{"id":39897,"date":"2012-01-18T11:51:36","date_gmt":"2012-01-18T19:51:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=39897"},"modified":"2012-01-18T11:51:36","modified_gmt":"2012-01-18T19:51:36","slug":"investigating-ron-paul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=39897","title":{"rendered":"Investigating Ron Paul"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jason Maoz writes<\/a>: Why have the media for the most part been so reluctant to expose the long documented fringe positions \u2013 including a clear and deep animus toward Israel \u2013 articulated by Texas congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul?<\/p>\n

Why have journalists whose greatest pleasure consists of waxing indignant over any misstep or misstatement, real or perceived, by Republican politicians not been particularly eager to examine the racially charged statements \u2013 example: \u201cOrder was only restored in L.A. [following the Rodney King-inspired riots] when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks\u201d \u2013 usually written in the first person in newsletters bearing Paul\u2019s name in the 1980s and 1990s? (He now says he did not edit those publications and has claimed \u201cmoral responsibility for not paying closer attention to what went out under my name.\u201d)<\/p>\n

One theory is that many reporters kind of like the idea of having Paul around as a stick with which to hit the other Republican candidates, all of whom differ with Paul on most major issues. There has been a tendency to portray Paul as something of a principled eccentric, a wizened cracker barrel philosopher unafraid of bucking GOP orthodoxy, hence the disinclination to discredit him, either at present or when he ran for president four years ago.<\/p>\n

When Paul mounted a run for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, James Kirchick wrote a disturbing expose of the man and his views for The New Republic. As Kirchick noted, there were those in the media who were all too eager to make a case for Paul\u2019s alleged down-home integrity, all too often without bothering to mention any of his far from mainstream views.<\/p>\n

(The conservative writer Christopher Caldwell described Paul as a \u201cformidable stander on constitutional principle\u201d while ABC\u2019s Jake Tapper called him \u201cthe one true straight-talker in this race.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Kirchick\u2019s article made something of a ripple among political junkies but really didn\u2019t have much of an impact on the wider public; besides, outside of his relatively small but extremely devoted following, Paul in 2008 was never taken seriously as a candidate.<\/p>\n

Four years later, with a wildly fragmented party and a collection of mostly unimpressive presidential wannabes, none of whom has failed to spark more than a passing infatuation among the GOP rank and file, Paul finds himself counted among the top tier of candidates in some of the early primary states.<\/p>\n

However, writes Kirchick in a follow-up piece on Paul in the current issue of The Weekly Standard, not much has changed when it comes to Paul\u2019s seeming embrace of conspiracy scenarios or his disdain for Israel:<\/p>\n

Paul has gone right on appearing regularly on the radio program of Alex Jones, the most popular conspiracy theorist in America (unless that distinction belongs to Paul himself). To understand Jones\u2019s paranoid worldview, it helps to watch a recent documentary he produced, Endgame: Blueprint for Global Enslavement, which reveals the secret plot of George Pataki, David Rockefeller, and Queen Beatrix, among other luminaries, to exterminate humanity and transform themselves into \u201csuperhuman\u201d computer hybrids able to \u201ctravel throughout the cosmos.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2026.In a March 2009 interview, Paul entertained Jones\u2019s claim that NORTHCOM, the U.S. military\u2019s combatant command for North America, is \u201ctaking over\u201d the country. \u201cThe average member of Congress probably isn\u2019t a participant in the grand conspiracy,\u201d Paul reassured the fevered host, essentially acknowledging that such a conspiracy exists\u2026.
\nLikewise, Paul\u2019s insistence that America should be a \u201cfriend\u201d of Israel is belied by public statements like one from a November 22 GOP debate: \u201cWhy do we have this automatic commitment that we\u2019re going to send our kids and send our money endlessly to Israel?\u201d<\/p>\n

Eric Dondero, a former Paul congessional and campaign aide, insists that Paul is not anti-Semitic, but acknowledges that he \u201cis, however, most certainly anti-Israel.\u201d In a widely circulated blog post this week, Dondero writes that Paul \u201cwishes the Israeli state did not exist at all. He expressed this to me numerous times in our private conversations\u2026. He sides with the Palestinians, and supports their calls for the abolishment of the Jewish state\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jason Maoz writes: Why have the media for the most part been so reluctant to expose the long documented fringe positions \u2013 including a clear and deep animus toward Israel \u2013 articulated by Texas congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul? … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[28745,12593,28746,28748,10071,28747],"class_list":["post-39897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-christopher-caldwell","tag-jake-tapper","tag-political-junkies","tag-republican-politicians","tag-republican-presidential-nomination","tag-texas-congressman"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39897\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}