ron paul

Yesterday I noticed a growing sentiment amongst those on the right; that they lost because of Mitt Romney. Here's a quick summary from Salon:

It’s been less than 24 hours since the polls closed and already the first shots in an emerging civil war within the conservative movement are being fired. Right-leaning pundits have been taking turns beating up on Mitt Romney and blaming him for the loss last night. Donald Trump just tweeted, “Congrats to @KarlRove on blowing $400 million this cycle. Every race @CrossroadsGPS ran ads in, the Republicans lost. What a waste of money.” And GOP leaders are already taking to the barricades on either side of the divide, which basically comes down to this question: Were Romney and the GOP too conservative or not conservative enough?

Granted, none of this is a shock. We hear this all the time from not only the right, but also the left. But as non-shocking as it may be, I always shake my head at the argument "the establishment picked this candidate". That was the meme in 2008, when John McCain won the GOP nomination. Apparently Republicans forget about that entire primary process and going to the polls earlier this year.

But there is something that has shocked me. From the same Salon article, we see a real fracture growing in the GOP:

But on the other side of the fight, Herman Cain, the former presidential candidate who still has a robust following via his popular talk radio program and speaking tours, today suggested the most clear step to open civil war: secession. Appearing on Bryan Fischer’s radio program this afternoon, Cain called for a large faction of Republican Party leaders to desert the party and form a third, more conservative party.

In the wee hours the Iowa GOP finally called the caucus for Mitt Romney by a whopping eight votes, but the story of the night was close second place by Rick Santorum. Suddenly many on the right are rallying behind Santorum, thinking he could maybe pull this out. Of course they would be mistaken.

Santorum has based his entire campaign on Iowa, a state not known for picking winners. He has spent months campaigning there and was the only candidate to visit all 99 counties in the state. The entire base of his finances have also gone to winning Iowa.

But what now? Outside of Iowa Santorum has no real operations. A poll released this morning shows Santorum gaining some ground in New Hampshire, but he is still in fifth and his support seems to be coming from Gingrich supporters. South Carolina is even worse, where Santorum is in last place. Outside of Iowa, Rick Santorum is a nobody.

Hearing Newt's speech last night he sounded as though he was staying in the race to run interference for Santorum, but the polls show something different. By Newt staying in the race, he will actually be helping Romney and hurting Santorum since most Newt voters would end up going for Santorum.

The only real help Santorum will see is from Ron Paul. Many of Paul's supporters would switch to Romney should he drop out. As we know from 2008 Ron Paul is not one to drop out, so that will give Santorum a little boost, but he still has Gingrich screwing with him.

Charles Johnson over at LGF has the details:

Andrew Kaczynski has dug up yet another buried video, a 1998 John Birch Society documentary starring none other than Ron Paul — a classic example of far right paranoia and conspiracy theorizing. Dr. Paul carefully explains that the United Nations is plotting to take over America, create a New World Order, confiscate every red-blooded patriot’s guns, disband all churches, and replace the US Constitution with the UN Charter.

Here's the actual video. Grab the popcorn and aluminum foil because we're going down the conspiracy hole!

News was made yesterday when Ron Paul walked out of an interview with CNN's Gloria Borger when asked about some racist newsletters sent in his name in the 80's and 90's. Here's video of that moment:

But was CNN out of bounds here, or is Ron Paul trying not to hold up to his history? Well it turns out that in 1995 Ron Paul gave a C-Span interview where he took full responsibility of the newsletters

Ron Paul has a serious racist past and he's trying to run from it now. Luckily we have the way back machine of the internets to expose the truth about him.

This also shows why the GOP is in an extreme frenzy trying to discredit Paul. He's looking like he'll win Iowa and that puts the GOP in a really bad position, especially in a time when there has been a lot of racism charges against the party.

The circus is just getting started, so grab some popcorn because this show is going to be one for the history books!

Something that really deserves more attention is the lack of any powerhouses within the GOP. We saw this in 2008, when Republicans had to suck it up and vote for John McCain. We are seeing it again now with the right trying to figure out which Republican candidate is the lesser of two evils.

Are the people supporting Mitt really supporting him or are they more so going against Newt?

Is Newt's support coming from people who actually believe in Newt, or is coming from people voting against Mitt Romney?

How about Ron Paul? His sudden surge has left a lot of pundits scratching their heads. A man who wants to legalize drugs and prostitution, something so far from the social conservative base that it might as well be in Amsterdam, has become a serious contender in the GOP race.

What's fueling that sudden Ron Paul surge? Is it people supporting Ron Paul or is it people so fed up with the other choices that they have no other option?

In all these questions both options can ring true, but looking at polling data and reading commentary you quickly realize that it's not really support driving these candidates, but rather a lack of any real choice.

One of the problems facing today's GOP is that they have gone so far to the right that they have actually forgotten who they are or in what country they are living. They believe that America is a far right country, when in fact it is moderate, if not more on the left. I come to that conclusion from recently spending a few hours digging through tons of polls on social issues. When you look at things like gay marriage, taxing the rich, a woman's right to choose, the death penalty, social programs, gun control and about any other issue you can think of, America takes a more leftist view.

Everyone in politics is guilty of spin and the American people are tired of it. It becomes even more painstaking when the spin involves unemployment, which affects the very livelihood of many Americans. Today on Fox News, DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz did just that type of spinning that I, like so many others, is tired of hearing:

Actually that started as a spin leading into a spin. The fact of the matter is that unemployment did go up since President Obama took office. There is no arguing that, but Schutz's response was troubling. She is trying to ignore that unemployment went up because it is now within one percentage point of when Obama took office.

This is something that can put a lot of voters off. We are talking about an extremely important issue here and that issue deserves absolute candor without all the spin. Schultz should have admitted that unemployment did go up since Obama took office and should have pointed out that a big part of that was most likely because of the obstructionism President Obama has faced from the Republicans in Congress. I say most likely because no one can know for sure what would have happened if we had a real stimulus package put in place instead of the water-downed version that had to be put out to get past a Republican filibuster.

Politics in America is changing and it looks like it's for the better. People want honesty. In my previous post on the new CBS poll we see that in the numbers, particularly on the blame of the economy question. A lot of pundits and politicians have tried to spin the economic collapse into being a post 1/20/09 occurrence, when it actually happened apexed in October of 2008, when Bush was still President (and started in 2007).

Kent Snyder, Ron Paul’s 2008 campaign manager and the man credited with pushing Paul into running for President, died at the age of 49 just two weeks after Paul ended his 2008 bid.

Like the man in Blitzer's example, the 49-year-old Snyder (pictured) was relatively young and seemingly healthy* when the illness struck. He was also uninsured. When he died on June 26, 2008, two weeks after Paul withdrew his first bid for the presidency, his hospital costs amounted to $400,000. The bill was handed to Snyder's surviving mother (pictured, left), who was incapable of paying. Friends launched a website to solicit donations.

So where was the personal responsibility here? Not only the responsibility of Snyder, as Paul would say, but the responsibility of Ron Paul himself? Paul brought in $35 million during his 2008 run and employed 250 people, yet he couldn’t give them health insurance? According to Ron Paul his own campaign would be a burden on the system.

This is another example of how people believe anything they are told. They believe Ron Paul has all these great ideas, yet apparently Ron Paul doesn’t even believe so since he doesn’t live up to them. Ron Paul is nothing but another fraud in the broken American political system.

A new poll, this time out of New Hampshire:

When PPP polled New Hampshire in April Michele Bachmann was stuck at 4%. She's gained 14 points over the last three months and now finds herself within single digits of Mitt Romney. Romney continues to lead the way in the state with 25% to 18% for Bachmann, 11% for Sarah Palin, 9% for Ron Paul, 7% for Rick Perry and Herman Cain, 6% for Jon Huntsman and Tim Pawlenty, and 4% for Newt Gingrich.

Ironically I still see a lot of people on the left, laughing off Bachmann as some sort of joke. I really hope they stop it soon.