ideological bedfellows — he hails members of the John Birch Society for their fine educations and respect for the Constitution"
Wait... What?
I was a member of JBS. I went to their camp as a kid. We read the Constitution, learned some conservative principles, and then we ate hot dogs.
The establishment right is getting worried about Paul. With all their talk about cutting spending and smaller government, here's a man who will actually do it. But he's not on board with their actual plan of increased spending and new wars, so out come the long knives. Bring it Lowry, you fraud.
Welcome to the top tier Congressman Paul!
You are now officially a threat to the GOP establishment. The attacks on you will be more frequent and uglier than ever before. I hope you're ready...
Conservative pundits are more often than not viewing politics from too narrow a focus. Who decides what “mainstream” is? Is it what occurred in the recent past? We need to go someplace better but do we drive in reverse looking in the rear view mirror? I think not!
Being timid is playing “Not to Lose” and appeasing the Fabian Socialist Progressives has taken us where we are today: A Fifteen-Trillian national debt, un-sustainable Social Security and Medicare unfunded liabilities plus all the state and local debts. We have a monster government that churns out job and liberty killing regulations; we go to war at any excuse which is a budget busting extravagance that has a negative effect on our economy unless you are a defense contractor.
I think that the “system” is too corrupt and being less “liberal” than the last past-President or the previous Congress is not enough to get the job done of restoring our lost liberties. Without personal liberties and economic freedom our nation is doomed and will perish eventually.
All this squabbling by movement conservatives over single issues, the definition of social issues and whether Newt or Mitt or Ron is “true blue” has the same effect as chopping up the rhetorical salami making it easier to eat, for our leftist opponents to ridicule our cause in the media and attempt to defeat us at the polls.
We need a “Velvet Revolution” here in America so we my restore our liberties as enumerated in our Constitution. Revisiting past Republican administrations is not a viable alternative or strategy. We need a Vaclav Havel for America- who will step forward? Is the Tea Party our only hope? Ron Paul seems to be the only candidate concerned about enforcing the US Constitution.
Nice hatchet job. The federal government robs me of 6 grand a month. NASA's budget is in the toilet and we no longer have a space shuttle. I am all for spending money on developing weapon systems and military technology, but how does providing free military services around the globe that costs a trillion a year make sense? How does killing muslims to protect us from muslims that want to kill us for killing muslims make sense? Washington D.C. should enforce contracts, protect property rights, provide a DEFENSE for our states, and a few other things. Plain and simple, the people that produce in this country are sick of the BS....
Well if he's so loony and so fringe, Republicans wouldnt care if he runs as a third party candidate or not, right?
Surely Republican voters would not be so tired of the big government authoritarian conservatism represented by Mittens and Newt that they would actually consider a guy who is serious about getting the government off our backs, whatever his other flaws?
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