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Ron Paul

Sean Hannity is Not the Future

[Obligations and opportunities in meatspace have been taking all my time. I have much to point at, but no free fingers to do it here.]

A few months ago a finished a book called The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy - What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny. Written in 1997, the authors predicted a major change in the socio-cultural-political order sometime near 2010. The twenty-somethings of today are in the same cyclic position as the boomers were in the 1960s.

Since I have been predicting a collapse and Brief Period of Violent Upheaval for a few years, I find the theories in The Fourth Turning to be brilliant. I may have joined the Liberty Movement and made friends with the Paulbots just in time to be on the right side of history:

This past Sunday night I was watching Madmen which this season takes place in 1966 New York City. One of the key ongoing themes of the show is how the World War II and Korean War generations dealt with the massive influx of new ideas which were born from the baby boomers. There was a good bit of fear, but for many of the characters there’s even more a sense of just plain confusion. What the hell is going on?

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Ron Paul Wins Minnesota

For a guy who is so roundly dimissed, it is easy to find anti-Paul snark around the intertracks. One of the standard barbs is to point out that Ron Paul hasn’t won any States during primary season.

That changed yesterday:

All the CD conventions have conclude and Paul has won 20 out of the 24 delegate slots at stake and nearly all of the alternates. Given that the composition of the delegations to the state convention, which is set for May 4-5 [May 18-19] in St. Cloud, is similar to that of the CD conventions, there is a very good chance Rep. Paul will come away with the lion's share of delegates from Minnesota.

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RP Sweeps MN CD5

I was a part of this:

In Minnesota, Ron Paul supporters swept the three district conventions that occurred today, winning nine of nine delegates to the national convention. Minnesota is set to hold more such conventions next week.

The RP local delegates seem to understand that their cause is bigger than one election. They have learned the rules and built a movement, taking over most of the offices in the precinct- and district-level Republican Party.

The Minneapolis and Metro-area GOP is no longer your father’s Republican Party. It is the Founding Fathers’ Republican Party.

Next month we find out if the Ron Paul R3voltion can complete an overthrow of the Minnesota GOP.

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Paul’s Strategy Works in St. Louis

What happened in Minnesota’s Senate District 60 has been repeated in St. Louis, MO:

The slate backing Paul cast 158 votes in the non-binding caucus Saturday. The purpose was to choose representatives to a round of Congressional district meetings in April and June that will repeat the process to send 52 delegates from Missouri to the August convention in Tampa, Fla.

The slate that primarily backed Santorum had 74 votes, while the Romney slate mustered 50 votes.

The delegates to the next-higher level are not bound, but it is widely understood that Paul supporters are fiercely loyal. It is unlikely they’ll be voting to support Santorum or Romney.

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Ron Paul Sweeps SD 60

Minnesota is a caucus state. That means it selects its delegates to a national political convention through a cascade of smaller elections. Last month I went to the lowest, grassroots caucus of the Republican party. I was elected a delegate and had a right to vote in the next tier of the election cascade.

That election was held yesterday. Since this is a redistricting year and political unit boundaries are redrawn, the first order of business was to establish rules and adopt a constitution for what is now the Minnesota Senate District 60 Republican Party (SD 60).

I enjoy rules and rulemaking, so this was not tedious. Parliamentary procedure was a bigger factor in this convention than in most neighborhood meetings, but less strict than the government meetings I watch on public-access TV.

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Cobb Goes Crackpot

One thoughtful, skeptical self-described neocon has put domestic reconstruction ahead of nation building:

So I think today that I'm going to follow Taleb and cast a vote for Ron Paul, the nutcase crackpot. Why? Because only a nutcase crackpot like Paul (being very specific) has the nerve to base his entire campaign on a few salient facts and properly directed wishful thoughts.


In other words, I've recognized the value of killing obstacles blocking my view of the world, and for me, 99% of them are financial. Therefore what I need to do is make every effort to kill financial obstacles. That means voting for Ron Paul because only Ron Paul will create the conditions under which the proper disaster will occur in the short term. Obama and Romney on the other hand will sustain a stasis field which will behave like Wile E. Coyote walking on air over a deeper and deeper ravine.

Person in Chewbacca costume with Ron Paul sign and Gadsden FlagCollapse is inevitable. We might be able to use politics to shape it, or to delay it. But it will happen. The sooner losses are recognized in a Great Repricing, the smaller our aggregate suffering.

If Cobb can find a reason to vote for the wookie, the wookie might have a chance.

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TEA, RP & GOP

The TEA people are loosely organized. Just exactly what they want and which candidates merit their support is an ongoing debate.

Karl Denninger denigrates them because of polling which suggests the TEA people are in favor of maintaining a significant welfare state. Vox Popoli looks at different polls and mocks the TEA people for being in favor of pre-emptive war and nation building. From what I see, there is some overlap between all these factions. I maintain that they stand for exactly what their acronym represents: Taxed Enough Already.

It’s not a sophisticated movement, more an ad-hoc coalition of one shared sentiment. It is a strong and widely-held sentiment which has political weight. The TEA people have not formed a TEA Party with structure that can contend amidst existing major or minor political parties.

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Winning Without Victory

The United States military won the war in Iraq. It looks like they have won the war in Afghanistan, too:

Finally, ABC’s Jake Tapper asked Carney when was “the last time US troops in Afghanistan killed anybody associated with Al Qaeda.” Carney didn’t have an answer, and referred Tapper to the Defense Department and NATO’s International Security Assistance Force.

I queried those agencies Tuesday and got an answer today. According to a Defense Department spokesman, the most recent operation that killed an Al Qaeda fighter was in April 2011—ten months ago.

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Caucus Day Debrief

The caucus for my hunk of the 55418 was held in an elementary school building. Both big parties were having their caucus there. Fitting to party stereotypes, the DFL (Democrats) were assigned to ther library media center, while the Republicans got the lunchroom.

Nobody checked my ID. I just went to the table for my Ward and Precinct and signed in. There was little formality and just enough order to make the proceedings legitimate. When we finally got started on business, about fifteen minutes late, the Convener was amazed by the turnout. He said that in 2010 there were 9 people. This time we had 47.

Of the 47, I recognized a small handful from my time as a community organizer. It's no wonder that the NRP served as a farm system to develop DFL candidates. The Republicans evidently didn't try to take over the system that funneled millions of dollars from the City to neighborhoods.

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Catholic R3VOLution

The Obama/UnicornCare contraception mandate offers a new lens through which we can view the GOP primary race. From 2007’s Open Letter to Catholics on Behalf of Ron Paul:

Although I would have supported Ron Paul back before I converted to Catholicism, I think Catholics will like what they see when they examine his record. Over at Defend Life, Ron Paul comes out decisively on top in a study of the candidates’ positions on the issues according to the guidelines recently established by the United States bishops. (If anything, I think this study understates Paul’s compatibility with Catholic teaching.)

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Caucus for the Constitution

I don’t like political parties. I understand why they exist in the United States, but they ultimately serve themselves more than serving the people. But I may attend my first party caucus next week.

I want to support the Constitution and it quirky proponent, Ron Paul. He can’t win, he’s crazy, he will get us all blown up by Iranians, blah, blah blah. But if I have integrity to my belief in our Founding Principles, and if this really is The Most Important Election Ever! I must go support the candidate who best represents my view. There are no bystanders.

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Dogs in a Horse Race

Right now, they all support positions I don’t hold.

Quoted from: Ron Paul, in an interview with CNN after South Carolina’s 2012 primary.

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Paulbots Exploiting the Process

In 2008, Rush Limbaugh announced “Operation Chaos”. The plan was to have righty voters participate in the Democrat primary process as supporters of Hillary Clinton. Limbaugh thought that it was important to make extend the Dem primary and give Hillary time to soften up Obama before he faced whoever the righties nominated.

I imagine there’s some of this going on now in the righty primary process. Ron Paul’s success in Iowa was attributed to support from Democrats (and Independents). The conventional wisdom says these voters are lefties who would vote for Obama in the general election. From what I hear from the Progs on the radio and in meatspace, I’m not sure the conventional wisdom will hold.

There’s faction of lefties who are participating in the GOP primaries not to weaken the eventual nominee, but expressly to see Paul become President:

Most of us identify as Democrats or Independents and/or supported Obama in 2008. We believe that on issues that matter most – war vs. peace (Iraq, Yemen etc.), civil liberties (Patriot Act etc.), and crony corporatism (bailouts etc.) – Obama has pursued a course similar to George Bush. Our reasoning is laid out in this article by Robin Koerner on the Huffington Post that “went viral”, coining the term “Blue Republicans” for those of more liberal sensibilities who are registering Republican specifically for Ron Paul.

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Turn This Ship Around

CVN-76 nuclear carrier listing to port under hard rudder at full speed

The USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76) under full rudder at speed. She is 1,092 feet long, her deck is 252 feet wide, and she weighs 101,400 tons.

If you zoom waaay in, you can see Ron Paul at the helm.

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An Intelligent Conversation on Paul’s Foreign Policy

Within the comments on a Vox Popoli post about Santorum comes a reasoned and reasonable discussion of Ron Paul’s foreign policy. At last!

Following are excerpts which I think flow together well enough. I would normally put this in “blockquote” style, but it is long so I am not quoting in favor of readability.

===

SWW
I think you're essentially correct, that the foreign policy is an obstacle for many. It doesn't help that the media mostly distorts his position and attempts to box him in with gotcha questions. All in all, I think he handles it quite well.

But let me ask you, or anyone, how would you articulate the non-interventionist position any better, so that it wasn't automatically disregarded as crazy.

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Thumping the Political Bible

Ron Paul’s supporters are regular accused of hoping for their own messiah. They’re tarred with the same brush used on the Hope-and-Change unicorn squad. Doesn’t make sense to me, because nobody wants a messiah who promises to leave everybody alone as much as possible. That’s almost an anti-messiah.

After last night’s Iowa caucus, Tam sees it like this:

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Plutocracy Rising

Conspiracy theorists are held in disregard for their crazy conclusions about hierarchies of control. The New World Order, a canonical example of conspiracy theories, is alleged to be:

a secretive power elite with a globalist agenda is conspiring to eventually rule the world through an authoritarian world government—which replaces sovereign nation-states—and an all-encompassing propaganda that ideologizes its establishment as the culmination of history's progress.

To me, that’s more than far-fetched. It presumes a god-like ability to coordinate and control conflicting factions. People don’t fall into line so easily, and local conditions are always pushing them out of line. Even God can’t seem to get everyone to agree on who He is or what He demands.

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Fragments on Foreign Policy

As I argue around the intertracks, I find it necessary to confirm, extend and adjust what I think I know. As Big Media and the Righty Establishment is apoplectic over what they think Ron Paul’s foreign policy is, I wondered what the current foreign policy of the United States claims to be. To Wikipedia!

The officially stated goals of the foreign policy of the United States, as mentioned in the Foreign Policy Agenda of the U.S. Department of State, are "to create a more secure, democratic, and prosperous world for the benefit of the American people and the international community." In addition, the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs states as some of its jurisdictional goals: "export controls, including nonproliferation of nuclear technology and nuclear hardware; measures to foster commercial intercourse with foreign nations and to safeguard American business abroad; international commodity agreements; international education; and protection of American citizens abroad and expatriation." U.S. foreign policy and foreign aid have been the subject of much debate, praise and criticism both domestically and abroad.

The essential test for all of that is: Is it Constitutional?

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I’m O.K., You’re a Paulbot

During the two most-recent Republican debates, Ron Paul got to me. He said, “We all swear the same Oath.” An oath to uphold and defend the Constitution.

If we are a nation of laws, integrity to that oath is the supreme qualification to hold the office of President. Or any government office, really.

Investigating Paul’s policy ideas, I have found that the Big Media and blogosphere characterizations are inadequate when they’re not entirely disingenuous. He, above all the other candidates seems to attract ad hominems instead of criticisms.

It is difficult to find a logical deconstruction of a Paul idea, but you can barely type a “P” in the search box before a hundred hits with words like “loony” “crazy” “wackjob” come up.

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