What’s this – a presidential candidate who thinks in terms of principles? And a Republican, to boot! Good lord, we can’t have that! What is he, some kind of kook?!
We know that Ron Paul did great in the Republican presidential debate sponsored by Fox News and held in Durham, New Hampshire, because how else can we explain neocon Andy McCarthy’s exclamation of despair over at the National Review group blog? “Why,” he cried out in anguish, “is there so much cheering for Ron Paul?”
As the last of the neoconservative dead-enders, holed up over at “The Corner,” mutter darkly, Paul, the ten-term libertarian Republican congressman from Texas, is stealing the spotlight from the so-called frontrunners. For the first time in many a moon, we witnessed a genuine knock-down drag-out brawl between presidential contenders: a real mix-up in which Rep. Paul, the only antiwar candidate in the GOP pack, succeeded in framing the debate around his challenge to neocon orthodoxy on the all-important issue of foreign policy.
By the way, thanks to Fox News for their brazen hostility to Paul, which blew right back in their faces. The refusal to even acknowledge him until a good twenty minutes into the debate, and Chris Wallace’s consistently sneering tone when a question finally came Paul’s way, didn’t stop the Texas troublemaker from stealing the show anyway.
Go here for the video, so you can hear the dripping sarcasm in Señor Wallace’s voice as he characterizes the Paulian position on Iraq as “pretty simple.” Okay, so you want to get out, but what – asked Wallace – about “trying to minimize the bloodbath that would certainly occur if we pull out in a hurry?”
A great deal of Paul’s growing appeal as a candidate lies in his apparent inability to emulate the bromidic grammar-challenged phrases that pass for stirring political rhetoric these days. Instead, he cuts to the chase with a few razor-sharp sentences, and his answer to Wallace did not disappoint his fans: