Dear “lewrockwellians”:

Regarding a stray post on dailykos.com — um, dailykosians?– commented by a blogger at lewrockwell.com:

How do I put this? There is this moment on the recent Ron Paul online video with a woman saying all her Liberal relatives are planning on voting for Ron Paul. It’s a misnomer. If push comes to shove, I believe the Liberal contingency would vote for goddamned Hillary Clinton over sainted Ron Paul. Nor do they particularly owe Ron Paul their vote.

Her ideology, such as it is, better matches them than Ron Paul’s does. And that includes the idea that we might intervene in Darfur.

Actually the linking to that is interesting. I do not think I saw it streaming on the rss roster at bloglines, meaning it’s not a “Front Page” item. I might be wrong about that. But the thing is that these sites are linking to Ron Paul in the media items right and left, left and right. A commenter on Reason posited this tendency as compared with the South Park Underpants Gnome of “Step 1: Steal Underpants. Step 2: Question Mark. Step 3: Profit.”

Taking a look at the latest Presidential campaign Youtube spots.

#1: Mike Gravel. Minimalistic, I suppose. I have no explanation.

#1a: Mike Gravel has offered an explanation. It’s a couple of art school students’ art project? I think Gravel overloaded the meaning.

#2: Hillary Clinton. For a second you think she selected Foreigner’s “Don’t Stop Believing”. I can not possibly see Bill Clinton, or for that matter anyone, saying “My money’s on Smash Mouth”. There is no way the voters could have possibly picked that not fully known Celion Deion song, and that is probably as good a metaphor as any.

#3: Barack Obama. Cute. Maybe one of the second or third tier candidates can get desperate and do a video full of strippers.

#4: Mitt Romney. 15 minutes of nausea. The question of “Why?” comes to mind. They eat a Christmas Dinner. It’s a big family. They say “Jesus” a lot. Why do we want tape of Mit Romney’s Christmas dinner?

#5: Ron Paul. Actually, seeing this video, screening at Paul’s campaign website, I am mildly freaked out by the Ron Paul supporters. A bit more freakish is to scan the videos at youtube, and see that they are all bulked up by the same spam-istic messages. Even as I admire Ron Paul, and have for some time, I would not want to be on any email list connected with him.

I was thinking about something with Ron Paul, and his presence on the Internet. Understand, Ron Paul has moved to the top of the heap of Internet searches — look to the right-hand box at technorati, for instance. He dominates online polls.

And he is nowhere in the “real” polls. The news that the oddsmakers doubled his odds of becoming president reminds me of a promo I saw for this television network, seen called “Channel America” (the highlight of the network was this late-late night show of public domain cartoons) calling itself the “Fastest Growing Television Network in America”. Indeed. Ron Paul went from 200 to 1 odds to 100 odds on Sportsline.com. Which are inflated odds due to his libertarian views on gambling, and online gambling at that which attract (drum roll please) Online followers.

I find something striking here. Many things have changed in the long history of the Internet, and the Internet has expanded beyond its initial geek userbase of various misfits. But there is still a strange shift of focus outside the “mainstream” on the Internet which allows for Ron Paul’s online popularity. It’s not 1993 here, and yet… it is. If that makes any sense.

The Internet has opened up many things just out of mainstream currents — The Furry subculture, for instance. There is an intensity there for Ron Paul that does not exist for Mitt Romney that befits an Internet activist. To a lesser degree, and only because he was closer to the mainstream of his political party, this fit in with Howard Dean in 2004 as well.

Ron is our last hope. They want to take away any possiblity of resisting there agenda. We must do something before we cannot even DEFEND our selves. We the people….NEVER FORGET.

This sounds strangely familiar.

Actually I am almost wondering if I ought not reconsider my statement Ron Paul is not a cult leader, which was a blog entry spurred off of a blog that compared Ron Paul with Lyndon Larouche, or more patently the supporters of Lyndon Larouche with the supporters of Ron Paul. Granted, the half a dozen comments that were sent my way were mostly okay (I get the feeling I probably would have had a couple more had this website not gone down for the night), and I can only really say I have this problem with one and a half of them. But those one and a half are indicative of something.

Generally I’ve found that the Paul admirers at Reason are more realistic in their admiration than the supproters at Lewrockwell. But this is probably something of an ideological putsch of sorts.

Again, Ron Paul is not a cult leader, and to say he is is to make statements of hyperbole and/or demogaugery. Lyndon Larouche is. (By the way, have I mentioned yet that Lyndon Larouche called this blog a “gutter outlet” of “Wall Street Fascist John Train”?) However, something in the realm of the politics they espouse somehow does bring a strange synthesis. Over the years, Lyndon Larouche has been referred to as a “libertarian”, and self-described Libertarians slapped silly with assumptions of Larouchian nature. While Larouche is the opposite of Libertarian, but the basic assumption comes with this idea that Libertarians are espousing a pallete of wild and kooky political ideas.
I observe, for instance, this. James Butler, a 25 year old student from New Jersey, has this misguided desire for Lyndon Larouche to toss some credence to his favorite poltical figure and presidential candidate, Ron Paul. A Larouche endorsement, which is physically impossible because it does not advance Lyndon Larouche’s meglomaniac agenda one iota, is about the worst thing that Ron Paul — already suspect for mainstream credentials and travelling the by-ways of fringey politics– could possibly obtain. If you think connections and support from 9/11 Truth and the Alex Joneses swirl uneasily with the mainstream electorate (both of which the person I am about to mention is a proponent of), Larouche is just poison. And Larouche responds as one would figure he would.

Ron does stand up on some important matters, but none of the candidates of which I know, including Ron, has yet to express himself effectively on the issues which will determine whether or not our republic still exists in its present constitutional form when January 2009 arrives.
Crack the code, and Larouche is running for president after pretending he’s not, with a draft-movement by his Cult kicking into high gear. He goes through the list of the party he is infiltrating (to rescue it from Howard Dean, who has sold it out to the ‘syncharists’ — also known as the International Jewish Bankers’ Conspiracy).
Some of James Butler’s comments are unintentionally spot on. Such as:

It is time to leave this fake, phony liberal/conservative paradigm in the past because it is dead.
Travelling the high-ways from Trotskyist associations with the SDS on to the anti-semitic Liberty Lobby, and feigning his way through the electoral political spectrum from there. Yes. He has certainly moved beyond the “phony liberal/conservative paradigm”.

Apparently, Mr. LaRouche believes that the US will be in a state of total anarchy in less than 2 years. Scary stuff here, folks.

More “scary ha ha” than “scary uh oh”. It’s been an article of faith for Larouche for the past 40 years. Don’t pay any mind to it.
Now do you understand why I posted that Ron Paul supporter comment on “last hope”? Help me Obe Won Kenobi. It’s a thin line; be weary of it.

Having gotten himself noticed and made a name for himself as somebody other than a man to be listed quickly in a long list of “also – runs”, I notice a bit of frettering by parts of the Ron Paul congregation (and you may use every term you desire from “supporters” to “cult members”) about some of his more… esoteric choices of media and associations.

An example:

And not to be outdone, Ron Paul’s media coordinator was on the infamous Alex Jones show the other night. Seriously, I understand that radio shows from all viewpoints are frothing at the Ron Paul candidacy, but this is just another example – in my opinion – of ammunition the opposition can – and will – use. That’s like Ron Paul appearing on the David Duke show or something.

I am pretty sure I’ve covered the burgeoning little controversy over here, sometime before Ron Paul’s q-rating rose after that last debate, and the gradual dawn of the mainstream media that Ron Paul is kicking ass on the Internet. The chief point I came in in posting that blog entry still stands, which is that Ron Paul’s greetings on Alex goddamned Jones is in many ways no less odious than the conventional candidates frequent forays onto Tim goddamned Russert and the Establishment Think politics that predominate on shows such as.

But my general thought with Ron Paul and the Alex Joneses of the world — or the 9/11 Truthers of the world — or the Gold Standard advocate — or whoever — is that even if Ron Paul wanted to disassociate himself from any of this, the genie is out of the bottom and there is no sense in doing anything but steam-rolling straight ahead. Somebody has to create a coalition of Fringe Unity.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist won a much-needed victory Saturday night in the Southern Republican Leadership Conference straw poll, a win that could begin to revive his 2008 presidential prospects after a difficult year politically in 2005.“We are gratified at the result of a lot of hard work,” said Eric Ueland, Frist’s chief of staff. “The leader is focused on ’06 and our party is focused on a strong positive vision for ’08.”

While the Frist victory (with 37 percent of the vote) was somewhat expected, the strong second-place finish of Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (14 percent) was a bit of a surprise.

Bill Frist reportedly bused in a a lot of his supporters to what was his home turf in order to ensure he won this much bally-hooed Straw Poll. All the power to him for, argurably, rigging the process. It did a lot of good for his presidential bid, didn’t him?
Reportedly Mitt Romney did something similar to the CPAC conference. Or, to be more precise, the Mitt Romney crew campaigning around kind of annoyed the attendes.

Now the question I have: does the rigging of that completely unscientific straw poll make Bill Frist’s supporters of the time “Cultic”? And… the same with the family and friends of Mitt Romney at the CPAC conference?

I am referencing this in relation to the frustrating voices that Ron Paul supporters (or, as his critics are calling him, followers) are “rigging” Internet polls, as well as that there Fox News text messaging poll.
I note this posting as an especially jarring burn:

After seeing Ron Paul’s followers in action since, I’m starting to wonder what it is about him. I have received some amazing emails from people who hunted down my real-life email address, and started sending me masses of “information.” Plus some threats (not to me but about what the future would be like without Ron Paul as President). Plus, a whole lot of “if you dont suport Ron Paul your not a real conservtive”[sic].

One of the parallels I remember from my college days was a table that would get set up every day at UH, operated by a fanatical supporter of a man who pretty much runs a cult: Lyndon LaRouche. LaRouchies are borderline insane. They hang on every word of LaRouche. At the table, they had publications that said he’d predicted things like stock market fluctuations and other events (the quotations could never be sourced and weren’t even sourced to their own publications for verification purposes), and they were crazy. One of the more entertaining things at UH was to sit down with them and work out what they were actually thinking, which usually was “LaRouche is my god.” […]

Interestingly, LaRouche supporters and Ron Paul supporters have an interesting number of parallels, even with some differences.

– Both claim to be from an established party (Ron Paul a Republican or Libertarian RINO, LaRouche claims to be a Democrat)
– Both run very much on a cult of personality
– Both make sweeping statements and accumulate people who set up their entire worldview around what the cult leader says.
– Both make claims about things they’ve said that aren’t necessarily verifiable

– Both are complete freaking lunatics

The key difference is that the Republicans have somehow allowed Ron Paul to maintain office, while the Democrats don’t have to deal with that.

Now, I have been meaning to put up a post of some rambling thoughts in my head about the oddness of electoral campaigns in that they are, to some degree, running off of Cults of Personalities, and enforcing the same. I don’t know, I may have already done so. There is no getting around this. Don’t believe me? What is this photograph? And, I like Howard Dean, but there was this particular moment of unease where I saw a blogger say that there was a chant of “We are Dean”. Which was a joke if there ever was one.
But it is limited. I know from Larouche. Ron Paul is no Lyndon Larouche. Ron Paul is an ideolouge, in love with his ideas of governing (or lack thereof). Call him a “Libertarian wacko” if you want, but he is operating off of something beside demanding Humanity glorify Ron Paul. That he is the most ideological member of Congress puts him in the distinctive position of being basically the most honest member of Congress — a constant, easily marginalized force. Meanwhile, Lyndon Larouche’s ideolougy boils down to… wait for it, I’ve used this phrase on this blog before… “Look! A crisis! Me For Dictator!” He runs a Cult of Personality in every way, shape, and form. This sets himself up as grossly dishonest, and…

Please tell me that Ron Paul, or his campaign, is writing internal memos such as:

Fortunately, a few of us were not inclined to die willingly. In the concluding years of the Y2000 U.S. Presidential campaign,the beginning of a resuscitation of the organization was underway under my leadership initiatives. These initiatives included the founding of an adult youth movement, an initiative which was met with strong, vigorous opposition, and attempted political sabotage, even from within leading parts of the association,through the time of what proved to be the highly effective July
2004 deployment into the Boston Democratic convention.

So, with the emergence of that adult youth movement, we began traveling the unavoidably hard road of rebuilding a shattered, and worn-down association. […]

The LYM, as I have defined its required organization and methods, is the only available way in which our organization can actually earn significant amounts of income to support our activities today. Therefore, it would be the lack of that policy which would be the greatest of the systemic varieties of threat to our capabilities today.

People in the “68er” age-interval, as typified by those born between, approximately, 1945 and 1957, are reaching out toward the age of retirement from any vigorous employment. Those born shortly before 1945, are on the way to retirement age. Thus, to state the cruel fact of the matter: who would make a long-term investment in their future economic contribution? Meanwhile, those who entered the LYM ranks about five years ago, or somewhat later, have more than fifty adult years of active economic life ahead of them; they represent a viable long-term investment.”

” Yet, in fact, the continued existence of society in a civilized form depends absolutely on the LYM’s generation. Not only does the LYM typify the best recruits from their generation, the educational and practical orientation established for, and by the LYM is peculiarly suited to the needs for a youthful adult leadership assigned to lead the entire population out of the cultural morass of a society whose reigning generation is destroying itself and civilization generally.

Without the effect assigned to the role of the LYM and comparable young-adult programs, there is no reason to invest confidently in the future of any nation of European civilization, or, perhaps, even beyond. The LYM typifies the last available hope, that, in time, the world can be rescued from the greatest collapse, globally, world-wide, in modern world history as a whole.

Whoever is getting money these days, the LYM is actually earning it for us all.

That be a cult, interested in the control of its people’s lives. I can assure you that Ron Paul’s memorandum is not terribly interested in how to control its people’s lives.

Now, Paul does not represent mainstream Republican politics, or mainstream national politics. This seems to be the main beef of the anti-Paul factions, and the anger at seeing him at the Republican debates as well as campaigning about. Which I tend to simply say: Bully for him. I’ve thought of him partially as the Republican version of Dennis Kucinich, but even this is off a bit — if you do your best to scrunch politics to one dimension, Kucinich will be more or less just further to the left than everyone else. I can’t conceptualize Paul in the same manner. Still, there are similarities — not least is a variety of political handicapping that I see in this statement:

Stop trying to take the Sean Calamity approach and play off his success as anthing other than support from the party base. Is it really so frightening to you neocons to realize that the majority of the Replican party thinks you’re all wrong????

Ignoring a slur for the Republican party to “Replican”, odd in the sense that he is claiming the Republicans are supporting Ron Paul which he would consider a positive– it is patently absurd to say that Ron Paul (1) “succeeded” at anything with that damned text-poll and (2) the majority of the Republican Party believes in what Ron Paul says on the key issues. Actually, the cult-like sensibility comes with the inability to leave two strains of thoughts alone: for whatever reason, it’s a mixed message, that last sentence — insult the party with the name, and then proudly proclaim it as being on your side.

There are a number of too-easy to make comments reagarding this Presidential election season. One is that the Presidential Primaries have been moved way too early, are encroaching onto the 2007 calendar year, and is likely to lead to this long, long, long election campaign. Indeed. I recall seeing an editorial arguring for Oregon to move its primary up to be more relevant to the presidential process. A horrible idea if there ever was one, the jig is up and all we can do is let us keep a sane election for our series of state and local elections, and not contribute to the new electoral process.

The other was brought up by the Oregonian’s resident Republican editorial writer — as opposed to the Democratic editorial writer — today. It is the opinion that we should somehow winnow the presidential candidates down now NOW NOW I say. Which works against the grain of the other problem: it is super urgent that we only entertain Giuliani, McCain, Romney — and probably only a couple of them — and that we only entertain Clinton and Obama. Why? Because hearing Trancredo chaffes at us. Because hearing Kucinich chaffes at us. Because hearing Ron Paul chaffes at us. Because hearing Mike Gravel — who I suspect is about to be let go to John Cox status — chaffes at us.
Ron Paul is instructive. He offered an opinion contrary to that held by everyone else on the stage. It is somehow the issue that most cleanly divides the parties — witness the Michigan political bosses circulating a petition to snuff Paul out of the debates and a renewed primary focus (as though it is about to get anywhere further than the renewed primary threat of 2006), and compare it to the apostacy of Lieberman for the Democratic Party. (Drummed out, thankfully, but face it: without the war issue, the party grassroots would suck in their dislike for Lieberman’s tedious DLC-ism, and accept him… much as they do a handful of other politicians.)

Without Ron Paul, the debate would have been tedious. As with Gravel at that Democratic debate.

The basic problem, dear Dave Reinhard, is this: you do know that this is 2007, right? The election is some years away (one and a half is plural, right? If we are stuck with this prolonged process, we may as well have a host of these “second tier” and “third tier” candidates blurring the precious “process.”

The big news that came out of the Republican primary debate was Rudy Giuliani’s response to Ron Paul. If you go to The Weekly Standard website, you will find a column by Fred Barnes on what a glorious take-down this was, and how Rudy somehow seized the moment and separated himself from the field. I wish that the American Conservative had a better web presence, either in the form of a continuous blog like Reason or in the form of these more timely instant articles like the Weekly Standard — so as to guage the reaction from that isolationist — ergo anti-war — paleo-conservative outlet. As it is, all I can really count on are the Libertarians of Reason and Lew Rockwell to counter the Weekly Standard and National Review (bluntly put it: “Go Away. We’re through with you.”).

I have every confidence that Rudy scripted his response in his debate planning. Bully for him, that’s what you are supposed to do, the other candidates can only wish they had thought of using Ron Paul as effectively. What strikes me is how patently false Rudy Giuliani’s comments are. Try it on for size:

That’s really an extraordinary statement…that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don’t think I’ve ever heard that before, and I’ve heard some pretty absurd explanations.

I can state with absolute confidence that Rudy Giuliani has heard of Blowback Theory.

I can state with absolute confidence that Rudy Giuliani has heard more absurd explanations for 9/11 than Blowback Theory. I can dredge some things up from the Internets if you want me to.
I will state that if what Rudy Giuliani says here is true, that he has never heard of Blowback Theory and that he has never heard any more absurd explanation for 9/11 — which if you consider are likely to include him personally makes it doubly incongruous, than he is — without gauging any other aspect of his political or personal characteristics — Utterly and Completely Disqualified to lead this nation. And I guess it is a good thing that Ron Paul introduced him to the concept here, or else he might find himself president and have the displeasure of CIA officials telling him about it on his first day of the job.

This is fine, though, because we all know Rudy Giuliani was lying and simply affecting a false pose of shock — SHOCK — in a fit of demagoguery. Really, only because the other candidates didn’t come up with the idea first.

At any rate, Rudy further disgraced himself when he said that he “lived through 9/11”. As though nobody else did. As though the other candidates didn’t.

Apparently Ron Paul kicked ass in Fox News’s text-message poll of text-messengers in the question of “Who won the debate?” He lead for most of the night, and at the end faltered to Mitt Romney, with Giuliani in a distant third. This is due to the nature of Ron Paul’s supporters versus everyone else’s, and Sean Hannity was, reportedly apoplectic in reporting the poll results. The question here is: what is the point of having a text message poll? I suppose it gives an illusion of interactivity, but it also gives the opportunity for the Paul supporters to completely destroy Fox News’s narrative illusion.

…………….

Ron Paul, from the debate:

Right now, we’re building an embassy in Iraq that is bigger than the Vatican. We’re building 14 permanent bases. What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? We would be objecting. They are delighted that we’re over there because Osama bin Laden has said, ‘I’m glad you’re over on our sand because we can target you so much easier.’ They have already now since that time they’ve killed 3,400 of our men and I don’t think it was necessary.

……………………

Ron Gunzburger: Whatever points Ron Paul scored in the first debate as the lone anti-war GOP candidate were probably lost in this debate […]True or not, Paul’s comments will relegate him to a fringe GOP following or a third party run. Um. Ron Paul was always held a “fringe GOP following”. At any rate, Paul is basically incapable of not telling his truth. More from his natural flock found here.

… And outside, Pigs were Flying. But… who won the debate?