Bill Maher on Ron Paul: "He is my New Hero"

So I just finished watching last Fridays rerun of Real Time on HBO, and was pleasantly surprised to hear Bill Maher defending Ron Paul's comments at the last Republican debate on Fox.

Maher was interviewing Chris Dodd (D-CT) at the beginning of the show when he made his comments about a man running for the Republican nomination named Ron Paul who has no chance of winning and can therefore speak the truth. He posed Paul's argument about America's foreign policy of interventionism that has served to drastically irritate much of the mid-east to a point where a 9-11 type attack became imminent. Dodd first disagreed on the grounds that he did not believe that 9-11 was a provoked attack, but host Maher quickly interjected by not allowing Dodd to in Maher's words, "do what the Republican's did to Paul." Maher told Dodd that Paul's words had been twisted. He explained that Paul's point was not to say that we were asking for the attack, but that we intervened to a point where someone was eventually going to respond.

Towards the end of the show Maher put together a stringed clip of the candidate's statements on the war on terror. Each candidate from Romney and Giuliani to McCain and on down the line repeatedly called for more use of torture to fight the war on terror. Romney actually suggested doubling the size of Guantanamo Bay. The clip ended with Ron Paul speaking of the Republican Party's tradition of being anti-war in the past. This was followed by the sound of crickets and dumb "dear in the headlights" looks on all of the other candidates faces.

After I finished writing this post, I noticed that Titanium Girl has posted the video clip from Real Time on her blog Titanium Thoughts. Check it out.