I’d like to be more optimistic than I am, and there are people telling me I should be

I’d like to be more optimistic too. Especially after tonight. I thought Ron got fair questions and did a very good job with them. However, the on-mic laughing and the dismissive comments by post-game commentators represent the biggest challenge of the Ron Paul candidacy: gaining mainstream credibility.

Your compulsion to repeat your well documented prediction ad nauseum simply makes his job even harder. I cannot fathom why you would continue to belittle his chances publicly if you actually wish him to win.

RP: I AM Ron Paul! And I see a whole army of my countrymen here in defiance of tyranny. You have come to fight as free men, and free men you are. What would you do without freedom? Will you fight?

All of us: Fight? Against the Republican and Democrat controlled establishment? No, we will run; and we will live.

RP: Aye, fight and you may lose. Run and you’ll live — at least a while and still be a loser. And dying in your beds many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for one chance, just one chance to come back here and tell our Republicans and Democrats that they may take our lives, our property, our women, our children, our self-esteem, our hard earned money, our homes, our constitution, treat us like servants, enact irritating laws, keep the man down, black and white. . . but they’ll never take… our freeeeeeedoom!

All of us: If we run, can we keep the property a little longer?
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Doug is right. It is truly going to suck when it’s all over.

eI don’t question Doug’s motives toward Ron Paul, the points he brings up are usually valid and he’s honest in his assessments. I just think he’s highly prone to negativity so he chooses to accentuate that with regards to Paul’s campaign. It’s not the way I’d choose to go, but hey, it’s his life.

Frankly, I’d say its based more on experience than anything else.

I’ve been involved in political campaigns since I was in High School, starting in New Jersey (the undisputed home of dirty politics by the way) and ending in Virginia long about 1992. I’ve been involved in winning campaigns, and that’s great. But, given my political leanings, I’ve been involved in far more losing campaigns, and those suck when they’re over.

More importantly, though, I’ve lost faith in the libertarian/conservative alliance that transformed Republican politics from the days of Barry Goldwater to the triumph of Ronald Reagan (admittedly, not a perfect President, but better than anything I’ve seen in my lifetime before or sense).

I’ve linked more than once to a Reason Magazine quote about the `08 Republican race…..”it would be nice to live in a world where Ron Paul could be President.”

I’d like to be more optimistic than I am, and there are people telling me I should be, but when I look at the people who actually vote in Republican primaries, and, more importantly, the American electorate as a whole, I just don’t see it yet.

Hopefully, I will be proven wrong.

We’ll work on him. My guess is that if Paul loses, Mr. Mataconis won’t have to be let down about a candidate that is closest to a document that means a great deal to us all. No one likes to lose, especially those of us who are frustrated by the attitude of Congress: “What’s a Constitution among friends?”

I don’t think Mataconis is marginalizing him. I think he’s trying to give a realistic assessment of Paul’s chances.

Initially, I believed the same thing. However, over the past few weeks, I’ve been reading Mataconis’s writing and there has been 1, count ‘em 1, article of at least a dozen about paul that didn’t prominently say “he doesn’t stand a chance.”

I’m pessimistic about his chances too, but I also realize that people saying “he doesn’t stand a chance” is a big reason why he doesn’t stand a chance. As such, I firmly believe Mataconis does more harm than good.

I make it a habit not to presume another man’s motives, but I’m definitely starting to question his.

I don’t think Mataconis is marginalizing him. I think he’s trying to give a realistic assessment of Paul’s chances. Mataconis will change the assessment I’m sure, if Paul starts showing up better in the polls. But this is the tip of the iceberg in terms of Paul’s problems.

The major problem is getting beyond the primaries. It is controlled by the establishment and I’m sure this is a major basis for Mataconis’s assessment.

Take for instance, the Texas straw poll. How is that Paul could show so poorly with so much support? Easy. Don’t allow votes by anyone who hasn’t been there in the previous election cycle. Most pragmatists are already involved in the process. It’s very difficult because Paul’s campaign isn’t organized like the machinery of Romney.

Hopefully Paul will get organized.

However, it is flawed in the premise that there is a difference between “centrists” and libertarians. There isn’t. Libertarianism *IS* the political center and always has been so. The MSM dinosaurs tend to label libertarians as far right for our economic positions, while ignoring the social positions. Call us libertarians, moderates, blue dog Democrats, or whatever the GOP calls us these days (usually preceded by a @#$%^&!), but we are and always have been there, the silent 60% majority in the center. The trick has always been convncing the mass in the middle of that.

As for Guiliani, his pro-censorship position disqualifies him not only from being anything resembling a libertarian, but also President. If he doesn’t understand the fundamental priniciples of Freedom of the Soul that the First Amendment embodies in its entirety, then how can we expect him to be fit to be President and uphold that very foundation of our nation?

I find it a bit curious that a blog called the “liberty Papers’ continually posts articles that attempt to discourage people from supporting the only presidential candidate who touts a liberty message.

If you keep watching, you’ll pick up on the pattern: Doug Mataconis.

He “supports” Ron Paul and “will vote for him if he’s still on the ballot”, yet he takes every opportunity to marginalize him.

I agree with your assessment of Giuliani and Thompson. Giuliani holds traditional democratic positions on abortion, gay rights, and guns, not libertarian views. And Norman Podhoretz is a lunatic. Anyone who puts that nutjob on the payroll should be automatically disqualified from any consideration.

Don’t lump in Goldwater with the Neoconservative foreign policy. It’s not accurate. Neoconservatism inherits from the liberal progressive view of imperial american power. Goldwwater was a virulent anti-communist(a position, frankly not that unreasonable to hold at the height of the cold war back in 64) but in no way iherited from the woodrow wilson tradition. Goldwater wanted to defeat the communists and then scale back down to a constitutional republic.

Contrast that with the Neocons who whined incessantly during the 90s about decadent american materialism and the relative military drawdown and advocated global american military hegemony, especially in the middle east. The Neocons view a purely constitutional american republic as an anathema.

A non-interventionist he was not. He campaigned in 1964 as an advocate of an “aggressive” foreign policy. He suggested the use of tactical nuclear weapons in Vietnam. He enthusiastically endorsed Johnson’s intervention in Vietnam early on and never changed his position.

He was a Brigadier General in the Air Force Reserve, a member of the Armed Services Committee, and a strong supporter of the military.

Ron Paul compares much better with former Senate Republican Leader Robert Taft of Ohio. Taft was a staunch anti-interventionist who opposed NATO and opposed selling arms to nations not threatened with attack. He criticized Truman for exaggerating the Soviet threat in order to retain WW II era controls on the economy and on society.

He was not as ideological as Ron Paul and actually sponsored a public housing bill. But for the most part he was staunchly opposed to the expansion of government and warned especially of the emergence of a “garrison state.”