Cleveland Buck;908007 wrote:Paul has said that he won't run as a third party candidate, but his supporters aren't going to vote for an establishment Republican that is no better than Obama. That is at least 10% of Republican primary voters that won't just vote for whoever has the R by their name. None of the other candidates beat Obama with independants, and if that candidate also loses 10% of Republicans, how are they going to beat Obama?
And you can vote for whoever you want, but of all the reasons not to vote for Paul, that one is pretty ridiculous. If his joke about Kucinich weighs that heavily on your mind then you deserve to vote for Romney and wonder what happened when we invade Iran to try and galvanize a country that is starving because our dollars won't buy food anymore.
The joke about Kucinich was the last of a long line of reasons why Paul isn't my candidate among the Republican field, reasons which are well-documented among other posters on this thread:
1. I'm a war-mongering, chicken-hawking, imperialist, interventionist neo-con who can't wait to spend trillions invading other countries and blowing stuff up and killing innocent civilians.
(Just kidding- I couldn't resist.)
1. Chief among them is his naivete regarding American foreign policy, that if we simply reduce our military presence overseas and withdraw aid from Israel our enemies will all of a sudden want to hold hands with us.
Most of us agree that waste and overspending need to be dealt with in the military budget (as in all areas of the budget), but I don't think I've heard any of the Republican candidates clamoring for an increase in the military budget or calling for an invasion of Iran or any other country.
2. Related to #1 is his comments regarding 9/11. Most of us know the difference between assigning "blame" for 9/11 and explaining reasons why it happened. But I'm not sure his comments don't actually blame American implicitly. For example, he says that 15 or so of the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, and were pissed that we propped and supported the sharia government for so long, so naturally the next step to correct such heinous injustices was to murder thousands of innocent civilians. By assigning a specific reason for the hijackers actions, he is indirectly explaining away some of their guilt. In other words, it's not good enough to call them sicko mass-murderers; we also have to point out how much America sucks in the process.
He kind of alluded to this in the CNN debate before Wolf Blitzer cut him off. He was describing the deaths of thousands of Iraqi civilians, and near the end he said something like, "I'm sure you would be annoyed . . . " if something like that happened. My take from that was that some of the hostility toward America on the part of the hijackers was justified. That stance from a Presidential candidate is unacceptable to me.
3. It's also annoying to read his quotes over the years, and read quotes from some of his closest advisors, bashing every prominent conservative that has ever held office or been respected as a prominent thinker over the past 30 years. Reagan, Bill Buckley, Antonin Scalia, Sarah Palin, pretty much every conservative talk radio personality, etc, etc. Now nobody's claiming these are perfect or have a monopoly on true conservatism, but when you eliminate every conservative bashed by Paul or someone closely associated with him, you're left with no one but- you guessed it- Ron Paul.
I know, I know, Ron Paul invented the Tea Party, Ron Paul wrote the Constitution, etc, etc.
I will say this- even though he's not my candidate, I would still in a heartbeat vote for him in the general election vs. Obama, as I would any of the candidates in the Republican field. I just can't wrap my arms around the reasons for labeling all of the other candidates as establishment Republicans unworthy of a vote vs. Obama, or unable to defeat Obama in the general election. I agree Romney is probably the worst of the bunch, but to lump all the others into his class is inaccurate and misleading.
I'm not putting too much stock in the polls right now. Reagan was tied with Carter at this point in the process in '79, and he went on to win a 44-state landslide. I'm just not feeling the "Ron Paul or go-down-in-flames-in-a-blaze-of-glory-with-a-3rd-party-candidate" attitude.
