The coming US presidential election will decide whether the United States remains an independent nation, or whether it will be subsumed under a western hemispheric version of supra-regional arrangements exemplified by the European Union.
The battle lines have never been more clearly drawn than in Ron Paul’s exchange with ex-NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani during the South Carolina GOP Primary Debate on May 15, 2007, and the follow-up blogosphere ruckus that can only be labeled as a political feeding frenzy.
What is not yet clear, however, is exactly who is doing the feeding - and who is the bait.
The Exchange:
The Aftermath:
After the debate, Ron Paul appears as a guest on Fox News’ Hannity and Colmes show. Hannity goes wild on Paul and Paul again refuses to back down, but can’t hardly get a word in sideways between Hannity’s irate rants.
The following day, Paul is interviewed by Wolf Blitzer on CNN and is asked whether he will take the opportunity to back away from his statements. Ron Paul retorts that it is Rudy Giuliani who needs to apologize to him for unjustifiably blowing his top on him and insinuating that he is “un-American”. Ron affirms that he is indeed an American because Americans have the right to disagree with bad policy, and America’s foreign interventionism in the middle east is bad policy and therefore can and should be challenged.
The Fissure:
In saying this, Ron Paul has opened a fissure, a festering sore in the American psyche, a sore that has been festering ever since neocon radio took over the AM airwaves. Ever since 9-11, AM radio talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glen Beck, have inundated Americans hoping to listen to conservative news commentary with the un-American notion that, if you disagree with president Bush on Iraq, you are either a wild-eyed liberal, a traitor to the American cause, or both. Only a few, like Mike Savage, have withstood the temptation to join that cacophony.
The Question:
The question is: Whom will American conservatives listen to - in the end?
The chances of Ron Paul maintaining his early gains in popularity after this Giuliani exchange are becoming somewhat iffy when heavy conservative guns such as Human Events Online offer a rundown of commentaries by what are widely regarded as conservative pundits depicting Paul as a tin foil hat-wearing, out of this world nut-job.
The answer to this question will forecast the future course of this nation with deadly precision.
The Answer:
In his CNN interview by Wolf Blitzer, Ron Paul demonstrated his presidential leadership credentials for all to see and hear. He confirmed that he in no way is “weak on defense” or anything of the sort. He explained that he actually voted for giving president Bush authority to go after Bin Laden in Afghanistan and maintains Bush should have stuck to that goal..
His very pointed - and subsequently universally ignored - criticism of Bush’s policy is, however, that the administration completely forgot about Bin Laden, allowed him to hide out in Pakistan which is supposed to be our “ally”, and instead attacked Iraq, which we by now know had absolutely nothing to do with the attacks on 911.
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