Rep. Ron Paul is now the media darling, again, after his surprising win of the 2010 CPAC straw poll. I don’t begrudge that win at all. Of the 10,000 people that attended CPAC, about 2,400 voted. 48% of the people that voted, were young people up to the age of 25. Ironic that the youth cared enough to vote.
But this straw poll win and the invitation to Ron Paul, Bob Barr, and Glenn Beck symbolized a strong libertarian uprising in the conservative movement in terms of fiscal sanity: reduce the size of government, abolish the Fed and other government programs, cut taxes, and reduce spending. These are supposed to be the platform of the GOP, before they abandoned it.
But here is where the problem lies between conservatives and many libertarians: the war against Islamic fascists and terrorism.
Today, Ron Paul made a guest appearance on Fox News via telephone with Julie Banderas to answer questions from Banderas and people on Twitter about CPAC, his straw poll win, the debate on healthcare, and the youth vote.
And here is where things get tentative: a person on Twitter asked Rep. Paul, what were his thoughts on the war on terrorism and third parties. Paul said terrorism is a “vicious crime” enacted against America.
Since when was terrorism a crime? This is a fundamental problem we conservatives have with libertarians and for that matter, the progressives and liberals, especially President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder. When we were attacked on the USS Cole, the American embassy in Kenya, and on 9/11; Al-Qaeda declared war on us. Simple as that. These were not random criminal acts nor did we deserve to be attacked.
However, Rep. Paul keeps claiming this point: That because of “American interventionism” in the Middle East for the past several decades, we had 9/11 coming.
Here is his response in the 2008 GOP presidential debate to former Mayor of NYC Rudy Giuliani when discussing 9/11:
“Have you ever read about the reasons they attacked us? They attack us because we’ve been over there. We’ve been bombing Iraq for 10 years.”
So in Ron Paul’s logic: An eye for an eye.
Don’t get me wrong, Ron Paul is a smart man when it comes to the Constitution and fiscal responsibility (ironic since he is one of the biggest porkers in congress), but he is boneheaded and dead wrong on foreign policy.
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