2012 GOP Presidential Campaign -- "This individual's going to accuse me of an affair for an extended period of time."

http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/24/politics/gop-virginia-primary/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

lol these dudes are hopeless morons

I agree with Pareene's take that guys like gingrinch don't give a shit about getting elected, they're just on a well-covered book tour.

i think i am more willing to believe gingrich is egocentric & delusional - so thinks he could, might be president - more than that he is cynical (at least wrt using it as a boost)

yeah me too

fuckin lol

ya living in VA with a dem organizer right now is mega lol i assure u

"We will work with the Republican Party of Virginia to pursue an aggressive write-in campaign to make sure that all the voters of Virginia are able to vote for the candidate of their choice."

all <10,000 of them

write-ins are illegal in VA primary elections

Thank you, Newt, for making my lolidays

for those interested in politics/nat'l affairs and are on twitter, i strongly encourage you to read the "ron paul newsletter" (rp_newsletter) feed. real quotes from ron paul's newsletters. eye-opening if you haven't carefully reviewed his poisonous newsletters.

example below, in reverse order:

Ron Paul Newsletter @RP_Newsletter -- But Al, the Statue of Liberty? Next time, hold that demonstration at a food stamp bureau or a crack house.

______________________________

Ron Paul Newsletter @RP_Newsletter -- Hmmm. I hate to agree with the Rev. Al, but maybe a name change is in order. Welfaria? Zooville? Rapetown? Dirtburg? Lazyopolis?

______________________________

Ron Paul Newsletter @RP_Newsletter -- ...demanding that New York be renamed Martin Luther King City "to reclaim it for our people."

______________________________

Ron Paul Newsletter @RP_Newsletter -- A mob of black demonstrators, led by the "Rev." Al Sharpton, occupied & closed the Statue of Liberty recently...

______________________________

Ron Paul Newsletter @RP_Newsletter -- (headline) KING CITY?

I would rep for renaming New York City "Dirtburg" if we get to rename the Jets the Dirtburgers.

if i can get a cap that says DIRT JETS or DIRT BURG JETS on it i will go to the ballot for this proposal

lol huffington post

Ron Paul Reportedly Refused To Use Gay Man's Bathroom

lol at ron paul getting battered around by the press.

it's almost as though he has some shameful ideas in his past that are coming back to haunt him!

best news regarding ron paul's fall -- btw, ron paul is not a serious candidate -- is that, perhaps relatedly, gingrich is getting an uptick in iowa (538 poll) and maybe elsewhere.

btw, ron paul is not a serious candidate

hm?

he's a fringe candidate. the only reason he's gotten any traction at all is because he hasn't been taken seriously enough to be a target. now that he's being attacked, his support will erode back to his preexisting base of libertarians.

i will say this: he has had a disproportionate impact on the modern GOP than his support (or his ideas) warrant. i think it's because, in the wake of obama's election, the gop was searching for a counter-narrative. it could have gone a number of different ways (e.g., toward mccain's housing proposals; a GOP-flavored stimulus), but it went for a hardcore anti-gov't stance, which in many ways mirrors paul's views.

Ron Paul is the only legitimate conservative candidate. Any Republican who dismisses him isn't a conservative.

conservatism doesn't equal libertarianism.

Never said it did! But this iteration of the GOP upholds a version of federal power so restricted that Paul is the only one who's made a career out of espousing those views.

that's true (and basically the point i was making above).

interesting theory that ron paul's 2012 run is really just laying the groundwork for a more serious run by his son, rand, in 2020.

that's not really the theory. it's a theory that that'll be the only meaningful legacy of the run, but not that ron paul is running just to set up his son

Barely related: I've been reading that book on the '60 election I mentioned a while back, and I just got to the part where Adlai Stevenson said that he found Paul (the Apostle, I presume) appealing and Peale (Norman Vincent, who questioned the idea of a Catholic president) appalling. I think I would have liked Stevenson, but I'm not sure how anyone came to the conclusion that he was someone who'd beat Eisenhower.

Not to mention sending him against Ike twice!

Even more bizarre, there was still a faction of the party--maybe 10 or 15%, including Eleanor Roosevelt--who wanted to run him a third time in '60. The way the author presents it, Stevenson was a dream come true for the most condescending, snobbish wing of the party, which leads me to believe he would have been crushed by Nixon.

I don't mean to sound like I'm simplifying a man who, like I say, I think I would have liked, and who I'm sure had lots going for him. I don't know a whole lot about him.

Ok, someone explain something to me. Why did Gingrich tank? I don't understand why. Unlike Perry and Cain (and possibly Paul now, although his case is a bit different), he hasn't revealed some heretofore unknown flaw to the public. It just seems like his fall was really random.

the negative tv ad blitz?

Why did Gingrich tank?

Liberals aren't the only ones who consider him a boor and a pedant.

Sounds like he just got pummeled over the air in Iowa--I've heard it described as a non-stop barrage of ads from Paul and Romney's surrogates (with no money to counter). I know what you mean, though (I've been saying the same thing): did all these ads reveal anything that these people didn't already know? You have to find it ironic (or hilarious), though, that Gingrich comes across as so wounded and forlorn these days, having been so supremely vicious himself way back when. Another example of ego: his amazement that because he decided he'd refrain from attacking everyone else, the rest of the world would naturally follow his lead.

"Amazement" should read "assumption."

Ron Paul: A man who lives in a glass house, yet still throws stones anyway.

Yeah, I forgot about all the attack ads. I'm in a state that doesn't matter so I'm not really exposed to them.

I guess we did actually matter in the 08 dem primary, but that was like a one-time novelty.

FWIW, gingrich is now experiencing an uptick, in iowa and elsewhere.

so maybe he peaked too early, and fell too early. we'll see.

he is a huge windbag, which can be a turnoff, but this is precisely the quality that people were championing when he was riding high (e.g., "he's so smart!, he'll show-up that stupid president obama in the debates").

RON PAUL:

Ron Paul Newsletter @RP_Newsletter -- Those who don't commit sodomy, get blood transfusions, or swap needles are virtually assured of not getting AIDS...
__________________________________

Ron Paul Newsletter @RP_Newsletter -- ...unless they are deliberately infected by a malicious gay.

What if they got a blood transfusion from a malicious gynecologist?

then that means they would have to know about the true family line of the elders, and...you know what THAT means

*ominous theme music*

interesting theory that ron paul's 2012 run is really just laying the groundwork for a more serious run by his son, rand, in 2020.

Well, yes. I might expect it even sooner than that.

FWIW, gingrich is now experiencing an uptick, in iowa and elsewhere.

What's the basis for this?

I've also heard the theory floated that Herman Cain's candidacy was a just a test-run for his son Vincent, 34 years old and presently a banker.

(Actually it was me who floated the theory, just now.)

Herman Cain was merely a jokey spokesmodel for the Koch Brothers' messaging.

Paul's 08 run was p much what gathered the grassroots momentum for the Tea Party wasn't it? (and Palin's involvement cemented it). I seem to remember a lot of interest being kicked up despite not having a huge media presence (a friend of mine who was a rabid devotee was making claims of a deliberate media blackout)...didn't he break some fundraising record in 0x? Most money in a single day or something?

everything came from Rick Santelli. He is the true prophet.

FWIW, gingrich is now experiencing an uptick, in iowa and elsewhere.

_______________________________

What's the basis for this?

― illegal crew member (C.K. Dexter Holland), Monday, December 26, 2011

Noam Scheiber @noamscheiber -- In same way that Newt may have peaked too soon, seems he may have also flamed out too soon. 538 shows recent uptick: http://nyti.ms/sdrxjR.

Digby:

Libertarians who believe that "statism" is ok if comes from state of California but not the US government are not only living in the early 19th century, they are basically saying that their only real beef is if the government abridging individual freedom is the federal government. Tyranny on a smaller scale isn't their concern. And that isn't liberal or libertarian. It's just plain old antebellum era American politics -- which is what Ron Paul truly believes when you see his positions on issue after issue. And perhaps that explains those notorious newsletters better than anything else. The antebellum south is where his philosophy really comes from --- and where it leads. (And by the way, it shouldn't come as any surprise that the other famous congressional goldbug of the last quarter century was Jesse Helms. Birds of a feather...)

I have no beef with Ron Paul running. He has every right and a legitimate following who deserve to be heard in our politics. He's giving the conservatives heartburn because as much as they love his Antebellum politics when it comes to domestic issues, they're completely at odds with the right's jingoistic national chauvinism --- something that cuts to the heart of American conservatism. (And truthfully, in that as in so much else, Paul works against the tribal lines. Pre-civil war Southern culture was nothing if not martial. And it still is.)

But he cuts equally to the heart of progressive politics with his rigid dismissal of egalitarianism. You simply cannot find a worse candidate for the current era of gilded age inequality. He has absolutely no answers for the most pressing problem our country faces beyond telling us to basically dissolve the union. Somehow, I suspect that isn't going to get the job done.

Yep.

And yet, Alfred is correct. Ron Paul's libertarianism has (conveniently) been adopted by the modern GOP as its answer -- on domestic economic issues, at least -- to the wave that sent Pres. Obama into office.