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[Primary 2012] Romney triumphs in NH, but his campaign is going South (Carolina) from here
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That was a pretty good read.
Romney spent $Texas via his SuperPAC to destroy him. And the RNC helped, because they can read a poll like anyone else.
I feel like this point of view misses to point of that Greenwald article (as I understand it.)
No one (in this discussion) is saying that Paul is a magical civil liberties candidate. To suggest that as the goal is to fall in to the trap Greenwald is talking about. All he is saying is that everyone is bad sometimes, so the only way to not be a hypocrite is to allow praise of good aspects of someone's positions even if you disagree with their motivations or other positions.
I hate Democrats.
Also? The article wasn't about Ron Paul. It was about those of us who don't like Ron Paul even though he occasionally says things which sound on their face like I would agree with them even if those things are emergent from an overarching doctrine which I ultimately think is abhorrent.
Greenwald would like to criticize me and others like me for hypocrisy because we can't appreciate shallow, superficial similarities. I happen to think that governance and policy is about more than a ten word answer.
This makes him slightly better than the group of covertly racist, right-wing Christian fundamentalists that don't favor cutting defense or drug legalization who make up the rest of the Republican primary candidates.
Or as Coates put it (I posted the thing for a reason!):
For evidence, you (and Greenwald!) can just point to the man these clowns are trying to replace.
Ta-Neshisi Coates is good at this: "I would like nothing more than to join my friends in support of Paul and exhilarate in a morality unweighted by the ugly facts of governance and democracy."
Do you read him consistently? He's really obnoxious on this point.
I mean, I can imagine a graphic like this
Is just the beginning.
I'm picturing leaving Paul's results off the graphic entirely, putting Romney's picture on top of Paul's with the numbers correct but the bar size mysteriously incorrect.
It'll be fun, is what I'm saying.
If we can get a Ron Paul D-TX out of this I think it will be the greatest caucus ever.
What does Ron Paul bring to the world other than another racist texan who would see black people back in chains if he could? I mean honestly Paul's support of a pro drug policy is advocated by a lot smarter and less horrible people.
And I did really like that Coates article. I do wish there were some more sane candidates out there supporting peace and rule of law. It is such a shame that Ron Paul is one carrying that torch.
Oh, come on. Is this the level of discourse here?
This is the same guy who said that Obama supporters would defend Obama even if he raped a nun live on TV.
He's the last person to get all huffy and demand people take a nuanced take on political candidates.
Sure, I agree.
I took the point of the article to be that Ron Paul was the only person in the running (including Obama) supporting certain positions and views - for any reason - that "progressives" claim are important. That being the case, it is still valid to support Obama over Ron Paul. It's just hypocritical to say something like "Paul's good positions are invalid because he also...." when you can do that for literally anyone.
Basically, it sounds like Greenwald wants more people to be talking about actual policy positions and their motivations and consequences, instead of picking a team and then demonizing all opposition.
book tourPrimary news, Herman Cain announced that he'd be totally willing to be someone's Secretary of Defense.Ding ding ding!
There are LOTS of those people. I'm an unabashed Obama supporter, and all the liberal blogs I read bash him fairly regularly, except Steve Benen who is more focused on the GOP.
What? A noted racist who wants to go back to "states rights" heard that song and dance before Kungfu.
Given that I was doing so, right here on this forum, I think I can safely say he's full of straw.
Santorum and Paul in the top 3 would really stick it to the news organizations that flat out ignored them. And Iowa will be the first and last state that they have a shot of winning. Santorum, anyway, Paul might get a small boost from momentum if he places well but won't be able to go the distance; he'd be at the bottom with Santorum and the rest soon enough.
Is it just me or is making Santorum jokes actually getting harder?
EDIT: Somehow in writing this post I left out the reason I quoted it. That graphic is ridiculous. I think Fox goes through a new graphics department every week. The people responsible are so inexperienced that they goof, get fired, and then replaced. That's the only thing that makes since since they are accidents, right?
Which is totally not what he does! He's a hypocrite. I used to read him, but there's only so many times you can read the same article (even if the name of the President is changed). That number for me was approximately 1500 times (5 years, every day...)
That's certainly a well meaning goal. Unfortunately he's applying that to the Republican primary.
Ban Gay marriage at a mininum some of them have supported criminilizing homosexuality
Banning abortion and contraception of any kind for any reason including incest and rape
War with Iran (aside from Paul)
Restricting voting rights with regressive poll taxes to prevent minorities and students from voting
Removing union rights and by extension worker rights
Removing medicare
Tax cuts for the wealthy at the expense of tax increases for everyone else
That's just off the top of my head. So tell me how is it demonizing them when they all have such universally horrible opinions.
First off, I don't think it ought to be in dispute that the article is actually about Progressives and not Ron Paul specifically. The title is "Progressives and the Ron Paul fallacies," and before he gets into the weeds on how Progressives interface with Paul's positions, he starts off with things like
And while there are, surely, those who can be caricatured this way -- I think it's more than possible to discuss Ron Paul's foreign policy outside of the context of racism, for instance -- I don't think it's "simple minded" at all to disagree with Ron Paul's foreign policy even if certain aspects of it sound appealing after you've burned enough calories out of it to reduce it down to something that some dipshit opinion columnist can fit on Twitter.
(added: and if you don't think he was characterizing Progressives as being simple minded, the phrase "simple minded" is a hyperlink within the column itself, and it dumps you out at democraticunderground.com at the other end.)
Santorum winning or coming in second in Iowa would lead to enough media attention and donations to make him the official Mike Huckabee evangelical protest candidate for this cycle. He'll soldier on even past the point of mathematical elimination since it'll improve his contract negotiation with Fox News for a TV show.
Paul might have a shot at doing well in New Hampshire, and his ability to wring donations out of his cult will keep him in the game for a while.
But yeah, at this point, the inevitability of Romney seems even more...uh... inevitable-ier.
I believe you. But his being a hypocrite ironically does not mean that his argument in the article is wrong. Just like Ron Paul he might be an asshole, but his point still stands?
EDIT: Anyway, I will go back to lurking so other news can be discussed.
Fortunately, I will be watching the Sugar Bowl instead of Iowa coverage so I will not be forced to deal with the contradiction inherent for a while.
This.
And his assumption that any liberal/progressive must be a pacifist level dove. Just because a liberal doesn't want to torture enemy combatants doesn't mean we want to be the lily livered cowards that the right portrays the left as. Its basically an excuse to rail about the ways he thinks Obama is "heinous" in order to construct a false equivalency between Paul and Obama. He insists on grouping positions within theoretical ideological camps while simultaneously decrying actual pragmatic understanding of political groups. And then he creates an imaginary Ron Paul who isn't a racist bigot in favor of the subjugation of human rights by the correct level of government. is a ludicrous set of assertions on many levels. Its hyperbolic at the very best and frankly deceptive. At the core all he's saying is "Obama is far too much of a hawk for my tastes so fuck him and everyone who disagrees with me is a slave to the system and not a true progressive like me." And that's exactly what he's railing against.
ed
For the record I'm a liberal Obama supporter who railed against Bush. I also don't believe that its Obama's fault that there are civilian casualties in the war in Afghanistan, support drone strikes in northern Pakistan, unlike Greenwald am aware the US doesn't use cluster bombs, don't believe hundreds of thousands of minorities are imprisoned for no good reason (or that Ron Paul actually opposes this... just when the prisons are federal), don't equate indictment with threats or whistleblowing with leaking classified security documents, don't buy into Fed conspiracy theories, and don't believe Obama is going to war with Iran. This makes me a terrible automaton.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
When I read this, my first thought was "The Nomadic Circle is deconstructing Ron Paul? How does this involve goats and colonialism?"
Tell me whats so deceptive about that line of reasoning Greenwalds makes for Obama support?
And I don't think Greenwald ever creates a non-racist Paul.
Ron Paul has horrible positions that coincidentally lead to some results that some people claim to want.
Excellent question! Two parts:
1. While arguing that support for one specific policy should not be misconstrued as support for the candidate who ventures it, he also argues that support for a candidate is thus support for all policies. So if we support Obama on HCR, we support him on Guantanamo, too. Whatever standard for political discourse he wants to use must go both ways -- he has to acknowledge any Progessive's right to support a candidate generally even if that Progressive disagrees with certain policy positions without being branded an automaton.
2. No True Scotsman-ism.
Worry not, the jokes may be drying up, but soon Santorum will flake off completely and there will no longer be any reason to speak of him.
Assuming the upset, Rupert Murdoch likes Santorum so they would simply start praising him and act as if they always had been. We have always been allies with Eastasia after all. But if RP won Iowa Fox would do one of two things; most likely it would wax poetic about how caucusing isn't properly democratic and how Iowa is given unfair advantage and how Iowa winners often DON'T win the nomination. Fox tells lies of quality more than of quantity, the line graph with the moving numbers implied unemployment was bad under Obama, they didn't say it was the highest it had ever been. Since ultimately all the delegates would go to one candidate (I think) they couldn't jimmy with the numbers and pretend Ron Paul was losing Iowa, they would instead be explaining how his win was unfair, improper, and ultimately meaningless.
Lying is an art form, and the lies which make the most impact for the least effort are not the brutal reversals and refusals of reality, but the muddling misdirections that manage perceptions.
I think you have become confused. The whole Obama-support-line of reasoning is directed at the people who make similar arguments against Paul. Greenwald isn't attacking all Obama supporters or anti-Paul people in that article. It was directed at self-described progressives who make such fallacious arguments against Paul. So he turned the tables on them to show how it doesn't work.