More Timely Than Ever!

Sunday, January 06, 2008

Nice Job, Ron!

Ron Paul did admirably well in the ABC presidential forum last night. He got some sure shots in against the empire, sharp enough that Rudy Giuliani felt he needed to respond. His response, of course, was absurd. For example he believes that evidence against Ron Paul's blowback explanation for 9/11 lies in the fact that Islamic radicals want to subvert "moderate" Arab regimes! What moderate Arab regimes? The Saudi monarchy? Egypt's dictatorship? Ron Paul quickly shot back that the U.S. has supported oppressive rulers in the Arab world for years.

He made good points about government's destruction of the dollar when answering questions about oil and medical prices. But he was badly ambiguous (at best) when he said that the medically uninsured would be better off if all that money wasn't being spent on empire. This could have left the impression that he favors government paying for medical care. He might have made other points on these subjects, such as that a truly free market will find alternatives to oil when necessary and that the medical and insurance industries are problems because they are already thoroughly dominated by government.

His worst moment was, of course, immigration. But at least he attacked the national ID card. He deserves much credit for that.

Not a bad night overall.

Naturally, ABC paid only as much attention to him as necessary. The network had a reporter assigned to each candidate's camp -- except, apparently, to Ron Paul's. After the debate, each reporter related his candidate's spin on the debate performance, but we heard nothing about the Paul camp.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sheldon,

I thought one of Giuliani's more absurd claims was in response to Ron Paul's statement that they attack us for "our" policies not our freedom. He used the Munich games as an example of a non-US country being attacked.Putting aside that Germans weren't attacked,wasn't that a Palestinian/Israeli conflict and not a Muslim/Jewish one? I don't know the numbers, but aren't a significant percentage of Palestininans Christians? I am sure they are just as opposed to Israel and their Muslim countryman. I'm not expert on the Middle East (I think you are). Is my analysis correct?

Sheldon Richman said...

I forgot about that piece of Giuliani inanity. Of course the Munich attack was part of the Palestinian (Muslim and Christian)-Israeli conflict. You're right: they did not attack Germans. Giuliani is a sheer demagogue.

That conflict is basically about land claims, not religion.