Lets talk 2012.

[devilsfan26]

I got Obama, Paul, and Bachmann. There is not a chance in hell I vote for Obama or Bachmann. I don't think this quiz is in-depth enough.

[ghdi]

I got Obama, Paul, and Bachmann.

Same exact three for me and in that order.

[Jimmy Leeds]

I took that the other day and got Santorum, Paul, then Perry.

I am mortally embarrassed that that kook Ron Paul was anywhere near the front !!

[Devils Dose]

I took that the other day and got Santorum, Paul, then Perry.

I am mortally embarrassed that that kook Ron Paul was anywhere near the front !!

He's seems to be near the top for everybody, but never #1. Maybe that means he's got something the everybody likes, but nobody likes all (or even a majority) of his positions.

[devilsfan26]

I took that the other day and got Santorum, Paul, then Perry.

I am mortally embarrassed that that kook Ron Paul was anywhere near the front !!

Ron Paul is a kook but Rick Perry isn't? Wow.

[devilsadvoc8]

I'd vote for Paul way before the other loons like Perry, Santorum, & Bachman. Paul would at least represent a real chance for a new perspective in the WH. He is the only candidate that truely represents "change". It might not be changes I would agree with but he would certainly shake things up a bit.

the sad thing is? All of these people suck. hard.

[Jerrydevil]

Paul was #1 for me.

For the problems we face today, I think he's the best man for the job. He's out in la-la land on foreign policy, particularly on the dangers Iran poses, but I would be proud to vote for him because of his views on the Constitution, printing money, bailouts, debt, taxes, welfare, etc.

Sadly, it's too late for someone like Ron Paul to help, even if he had a good chance to be president. We're too far down the road to ruin. Happy holidays, everyone.

[ghdi]

Ron Paul just irks me. I think hes got some great ideas and think he's completely batsh!t insane otherwise.

And then theres stuff like this:

http://graphics.thomsonreuters.com/11/12/Solicitation2.pdf

[devilsfan26]

Ron Paul just irks me. I think hes got some great ideas and think he's completely batsh!t insane otherwise.

And then theres stuff like this:

http://graphics.thomsonreuters.com/11/12/Solicitation2.pdf

With this completely inefficient election process and voting system we have, he is better than any other viable candidate. At least his main influence is the best interest of the people and not corporate campaign donors. The only other person I would vote for is Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate.

[DaneykoIsGod]

Ron Paul just irks me. I think hes got some great ideas and think he's completely batsh!t insane otherwise.

And then theres stuff like this:

http://graphics.thomsonreuters.com/11/12/Solicitation2.pdf

That's just the tip of the iceberg. Check this out. The blatant, over-the-top racism is absolutely frightening.

It amazes me that absolutely none of the candidates are without blemishes, and that all of their blemishes are being paraded in front of us .... except for this stack of conspiracy-driven, racist, homophobic propaganda that Paul actually made money off of. How are Gingrich's marriages, Romney's flipflops and Cain's infidelities fair game, but all of this goes pretty much untouched?

[devilsfan26]

Ron Paul never talks like that, and if you look at his voting record you can see his views don't line up with it either, so I'm really not putting much stock in that stuff.

[devilsadvoc8]

It is very disappointing that two religious nuts placed 1, 2 in Iowa. Ugh. We are screwed.

[Jimmy Leeds]

It is very disappointing that two religious nuts placed 1, 2 in Iowa. Ugh. We are screwed.

That's the new attack, "religious nuts".

Should we all be atheists?

[DaneykoIsGod]

Ron Paul never talks like that, and if you look at his voting record you can see his views don't line up with it either, so I'm really not putting much stock in that stuff.

Paul says that his handful of staffers wrote those newsletters. Even so, that link sums it up:

Still, on any map of moral behavior, this is a man who merits no one's esteem. To return to a comment above, he either believes these paranoiac, divisive, racial and sexually malicious things and wrote them himself, or he recognized the cynical political value in trading in them, or he was so stupid that not a word above was written by him, yet it carried his name anyway.

And besides, it isn't like Paul hasn't done anything recently to make it look like such racist ramblings couldn't have come from him ...

"White Supremacist" doesn't do that guy justice. He was an American Nazi party member and KKK Grand Wizard.

Even if I was a huge Ron Paul supporter before (which I wasn't, but I wasn't entirely against the guy either), there's no way I could support him after seeing this stuff.

[Daniel]

It is very disappointing that two religious nuts placed 1, 2 in Iowa. Ugh. We are screwed.

Mitt Romney has shown no evidence of being a "religious nut," unless that definition includes anyone who is a Mormon.

[Daniel]

Paul says that his handful of staffers wrote those newsletters. Even so, that link sums it up:

And besides, it isn't like Paul hasn't done anything recently to make it look like such racist ramblings couldn't have come from him ...

"White Supremacist" doesn't do that guy justice. He was an American Nazi party member and KKK Grand Wizard.

Even if I was a huge Ron Paul supporter before (which I wasn't, but I wasn't entirely against the guy either), there's no way I could support him after seeing this stuff.

Politicians take photos with a whole lot of people. Unless there's any evidence to the contrary (which anyone can feel free to point my way) Paul most likely thought the guy the same as any other voter coming up to take a picture with him.

Also, one of Paul's principled stands against the drug war would most benefit blacks who get the short end of the stick for drug violations. One of his heroes is a Jewish economist, which refutes the idea that he's an anti-semite. He also supported Israel's attack on Iraq's nuclear facility, which even Ronald Reagan, at least publicly, opposed, and has expressed the view that Israel has every right to attack Iran's nuclear program for its own self-defense, but only that the US should not participate.

If Paul should be attacked for anything, it's his fondness for Depression era monetary policies, that even Milton Friedman opposed. This is what scares me most about Paul.

Finally, those who want to harp on the newsletters have absolutely no business saying that the attacks on Obama's associations with Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright were unfair.

ADDENDUM: I don't mean to say that Paul's associations, even if they are tenuous in some cases, aren't fair game. We are voting for someone who wants to be the President, so there is very little that isn't. (I personally draw the line at attacks on children.) If anything, the more idiotic attacks, like the birth certificate nonsense, probably help the targets in the aggregate.

Edited January 4, 2012 by Daniel

[devilsfan26]

Paul says that his handful of staffers wrote those newsletters. Even so, that link sums it up:

And besides, it isn't like Paul hasn't done anything recently to make it look like such racist ramblings couldn't have come from him ...

"White Supremacist" doesn't do that guy justice. He was an American Nazi party member and KKK Grand Wizard.

Even if I was a huge Ron Paul supporter before (which I wasn't, but I wasn't entirely against the guy either), there's no way I could support him after seeing this stuff.

I put way more stock in his actual voting record and platform than some newsletters that he may or may not have known about that were written 20 or 30 years ago. Substance is more important than smear tactics like this. He voted for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day among many other bills that help African Americans or celebrate their achievements and is a big opponent of the war on drugs, which has done a lot of harm to minorities.

Read this and then tell me he's a racist.

Edited January 4, 2012 by devilsfan26

[devilsadvoc8]

That's the new attack, "religious nuts".

Should we all be atheists?

Well since you asked, Yes. If we as a species are ever to continue to progress and improve, the chains of religion need to cast aside. Any candidate who lets bullcrap religious dogma impact their political and legislative positions is unfit for office. If you want to be ignorant on your own time, go ahead but not when your actions impact other human beings. This applies directly to Santorum and by extension to Mitt due to his high position with the CoLDS which separates him from a causual congregation member. If you believe in fairy tales, I cannot trust you to make sound judgments on other much more important issues.

[Devils731]

Well since you asked, Yes. If we as a species are ever to continue to progress and improve, the chains of religion need to cast aside. Any candidate who lets bullcrap religious dogma impact their political and legislative positions is unfit for office. If you want to be ignorant on your own time, go ahead but not when your actions impact other human beings. This applies directly to Santorum and by extension to Mitt due to his high position with the CoLDS which separates him from a causual congregation member. If you believe in fairy tales, I cannot trust you to make sound judgments on other much more important issues.

So you rarely vote? Since most politicians talk about their faith and religion.

[CMONPETEYD]

Barack Obama belonged to Jeremiah Wrights "church" for over 20 yrs...... with very very very radical/racist views......

[devilsadvoc8]

So you rarely vote? Since most politicians talk about their faith and religion.

Did I say that? I am just severely disappointed in what is shaping up to be my limited options in the November.

I don't vote in every smaller election but certainly do in national / state level elections. I always evaluate the degree of religious nuttiness in the politician. By way of example, I live in PA and am in Santorum's former district. Even though I am a republican by affiliation, I never voted for him based solely on his religious views and his willingness to have them color his political positions. I voted for his democratic opponent in his last election. I was extremely happy when he was no longer in office. He is a dangerous man.

[DaneykoIsGod]

I put way more stock in his actual voting record and platform than some newsletters that he may or may not have known about that were written 20 or 30 years ago. Substance is more important than smear tactics like this. He voted for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day among many other bills that help African Americans or celebrate their achievements and is a big opponent of the war on drugs, which has done a lot of harm to minorities.

Read this and then tell me he's a racist.

I think this article does a pretty good job attempting to figure out the real story behind the newsletters.

It assumes that Paul probably didn't write them (even though he took responsibility for them in 1996 and 2008). Instead, it's very typical political pandering to votes from the man whose supporters love him for how much he isn't a typical politician.

These newsletters were published before a decade of war that has exhausted many Americans, before the financial crisis, and before the tea party.

All three made Ron Paul's ideas seem more relevant to our politics. They made antigovernment libertarianism seem (to some) like a sensible corrective.

But in the 1990s and 1980s, antigovernment sentiment was much less mainstream. It seemed contained to the racist Right Wing, people who supported militia movements, who obsessed over political correctness, who were suspicious of free-trade deals like NAFTA.

At that time, a libertarian theorist, Murray Rothbard argued that libertarians ought to engage in "Outreach to the Rednecks" in order to insert their libertarian theories into the middle of the nation's political passions.

Rothbard had tremendous influence on Lew Rockwell, and the whole slice of the libertarian movement that adored Ron Paul.

But Rothbard and Rockwell never stuck with their alliances with angry white men on the far right. They have been willing to shift alliances from left to right and back again. Before this "outreach" to racists, Rothbard aligned himself with anti-Vietnam war protesters in the 1960s. In the 2000s, after the "outreach" had failed, Rockwell complained bitterly about "Red-State fascists" who supported George Bush and his war. So much for the "Rednecks." The antigovernment theories stay the same, the political strategy shifts in odd and extreme directions.

As crazy as it sounds, Ron Paul's newsletter writers may not have been sincerely racist at all. They actually thought that appearing to be racist was a good political strategy in the 1990s. After that strategy yielded almost nothing -- Paul's admirers abandoned it.

It goes on to make a couple other points, like imagining if Mitt Romney had allowed anything like these newsletters to be printed in his book. Hello, campaign deathnail. But somehow it's forgiven for Paul. Weird. And if Paul was actually so innocently oblivious to these newsletters, how oblivious would the 77-year-old version of him be as President?

[devilsfan26]

I don't disagree that he might have been pandering for votes, but that alone isn't enough to label him as "a typical politician". His opposition to campaigns funded by corporations and special interests and his platform's consistency is more important to me. Based on his voting record I am not concerned about him having any racist thoughts, and whether or not he used this as pandering for votes isn't a big enough deal for me to choose one of the other typical status quo garbage candidates over him.

[Daniel]

Well since you asked, Yes. If we as a species are ever to continue to progress and improve, the chains of religion need to cast aside. Any candidate who lets bullcrap religious dogma impact their political and legislative positions is unfit for office. If you want to be ignorant on your own time, go ahead but not when your actions impact other human beings. This applies directly to Santorum and by extension to Mitt due to his high position with the CoLDS which separates him from a causual congregation member. If you believe in fairy tales, I cannot trust you to make sound judgments on other much more important issues.

Plenty of nations that casted aside "the chains of religion" were plenty violent themselves, see Mao's China, the Soviet Union, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, and even Nazi Germany, which, at most, tolerated certain religions.

As a contemporary example, South Korea, which has a vibrant religious segment of its population, has progressed and improved much further over the years than has its officially atheist neighbor to the north.

The "free exercise" of religion in the First Amendment is just as important as the prohibition on the "establishment of religion."

[Daniel]

His opposition to campaigns funded by corporations and special interests and his platform's consistency is more important to me.

I'm pretty sure that he is not opposed to any such thing. He's against the causes of large political donations from corporations and special interest groups, which are undoubtedly the vastly expanded power of the federal government.

Edited January 4, 2012 by Daniel