According to Ron Paul Henchman and alleged erstwhile ghostwriter Lew Rockwell, you can blame Dicky Flatt’s buddy, Phil Gramm:
…I was involved in that campaign, when Reagan broke his moronic “11th Commandment” to speak ill of fellow Republican Ron Paul, and such figures as Karl Rove and Paul Weyrich conspired to wage a very nasty campaign against Ron. In true Republican dirty-tricks fashion, Ron’s campaign office was even burglarized and his mailing list and other documents stolen. The power-elite had annointed (sic) the Philster, and would brook no grassroots opposition. Ron, of course, ran a hard and heroic campaign, complete with brilliant antiwar ads.
Wow! Bush’s Brain was controlling the party way back then? It also seems a bit ironic for Rockwell to call Reagan’s 11th Commandment “moronic” then whine about him breaking it. Then Llewellyn all but states it was Rove and Weyrich that broke into Paul’s campaign office, a pretty bold claim. And what war was Paul running anti-war ads against in 1984?
The Rockster was responding to comments made by Spencer J. Hahn on why he can never forgive Gramm for stealing Ron Paul’s chance of serving in the Senate alongside Barry Goldwater:
Let us not forget that it was that Democrat turncoat, Phil Gramm, who defeated Ron Paul in the 1984 Republican Senate primary. Had Ron Paul won the primary, he would have won the general election, and become the true conscience of the Senate. I often wonder what would have been if Ron Paul had been in the Senate to filibuster every unconstitutional bill. He almost certainly would have been a presidential candidate (as Gramm was in 1996), and likely would have been taken more seriously by the MSM.
So there you have it, folks. The reason no one takes Ron Paul seriously is because Phil Gramm beat him in the primary in 1984. Oh, and Halliburton.
I thought Libertarians were all about personal responsibility?
Filed Under Front Page ·
Comments
28 Responses to “Why is Ron Paul not President?”Search
Our Sponsors
Poll
Loading ...LST Book Club
-
Defending Identity: Its Indispensable Role in Protecting Democracy
by Natan Sharansky -
Fear No Evil
by Natan Sharansky -
The Case For Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror
by Anatoly Shcharansky -
The Jewish State: The Struggle for Israel's Soul
by Yoram Hazony -
Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There
by David Brooks -
Snobbery: The American Version
by Joseph Epstein -
A Conflict of Visions: Idealogical Origins of Political Struggles
by Thomas Sowell
You really couldn’t make up this crap.
That late night radio guy may be on to something.
I am becoming convinced these people really were deposited in New Mexico in the 50’s for our entertainment.
Ron Paul! Ron Paul! Ron Paul!……oh, never mind.
I don’t see how any of this will make any difference? According to the latest phone and computer polls, Ron Paul will win the primaries in a landslide!
I’m really intrigued about these “anti-war” ads. Does anybody remember that campaign? Those were hazy days for me. I can remember I lived here but that’s about it ; - ) Surely they weren’t ads run against “The Cold War”. You know, the one we won and that caused the collapse of communism and the liberation of all of Eastern Europe.
Good grief. Is anyone else as sick of hearing about Ron Paul as I am? What a complete loser. Why his constituents keep electing him is beyond me.
Every time I hear the name Lew Rockwell, I know a facepalm is coming. Shoot I’m even a fan and voting constituent of RP in congress. As a full RP congressional supporter, I will say he would not be a good president.
Maybe the reason he hasn’t been able to achieve higher office is because of the folks he’s surrounded himself with, like Llewellyn.
I think it’s his efforts to legalize shemp that’s keeping him down.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-weigant/electoral-math-from-knuck_b_110086.html
don’t think Ron Paul will win, but here’s Weigant’s view of how the election may go…
#7 I don’t think Rockwell has cost him anything in the quest for higher office simply because most voters don’t know who Rockwell is, or care for that matter.
Rockwell’s a pretty mild addition to the list of forbidden political associations…so mild that pretty much the only people who care about him are a small cadre of perpetually stoned AIDS fiend libertines at the Cato Institute and Reason Magazine who have a disgruntlement with Rockwell predating the Paul campaign.
Jamie Kirchick, the “reporter” who was quoted approvingly by some around here, is among said libertines.
But in that case, the offended party is a worse association to have than their original grievance. If the choice is between Rockwell and the cast of “Rent,” Rockwell is by far the lesser problem.
That’s pretty funny (really) but why does that have to be the choice? How ’bout neither?
Are you saying he should pick the lesser of two evils?
#10 Phil_M
Good line and very funny.
“Neither” is always ideal, and in fact it is what I say frequently about the choice between McCain and Obama. It’s seldom an available choice though, so you learn to tolerate some negatives and object to others based on how severe they are.
Rockwell, IMO, is pretty harmless. He isn’t guilty of much more than taking iconoclastic political stances that he knows aren’t very popular anyway. The Cato Libertines though…
I’ve generally found that the “neighbor” test is a reasonably good way to differentiate “controversial” political associations: would the person in question be someone you’d want living next door to you?
I would NOT want to live next door to William Ayers, a KKK guy, Quannell X, David Duke, Father Placa (Giuliani’s pedophile priest), or the cast of “Rent” - all for different reasons, but each related to my own safety and the environment I would want my family to live in.
It’s very different though with guys like Rockwell, or perhaps Pat Robertson - i.e. political figures who say controversial (and sometimes stupid things) but are generally harmless.
#13 - That’s one of the things that really bothered me about the whole “Ron Paul newsletters” story. There were more things wrong about the sources it was coming from than the story itself, and a lot of people (including some around here) seized onto those sources out of their animosity towards Paul when in more discerning times they would have never given them the time of day.
To put it bluntly, Jamie Kirchick is a filthy and perverse waste of oxygen who does filthy and perverse things to himself and, sadly, to the reputations of his betters with little to no repercussions. He is to the New Republic and the DC/Cato/Reason Libertine clique what Lisa Falkenberg is to the Chronicle.
Yet when Kirchick was attacking Ron Paul, he was celebrated and promoted by people who should have known better including on this blog and in live interviews on KSEV. In their quest to label Paul a snake, they unwittingly dove head first into the viper pit.
There has been exactly one post on LST to even mention Kirchick. This is all that was said:
I would hardly classify that as celebratory or promotional.
Hamous - Kirchick was interviewed live on KSEV for over half an hour straight. His newsletter story was also repeated all over this blog even if he was only named once.
The simple fact is that people who should have known better associated with the trash he was generating and spread it with little to no scrutiny of their source.
It’s also worth mentioning that it would have been entirely appropriate to prefix the Kirchick post here with a full disclosure of who he was: a libertine sleaze columnist with a knack for character assassination and shoddy political hit pieces on people, usually motivated by perceived sleights to his own gayness.
The guy is despised in the non-Cato libertarian movement, and even some of his former colleagues in the gay movement disown him for his tactics. All of that would have been an appropriate disclaimer to the link LST posted, just as it similarly disclaims links to trash from the Chron.
Instead we only saw approving silence.
Hamous, how many extreme right wing, racial hatred filled websites (read neo Nazi) did LST come up with who were endorsing Ron Paul?
This is really pathetic. Well the facts are it really was a very dirty campaign. Gramm had been instrumental in getting Reagan’s tax cuts through the congress while he was a Democrat. He then switched to the GOP. During the Senate primary campaign the GOP establishment did all fall in line behind Gramm against Ron Paul who had been one of four Republicans in the congress to endorse Reagan in 1976. Good gravy, I’m 54 years old and I still remember the campaign. The GOP establishment was more interested in getting party switchers than backing a life long Republican. It was pretty shameless. And I’d like to add, I know NeoCons like Ed Hendee tried his best to defeat Ron this past March but the good people of the 14th gave him 70 percent of the vote. NeoCons face it, you’re stuck with Amnesty Insane John McCain.
So tax cuts are a bad thing? I didn’t get that memo. I don’t care who votes FOR a tax cut. I’ve never met a tax cut I didn’t like.
As opposed to RP, who was a Republican, then a Libertarian, then a Republican again because he couldn’t get elected. I call that an opportunist. Nothing necessarily wrong with that but it’s hard to put him up on the purist pedestal.
I’d venture to say the Republicans would never have been in the majority if it had not been for many Southern Democrats switching party affiliation. It is certainly a shameful thing that they squandered a golden opportunity, but most certainly Phil Gramm was not one that did.
Ooooh! Neocons! Booga Booga!!! Scare me!
Hammie, check your damn email and go try it!
I didn’t say tax cuts were bad. Just pointing out that Gramm while a Democrat did help get Reagan’s tax cuts through the Democrat controlled House with Tip O’Neill as Speaker and Jim Wright Majority leader. The GOP in Texas was falling all over itself trying to get party switchers at the expense of life long Republicans. Texas was still for the most part a Democrat state. It was a very dirty campaign. Ron Paul would have been a better Senator. He actually believes in limited government and the constitution. I’m not trying to scare you, just pointing out that Edd Hendee is a NeoCon.
#23 Oops. It was Gin & Topo Chico hour out in the back yard at Hammieworld. On my way.
Yeah, while I’m bustin’ my ass trying to fix this!
jimbob - If all Democrats were in favor of tax cuts this country would be in much better shape than it is today. I don’t see that as a problem.
Lew posted the text of a note sent to him by a Spencer J. Hahn.
I used to be considered part of the extreme right-wing nut, then I was relabeled a paleo-conservative to distinguish from the NR new version of “conservatism,” that is to say neocon.
Do y’all even realize that many of Lew Rockwell’s associates are pre-Vatican 2 Roman Catholics?