Black Box Report

A balanced-budget, anti-war Republican who blames the Bush administration for the erosion of our civil liberties? I know, I didn't think one existed either, but he just raised 5 mil, and has more cash on hand than John McCain. Maybe there's something to this Ron Paul Revolution after all? He certainly seems to have caught some people off-guard:

Oh me of little faith. Ron Paul cannot be dismissed as a gadfly...

The Paul movement is probably one part Buchanan brigade and one part fiscal hawk. It is clearly active in ways that most of us haven't adequately understood? Paul may be in a position to be a giant killer now. Imagine if he finishes second or third in New Hampshire ....

Imagine. Around 70% of Americans oppose the Iraq War, not all of them Democrats and Independents. And when Paul raises 3 times as much from military members as Romney, 4 times more than Giuliani, that ought to say something:

This says as much about the serious trouble the Republican Party finds itself in in regards to the war as it says about anything else. If the lone anti-war Republican is getting more money from the military than the main hawk Giuliani, then clearly there is more anti-war sentiment in the ranks of the party than some are willing to admit.

This is all very informative, but for Paul's sake it's still not enough. This is the Republican presidential nomination he's running for, and the anti-war positions of he and his followers have gotten the attention of the rightwing noise machine. If you read closely into their coded language, you can almost sense their disapproval:

The behavior of the Paulnuts...is a common consequence of pacifism and extreme libertarianism. Both think the state at war is the worst thing in the world. (Extreme libertarians think the state doing most everything else is also bad.) Most—maybe all—libertarians acknowledge a right to self defense...Extreme libertarians do not; therefore they support self defense only in theory.

In any actual situation, the prospect of the state at war is so monstrous that the pacifist/extreme libertarian must prettify or deny the threat...

Ron Paul is a pencil head, leading a jacquerie of wicked idiots.

Extreme...pacifist...pencil head..idiots. Rightwingers really hate this guy. Almost as much as they hate Democrats. But is this kind of abuse warrented for the only GOP candidate that can beat TEH HILLARY???!!!???

When you look at it objectively, there isn’t a single one of the “Big Four” GOP candidates who can beat Hillary Clinton head-to-head. And none of the “second tier” candidates (Huckabee, Brownback, Hunter, Tancredo, et al) have stepped up to the challenge. Really, there is only one remaining viable Republican candidate: You guessed it, Ron Paul.

Only Ron Paul can take advantage of the Internet the way Howard Dean did before he imploded four years ago...

Only Ron Paul can outflank Hillary Clinton both to the left on the war, and to the right on everything else … which is the only winning strategy the Republicans can plausibly employ in 2008.

Only Ron Paul, who is truly pro-family (married to the same woman for over 50 years, with five children and 18 grandchildren - no “trophy wives” here) can motivate the socially conservative base to actually turn out and vote.

I'll say this for Paul's supporters, their hearts are in the right place, and they are passionate.

Nuttier than a squirrel's lunch, but passionate.

This administration has careened from abuse to arrogance to denial, and now it seems to outright lies when it comes to torture. We have all learned in recent years that this White House and its disciples advocated torture. They ignored vocal dissent from within their own Justice Department, they ignored international standards like the Geneva Convention and they lied about it when confronted with the facts.

Even after publicly renouncing torture as abhorrent - they went ahead in then-secret memos saying, “Don't worry, keep waterboarding.”

Forget for a moment that no military man supports torturing the enemy, lest one of their own fall into enemy hands; this administration kept secrets from congress after explicitly promising otherwise. When Alberto Gonzales, George Bush and Dick Cheney decide the law does not apply to them, our nation is in grave danger.

Congress is and should be looking into who knew what and when. No administration should be above the law, especially this one.