Ron Paul Roundup
Obviously Ron Paul has been the candidate du jour for the media. Here are three pieces from the past week that have appeared online. First, Dave Weigel in Reason with a rather dour piece on "The Paul Paradox", which goes like this: The success of Ron Paul's message is inversely proportional to the support his campaign receives. I think this is a little too depressing and I wonder if the chat around the offices at Reason is the material cause for Brian Doherty to say, "Culturally, he strikes a lot of the more cosmopolitan libertarians as a yokel" to Michael Crowley in The New Republic's profile of Paul. Today Peter Suderman added to the pile-on at NRO, with a surprisingly sympathetic article.
And I'll join in. My profile of Ron Paul will appear in the next issue of The American Conservative, along with a piece by Kara Hopkins on the party establishment that is acting so quickly to try and silence him.
What I've found fascinating about Ron Paul is that my friends who do not care at all about politics find themselves excited by him. The sheer novelty of a strongly anti-war Republican totally blows their mind. It is enough to make one wonder if the increased ideological conformity of the major parties actually makes them more susceptible to serious challenge. If GOPism and Democratism are taken as shorthands for conservatism and liberalism - then those categories have become more brittle than ever before since it is rather easy to attack the major parties.
Michael Brendan Dougherty
in Politics
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Reader Comments (1)
Immigration is the issue on the right and the war is the issue on the left.
Still, I have always wondered about the suppossed 67%+ support for Iraq on the Republican side. I just don't see it in the circles I keep.