Ron Paul has a provocative new ad out asking Americans to imagine Chinese or Russian troops occupying Texas in the way American troops occupied Iraq and are occupying Afghanistan.
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Ron Paul has a provocative new ad out asking Americans to imagine Chinese or Russian troops occupying Texas in the way American troops occupied Iraq and are occupying Afghanistan.
While I quibble at the margins of this, it’s a strong point. It’s also proof positive that Ron Paul isn’t seriously campaigning for president of the United States but rather using the campaign as a platform for his message.
I don’t know how this translates into not being a serious contender for president. It’s simply pointing out the question “Would American’s like foreign soldiers point guns at them on a routinely basis?” Anyone who actually values liberty would say No very loudly but yet they have no problems doing it to others in foreign countries which is hypocritical.
It’s a serious question, yes. It’s being taken as an unserious move in terms of winning an election for POTUS, because, basically, voters are hypocritical about this and far too few of them will re-evaluate in light of an ad like this. The argument isn’t that Paul is wrong.
Hence “more interested in getting his message out there” than winning. That is not a bad thing, IMO, for the country. It’s a good thing.
@john personna:
At two and a half minutes its too long for TV, but it an effective ad none the less.
Or just show Red Dawn all the time and ask if those kids from CO were terrorists.
That’s not a Ron Paul campaign ad. It was created by a group of grassroots individuals and then promoted by RevPac, a Ron Paul supporting SuperPac. It’s also not new, it’s been around several months.
@mantis:
The point is that Obama campaigned on being the peace candidate as opposed to Hillary and McCain. He’s done nothing of the sort, the whole “withdrawal” from Iraq was a political move to sucker the anti-war left vote.
I remember Obama’s pitch in 2008 being the “mostly” peace candidate. Peace with an asterisk, if you will.
He mentioned “send the troops home from Iraq” at every single opportunity and every stump speech. But he also made plain his intention to continue, if not double down, on Afghanistan. Anyone paying an iota of attention to his speeches saw this.
Indeed, if he weren’t running against the modern Republican party, he likely wouldn’t have been dubbed a peace candidate at all… but it might be valid in the face of comparison.
He’s done nothing of the sort, the whole “withdrawal” from Iraq was a political move..
What the hell does that mean?
Did he withdraw the troops or not?
Everything an elected official does can be considered “political”, by definition. What do you even mean by “political:?
If a candidate vows to end a war, how is that not a political statement? If he then fulfills his promise, how is that not a political act?
@Tano:
Simple it’s an election year, if he was actually serious he would’ve put that number one priority when he got into office. Obama sees the writing on the wall, people want him out, independents have abandoned him and the left views him as a corporatist sell out.
@Mark:
The deep irony is that there had to be bootleg Red Dawn Dads in Iraq before GW II. Remember American kids building Pedal?
if he was actually serious he would’ve put that number one priority when he got into office.
Sorry, but that is pure BS. Do you really think that the way to be “serious” about an issue is to make it the number one priority- if by that you mean to go ahead with the promise while being completely blind to what the consequences will be if you do not handle the process in an intelligent manner? In a manner that would fulfill the promise but also minimize any unwanted consequences?
I ‘ll take a President who tries to the right thing in the right way. Any day. Over someone who thinks that a policy objective can be pursued without any regard to collateral consequences.
Obama sees the writing on the wall, people want him out,
More BS Obama is ahead in all one on one matchups. And he is respected and liked more than any of the Republicans. The only thing standing between him and a landslide re-elect, and yeah, possibly even any kind of reelection, is the state of the economy. Certainly not anything about how he has handled Iraq, or any other aspect of foreign policy.
@Tano:
Obama has left thousands of US soldiers and mercenaries in Iraq stationed on one of the largest military bases in the world. The war and violence over there will continue indefinitely.
Additionally, Bin Laden is “dead” but we still have hundreds of thousands of troops in Afghanistan for no clear reason with no obvious objective and no end in sight.
Your hypocrisy is blinding. Condemn Bush for one thing and vindicate Obama for the same actions. Did he stop pandering to corporate interests? End the Iraq war in year one like he promised? Close Guantanamo? Improve the economy? Address the debt?
You’re exactly the same as all the corrupt big government neo-cons who stick to party lines regardless of what benefits the country in order to win elections. Anyone deluded enough to think that the Republicans and Democrats are different is watching too much CNN or Fox News.
Reality Chump.
There are no American forces engaged in combat in Iraq. Period. Violence may well continue there, because it is a country with enormous unresolved problems, and fragile institutions that cannot easily resolve those issues peacefully, but the violence does not, and will not include us.
we still have hundreds of thousands of troops in Afghanistan
You obviously do not know what you are talking about. We have 100,000 troops there, with 10,000 on their way out this month – another 30K to leave next year, and the rest to leave by 2014.
The objective is blazingly obvious – to provide basic security for long enough so that the Afghan government forces can be trained up to do the job. Then we leave. Not only is there an end in sight, there is a plan and it is being followed.
Condemn Bush for one thing and vindicate Obama for the same actions.
I don’t recall saying a word about Bush. What the hell are you talking about?
Did he stop pandering to corporate interests?
Ask the corporate interests, who are arguing that he is the least business-friendly president, like ever. (thats BS, but it does show that they are not enthralled by him)
End the Iraq war in year one like he promised?
He is ending it exactly how I thought he would – the quickest way possible without causing the country to descend into chaos.
Close Guantanamo?
No. he didn’t do that.
Improve the economy?
Yes. Hugely. He managed to stop the slide into a depression, and allow the conditions for 2 years of positive growth. The growth is obviously way slower than we need it to be, but I really cannot see how he is responsible for that. The collapse of the financial sector has impoverished tens of millions of people and that absent demand is holding back the economy. There is not much that any President can do about that, other than offer short term stimulus, and Obama has done that as much as the political system (read Republicans) would allow.
Address the debt?
Its a secondary problem. It needs to be addressed after the recovery is secure.
Anyone deluded enough to think that the Republicans and Democrats are different….
Anyone who thinks they are the same is a fricken moron.
@Tano: You are correct sir…my apologies. It was Cyrano in New York.
1. Obama promised to get out of Iraq. I might have wished for a speedier withdrawl, but it’s been done (though the mercenary force left behind raises questions). Seeing as his policy has been cast as lilly-livered appeasement surrenderism by most of the Right, I can’t muster much angst, sorry.
2. Obama also promised to double-down on Afghanistan (and be aggressive in Pakistan). Therefore, while one can certainly disagree with his policy in AfPak – and I do at this point – it’s dishonest to claim he reneged. He didn’t. He actually did what he said he’d do. No one can reasonably claim candidate Obama and President Obama are opposed on this.
3. It’s irritating, because the ad is mostly bang-on. The falsehood sticks out and undermines the message. And if you really need to throw some elbows at Obama, there are other lines of attack that are both true and even more important to the public: civil liberties abuses. Transparency FAIL. Going after whistleblowers to the max. Detention policy. And so forth. This is SUCH FERTILE GROUND. But instead, we get this dishonesty. It’s annoying.
@Hey Norm:
I hope you reaize, his campaign did not post this ad!!
Bush signed a bilateral agreement that was ratified by the Iraqi government in 2008, right before he left office. That agreement stated that all troops would be gone by December 2011.
Obama simply adhered to the schedule.
Regardless, we’ll still keep thousands of contractors earning taxpayer money at a gigantic embassy in Bagdad.
The problem with seeing everything in terms of game theory, with Machiavellian, short term interest moves only, is that every now and then a visionary comes along and issues in a sea change. These short term moves are closely reverted to mean reversion models in finance (which causes the occasional failures of banks), or the sustainment of the status quo in large corporations which leaves them vulnerable to disruptive economic change. Essentially, having no vision and making decisions by means of having one’s ear to the floor, leaves one very vulnerable to a person with strategy and vision. Ron Paul is such a man.
My politics Ph.D. friends tend to analyze Ron Paul the same as Dr. Joyner here. However I feel it’s a bit shortsided to be dismissive of these public-spirited strategies that founded and substantially transformed the Republic so many times. The people who executed these contrarian strategies in various nations (the Founders, Abe Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Rosa Parks, Gandhi, MLKJ, Thoreau, Tolstoy, etc) sometimes ended up dead but also often ended up with substantial power after their change worked its way through the system. A better way of analyzing such people is viewing them as a “black swan” event that has little probability of success but offers major change when it does succeed.
Ron Paul would indeed end up with very substantial political power and influence if he succeeds in convincing people of his ideas. He really has little choice than to continue to back his ideas, with the very real intention of winning the US Presidency. Because it is his contrarian edge and willingness to stand up to people who are Wrong — this same impulse founds religions and advances humanity. He relies on it for all of his strength — for funding, his continued political career, the very substantial influence he has already made, and his quite earnest intention to win the Presidency.
