Is the Ron Paul Campaign Dangerous?

I have just finished reading J.B. Williams article, "Why The Ron Paul Campaign is Dangerous" over at gopusa.com, and I have a few comments.

I find his claim that there are virtually no real Conservatives supporting Paul to be way out of touch with reality. I come from a very Conservative upbringing, but sadly I have been politically homeless for the past several years due to reckless spending and what I have come to view as a dangerous foreign policy out of step with that advocated by the founders of our country. I have studied the history of the Republican party, and I have observed an abandonment of most of the core principles over the past 8 years. Ron Paul has brought me back into the Republican party, as he has done with countless others here in my own city who are now working with me to get Mr. Paul elected.

I concede Mr. Williams' point that many Democrats and Independents are jumping parties to support Paul, but shouldn't the Republican party be celebrating this. I thought that when large numbers of people switched parties for any reason that it was called growth, something the GOP has sadly seen little of recently. Paul represents a unique opportunity in our history to return to the true Conservative Republican values of self reliance and true self government. Not the kind of self government that Pres. Bush speaks about when he speaks of "liberating" third world countries and subsequently imposing his idea of self government on them by occupying them for seemingly the rest of time. When I see the now small remaining base of the Republican party refusing to embrace a candidate who has managed to persuade millions of of Americans of all political and social backgrounds that our current direction of more and bigger government is the wrong direction, I remember why I ceased supporting the GOP back in 2001.

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.