Recall this moment during the 2008 Republican Primary campaign.   Ron Paul met up with Rudy Giuliani at the Republican primary debate.  Both had the better of each other, and received their plaudits from their constituencies.

Skipping forward to his progeny, the Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul, who we fairly ascertain as capitalizing on Ron Paul’s following — and the first campaign ad he’s putting out there.

U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul has aired the first television ads of the 2010 election cycle with a 30-second spot that touts his position on national defense.

“I think prisoners of war, enemy combatants and terrorists captured on the battle field should be tried in military court and not brought to the U.S.,” Paul, a Bowling Green ophthalmologist says in the commercial. “I do not believe they should be tried in civilian court.”

David Adams, Paul’s campaign manager, said the ad is running on the Fox News Channel on cable television systems throughout the state.

That’s the type of talk that will get you that much desired Sarah Palin endorsement, the Fox News employee who was interviewed on Fox News (?) and said that Obama can save his presidency by bombing Iran.  Also the type of talk which will firmly establish Rand Paul as a Tool of the Police and Security State, hard to see where .

Once upon a time, a whole mass of peoples threw up Guy Fawkes paraphernalia on the fifth of November (Remember, Remember, the fifth of November) for promotion of Ron Paul — mixing up British and American history items for a Guy Fawkes “Tea Party”.  And last week the thing came to its full circle to it’s basic RNC fund-raising tool.

In a previous time, about a year ago, it was interesting to take note of the Ron Paul acolytes taking on various candidates on the localest of levels in precints in Idaho, and up to the Senate races in Connecticut and Kentucky.  Things have changed.  Ron Paul is now getting three “Tea Party” primary candidates. Curious criticisms, “ineffective”, after the raising acolytes Paul has received as of late — see, for instance, or.

The Ron Paul Revolution is dead.  Bury it, stick a fork in it, give it its last rites.

Item the first:

All politicians need money for their campaigns. But a congressional candidate from Santa Fe is asking supporters to give his campaign something he says is far more valuable than cash: gold and silver.

Kokesh is a supporter of U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, who campaigned for president last year on a platform that included returning U.S. currency to the gold standard.

I’ve seen much the same story before.  I guess running for office to make a point — in this case the Glories of Precious metals — is an honorable use of the ballot access.

The thing about this race, when compared to the earlier Oregon race in 2006, is the rise of Ron Paul into the insertion of the story.  “Ron Paul supporter” becomes either a shorthand, or an explainer for a phenomenon of candidates in Republican primary.  Or else we could say that these candidacies have been taking place from time immemorial (or at least since around the heyday of the Birch Society), but are now being corralled into something else.

… which happened somewhere around the point of:
Item the Second.

Nope.  Nothing cultish about that.
And what in the world is this?

Meanwhile, interesting twists in the race of Rand Paul, enter Kentucky AND Item the Third.

“I was actually going to offer to pay for Rand’s registration myself today with a personal check if he would file what he really is – a Libertarian,” said Mike Bryant, a Paul protester.

Party hack.  It’s a primary — and I do believe a two way primary at that.  If you want the mainline Republican to go to the general against the Democrat instead of the “Libertarian trying to take over the Republican Party” — mobilize your Republican base to beat the Paul.

From Terry Gross’s “Fresh Air” interview with Sacha Baron Cohen, regarding the movie Bruno, and the scene with Ron Paul.
GROSS: It’s a really funny scene. But you know, really, seriously thinking about it, like what options did Ron Paul have? He couldn’t very well stay in the room while you’re stripping, you know? So what could he have done?

Mr. COHEN: Well listen, you know, a lot of this comedy is about putting people, hopefully who are good targets, in uncomfortable situations. That’s the experiment. What does somebody as powerful as this, you know, somebody who’s standing to be the leader of the free world, how does he cope with a man dancing in front of him, you know?

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. COHEN: It shouldn’t be the biggest challenge in the world considering, you know, if he would’ve got the job he would’ve been in the U.N. facing Ahmadinejad or deciding whether to press the red button. You know, how does this guy – is he going to be able to cope with it if he has a Austrian fashion reporter dance provocatively in front of him in a hotel room? I mean incidentally, on the DVD as well, we’ve got – we did the same scene with Tom Ridge and John Bolton.

GROSS: Oh, and also Gary Bauer, the Christian activist.

Mr. CHARLES: Yeah.

Mr. COHEN: Yes.

GROSS: Yes. And why did you try out several different people – tell us why you did it several different from the political world…

Mr. COHEN: Well, well…

GROSS: …how they reacted differently and why you chose Ron Paul in the end.

Mr. CHARLES: Keep in mind that again, this is one take filmmaking. So if we try with Gary Bauer or John Bolton and it doesn’t quite work, it’s very hard to make that scene work in the movie then. And so we try to do it more than once in different locations with different people, sometimes, if we can get those people.

And in this case, we did it a few times all in one day in Washington. We flew to Washington from Los Angeles, shot this all in one day and then flew back – these four different interviews. And ultimately, Ron Paul was the last and we had refined the process through the four – the three times we had done it previously. And so when Ron Paul came in it just wound up being the funniest version of the scene. And he was also probably the most powerful person of all the four people that we had.

From a week ago:

The straw poll at the Value Voters conference should give some indication about the Nuge Factor that is rattling some traditional Republicans. Nugent was the star of the show in some of the Texas “tea party” rallies on April 15. Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina, was sent almost to seizures when a purely conservative crowd started chanting “Ron Paul, Ron Paul, Ron Paul … ” to the tune of “USA, USA, USA … ” during one of his speeches. Paul is not a Republican, Graham shouted back at the group.

I don’t know how that works.  “USA” is three syllables.  “Ron Paul” is two syllables.  Is it “Ron Paul Ron”, “Paul Ron Paul”?  Doesn’t that throw the cadence off?
Is this on youtube so that I can figure this conundrum out?

See also the comment in the postings:

Ron Paul is the only hope for the United States of America, and you and everyone else knows it. Some may be afraid to admit it and some may be too uninformed to recognize it, but by 2012 it will be plain as day.

Individual Liberty my arsh!

I will say, though, that the Lindsey Graham versus Ron Paul supporters storyline is one of the political matches worth watching.

Ron Paul on Sarah Palin:

As for soon-to-be departing Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, Paul dismisses her supporters as “more establishment, conventional Country-Club type of Republicans.”

“I wonder whether she’s energizing the 15-20 year olds,” Paul muses. “That would be a question I would have. Because she doesn’t talk about the Federal Reserve and some of these issues. She doesn’t talk too much about personal liberties, civil liberties, getting rid of drug laws, attacking the war on drugs, punishing people who torture.

Worse still, he adds, Palinites are partisans: “If Obama was the only one who was guilty, they would be on his case all the time, but there is a lot of partisanship and I am probably less partisan and therefore she is going to appeal to partisan Republicans better.”

Sarah Palinite on Ron Paul’s statement:
I thought we were all a bunch of white-trash, trailer park, SoCon hicks who scare the living daylights out of the establishment, country club Republicans.

Different Sarah Palin supporter on Ron Paul’s statement:
“Ron Paul jumps the shark.”

And some mildly amusing statements at freerepublic.

Hm.
Oh, whatever.  Supposedly, Sarah Palin is flirting around and flirting around third party land.  Whatever gives her the traction she desires, I suppose.  Ron Paul?  He’s flirted around fifth party land.  So we at least have some ground level to proceed.

Look at the name in the marquee.

Ron Paul discusses his role here.  I have to side with Paul, whose only “crime” was using the word “queer” as he left the room, and see no real amusement value in 90 minutes of a man rubbing his butt cheeks at various people.

For Ron Paul’s movie career, it is a step up.  Previously, he appeared in such films as Engame:  Blueprint for Global Enslavement, a movie with the not so promising tag-line “They Want You Dead“.  I guess he’s escaped a certain type-cast: he’s role is more uptight foil than sage truth-teller.  (His fans tend to watch other movies and insert him as the hero.)

Both films pretend to have redeemable political and social commentary, but cater to a base level instinct.
(It is worth mentioning that I pulled the youtube video from a blog, in searching for this thing, entitled “Deconstructing the Jewish Crime Network”, the url address including the word “zion” – which is the type of thing which will be sloping off of fans of the “They Want You to Die” movie.

I think I’ve seen this camper before, stocked to the barricades with bumper-stickers.  The most visible is at the top of all four sides:  “9/11 Was An Inside Job”.

Beyond that, there’s “End Wars for Oil and Or Israel”, “9// Controlled Demolition”, “US Troops out of the Middle East!”, “Arrest Bush Cheney Pearl Ashcroft Rice Rumsfeld Powell 9/11 Wars Crimes Lies” (Time to update to the new administration.)  “Bush Rage Allowed”.  “No War on Iraq” “No War on Iran” “IMPEACH” “I Love My Country But Fear my Government”.  “One Nation Under Guard”.
This is one side of the camper.  I didn’t jot down the other side.

And then we throw in these two:

“Ron Paul for President” and “Dennis Kucinich for President”.

Huh.  I guess we do get this from time to time.  But is the optimum ticket Paul / Kucinich or Kucinich / Paul?

I suppose the owner of this camper takes the vast arraignment of disagreements between Paul and Kucinich over the scope of government welfare and beauracracy as meaningless.  The areas of agreement are almost meaingless too, save a point of departure to 9/11 Truth.

For the life of me, I can’t tell from what perspective this is coming from.

But it does link the two current stories in the “Ron Paul Revolution” — the ACLU and “Campaign for Liberty” backed lawsuit against a TSA search of a cash-wielding Ron Paul supporter.

Go one further step to the rawstory link and you find this puzzling opening.

The American Civil Liberties Union may have just earned itself a few more Republican admirers.

That greatly disfigures Ron Paul’s relationship with the Republican Party, but so it shall be.

The other item of news.  Paul’s “Audit the Fed” has gotten its 218th (ergo majority in the house) sponsor.  This was pre-arranged, though for the life of me I don’t really understand the point of the symbolism.

I suppose there is some overlap in support.  Your alexjones and “from the wilderness“ type has settled on Kucinich as the Democrat to balance Ron Paul in exposing the Oligarchy, but that’s just because Cynthia McKinney is out of office.

Though it doesn’t take too much googling to find support for a Paul / Kucinich ticket and the inaccurate sentiment that they are the most ideologically compatible of a bunch.

Incidentally, not so fast on that bill.  The Senate has a way of reconfiguring things.

Third item of interest: dateline Connecticut:  Stuart Rothenberg is not impressed by Ron Paul accolyte candidate Peter Schiff.  But that’s not Peter Schiff’s point.  I guess.

Dateline Kentucky:

Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., acknowledged Tuesday that during a meeting in December, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told him that “I was too old and I couldn’t win” a re-election battle in 2010.

Bunning, 77, went on to call McConnell, also a Kentucky Republican, a “control freak.” He also said he’ll fare well in Kentucky without McConnell’s endorsement in the Republican primary, since during the senior senator’s tenure as a member of the GOP leadership the Republicans have lost several seats and could lose more in 2010.
“If Mitch McConnell doesn’t endorse me that may be the best thing that could happen to me in Kentucky,” he told reporters during a conference call Tuesday.

Actually the problem isn’t that he’s too old.  It’s that he’s too senile.  But waiting in the wings:

Take a look at the Facebook group “Rand Paul For Senate 2010.”

You will see more than 2,000 members and messages from people all over the country, not just Kentucky, begging Paul to take the leap into politics.

Over the past few months when asked if he was going to run, Paul has said he would only if incumbent Senator Jim Bunning didn’t.

Well, Bunning is poised to run.

So where does this leave Paul’s political aspirations?

“We are forming an exploratory committee to run for the US Senate,” answers Paul.

That’s all that Paul would confirm when it comes to whether he’s decided to run for the Senate.

And I ask again: Ron Paul, you named your boy “Rand” – really? 

Dateline Idaho:

Monday, unhealed wounds were on display again as an Ada County magistrate sentenced Elmore County’s Republican vice chairman for making a pest of himself in state offices, particularly the office of Gov. Butch Otter. Although the judge gave Christopher Pentico the lightest possible sentence for trespassing, 30 days of probation with a cleared record once they are completed, Pentico’s supporters marched directly from the courthouse to Otter’s office.
“Idahoans for Liberty,” including organizers of recent Tea Party demonstrations and supporters of former presidential candidate Ron Paul, wanted Otter to pardon Pentico and stop enforcing the state trespass law against him.

There might be a question of the propriety of applying a law aimed at protecting private property to buildings owned by the public, but there is apparently little question Pentico, 42, has been a nuisance, and not just in Otter’s office. Still smoldering over a five-year-old dispute with Boise State University officials, he has also taken his complaint to Attorney General Lawrence Wasden, state school Superintendent Tom Luna, dozens of legislators and staff members of Sens. Mike Crapo and Jim Risch.

“He seems to think that if he comes 12 times, the answer will be different than the 11th time,” Otter spokesman Jon Hanian said Monday.  [...]

Last month, a majority of members of the Ada County Republican Central Committee forced a vote on a resolution charging Otter with violating Pentico’s rights, but failed to get the needed two-thirds margin for passage.

In addition, nine legislators signed a letter saying Pentico had acted responsibly and respectfully, and another, Rep. Pete Nielsen, R-Mountain Home, testified in his behalf in court. [...]

Today’s Idaho Republicans are another matter. There appears no way to reconcile those who want to serve in government and those who want to disown it.

Gawd, Idaho is weird.

Dateline South Carolina:

A fired-up Lindsey Graham, speaking to the South Carolina Republican Convention on Saturday, took a jab at Ron Paul and Libertarians, drawing some noisy protests from the crowd, as can be seen above and in an audience video here.

“We are not going to build a party around libertarian ideas,” he said. “Ron Paul is not the leader of this party.”

Graham described himself as “a Ronald Reagan, Strom Thurmond, Lindsey Graham, Caroll Campbell Republican, and winning matters to me. If it doesn’t matter to you, there’s the exit sign.”

It’s worth noting that in the 2008 Senate race, South Carolina Democratic primary voters managed to nominate a Paul-ite, so maybe Lindsey Graham’s suggestion to walk out the exit doors isn’t too ridiculous.

Somewhere in the midst of cheering on would-be Texas Secessionists and Nullifiers, Representative Ron Paul was hood-winked into an Ali G — now Bruno — stunt.  Witness.

“The pair go back years. Madge was such a big fan of his Ali G character she asked him to star in her video for Hey Mr DJ and they’ve been pals ever since.” Ali G and Borat made complete fools of politicians all over the world and it seems Bruno is no different. He was branded a “fraud” this week by a senior Republican who claims he was tricked into his “bedroom” for a seduction scene.

Texas Congressman Ron Paul told America’s ABC radio: “We were in a studio, I wasn’t invited into a hotel room. There were lots of lights and blaze and commotion and they said we better get in this back room which was fixed up as a bedroom.

And I was expecting an interview on Austrian economics. It didn’t turn out that way.” You can say that again congressman! It seems that stimulating the finances of the Austrian economy was the last thing on Bruno’s mind.

Ron Paul said: “By the time he started pulling his pants down, I was like, ‘What on earth is going on here?’ and I ran out of the room. This interview had ended.”

The new film is set for release in November. Hurry up!

I mention this all by way of asking for Ali G to please stop.  It was funny once.  It then ceased to be funny and is now tedious.  So Ron Paul goes into the room and leaves when you lower your pants.  Okay.  How is this incisive commentary on anything?  Just enjoy your ruining of the lives of Kazhakstan’s foreign exchange students for a generation (ala Borat) and move on to a new schtik.