Ya know...

[bovil]

So I read this in the paper yesterday:


It's not without irony that the story of Ron Paul's "Ron Paul Political Report" is hitting CNN and the rest of the media (well, except Fox News, who apparently doesn't report so you can't decide) now.

The Pajamas Media article even has links to scans of whole report pages.

Now we're talking about something that Congressman Paul claims he didn't write. I bet he's even telling the truth. It probably was his newsletter editor.

It's still as big a problem.

You often see candidates throwing blame on their campaign staffers. National campaigns are large organizations, subordinates will do stupid things without anybody above approving it.

That's still a problem.

Ron Paul's newsletter, though, wasn't a national campaign. There weren't layers of management separating him from what was happening. There weren't thousands of employees and volunteers that needed to be managed. It was a political fanzine for all practical purposes.

The federal government dwarfs a national campaign. It's a much bigger management job. If Ron Paul failed to manage a little newsletter all those years, he shouldn't be managing the country.

(Of course, by that standard, GWB's spectacular management failures should have disqualified him out of the gate.)

Comments

[madoc62.livejournal.com]

Andy,

Ron Paul is a whack job of the first order. The only reason the guy is attracting what attention he has is due to a bunch of overly savvy Web geeks who are jonesing for something "cool" to root for politically.

Paul espouses what would traditionally paint him a Libertarian but he hasn't declared himself one, officially. Had he done so then it'd suddenly become a whole heckuvalot harder for him to have gotten on ballots nationwide. He'd also have to contend with the Pat Buchanan followers who've taken over the bulk of what was the Libertarian Party. He'd have been expending so much of his energy dealing with them that there'd have been nothing left for national campaigning.

So, by calling himself a Republican, Ron Paul gets the access that comes with being part of a mainstream political party whilst spouting a "radical" a "new" and a "cool" political line. A line which wouldn't push him above the day to day fray in the Libertarian world.

The bulk of the folks who are pushing him in the Republican Party seem to be doing so due to it's being fashionable. He's not one of the tired old faces that are so long familiar from the GOP side of the aisle. But Paul's views are horribly, horribly unworkable and, at best, are naive. His idea of reducing the US military down to just a cadre sized force is inviting death and destruction to our shores the likes of which we've never seen. Every previous time the US has tried facing the world with but a "cadre sized" military we've wound up in wars that have been horribly costly for the first couple of years it takes to train up and expand the military into something effective.

Back when it took weeks to cross the Atlantic and when the most destructive weapon in anyone's arsenal was a muzzle loading cannon that could barely spit a round three miles away, this minimal military policy was something deemed acceptable. Nowadays?

And that's just to start when it comes to the good Mr. Ron.

His dodging and weaving and waffling about his newsletter is showing another enormous shortfall to the man and his agenda.

This guy is not ready for primetime.

Madoc

[yourbob.livejournal.com]

The only reason I listen to him at all (and not much) is because he has some interesting ideas. Impractical? Yup. Undoable? Yup. Nutty? Often. But they're an interesting point in the discussion.

His main problem is, he seems sincerely to believe most of them.

Oh, and GWB's failures did disqualify him - unfortunately Darth Cheney's supposed competence lulled even some of us who switched parties in order to vote against GWB in the primary.

[seekatesew.livejournal.com]

Is it wrong that I initially read all those ads as "Ru Paul for President"?

Would probably be a better candidate...