Posted by
Charles Lewis on Tuesday, January 22, 2008 10:31:55 PM
by Charles R Lewis
Today's
departure of Fred Thompson from the GOP presidential race leaves me in
the midst of a plot worthy of a political Poe. There remain three
genuine conservatives in the race (my close friend, Dr Hugh Cort, plus
Alan Keyes and John Cox), but these three combined (at least according
to the infamous Diebolds and their cronies in the mainstream media and
pollster set) have yet to garner a tenth of 1% in any given state
primary. That leaves only two remaining "viable" options, one too
horrible to even consider, the other on the brink of the same category.
On
the one hand I can pick among four denizens of the
fool-me-once-with-Dubya, shame-on-you, fool-me-twice... wing of the
GOP. That's out. Thompson was as far as I'd go in the establishment
direction. Briefly, those untenable options include:
John
McCain, the UN-ophile who outlawed free speech within 60 days of an
election everywhere but the Internet and wants to do it there as well,
who's a global warming anti-capitalist Chicken Little, who joined with
his pal John Kerry in writing off the MIA's still enslaved in Vietnam,
who openly despises evangelicals and favors taxpayer funded
abortion-for-research, and who still wants to ram at very least
20,000,000 invaders qua America disdainers qua future Democrat voters
down our throats. Ixnay.
Rudy Giuliani, a pro-abortion,
anti-gun, internationalist who sued the feds to maintain his sanctuary
city, lost in court, announced he'd defy the ruling, and did so. He
should be locked up.
Mike Huckabee, who accused anyone who (like
you and me) thinks proof of citizenship should be a requirement for
voting of being a racist, wants in-state tuition for invaders, is a
profligate taxer/spender/regulator on a scale to put Slick Willy to
shame, pardoned murderers who murdered and raped again, and is likewise
anti-2nd Amendment. In his dreams.
Mitt Romney - "Slick Mitt" or
"Slick Willard" - who miraculously morphed from (1) a Massachusetts
governor with a lower gun rating than his last Democrat opponent, (2) a
defender of "reproductive (read 'abortion') rights," (3) a gay marriage
maven who enforced (with a vengeance) an obviously unconstitutional
state supreme court ruling that wasn't even aimed at him, and
instituted gay adoption and gay indoctrination in the state's K-12
curriculum, (4) a proponent of open homosexuality in the military, (5)
a joker that claims (parse-worthily) he wants to dole out a little less
federal largesse to "cities that call themselves sanctuary cities" (of
the hundreds that are, none of them call themselves such), (6) a
doubletalking socialized medicine advocate, (7) an opponent of even the
token interest Congress displayed in saving Terri Schiavo, and (8) a
consistent opponent of capital gains tax cuts, into someone
pseudoconservative enough to gather a very lefthanded endorsement from Ann Coulter. I'll pass.
Oh,
and there's the Democrats, whose debates basically amount to heated
accusations of trivial examples of lack of fealty to their Marxist
party agenda. No, thanks.
That's the pit. On the other hand, there's the pendulum, which has now swung to Ron Paul.
I
used to virtually idolize Ron Paul, who represented the unwavering
commitment to limited constitutional government, individual and states'
rights, free enterprise, health freedom, rugged individualism, self
determination, personhood from conception, border security, defense,
family values, and prosperity which comprised my political philosophy.
I was warned by Washington insiders that this was a facade, that he was
a pied piper of (rightly) disgruntled conservatives, but I held onto my
hopes.
Now I wretch when I behold Paul the flower child and his
largely leftist following pontificating about how if we simply "talk
to" the evil forces that seek our scalps, they'll mend their ways and
join us in a chorus of "Kumbaya," as he apparently believes the
Christian prosecuting butchers in Hanoi are already doing. I want to
scream when he says if China were doing to us what we're supposedly
doing to the Iraqis we'd be shooting at them (as if the Chicoms weren't
strangling us with unfair trade practices, robbing our jobs with slave
labor, threatening to at once pull our monetary plug and nuke us,
running our Panama Canal, poisoning us with tainted products, utilizing
the profits to prepare for our military demise... and I haven't heard
us fire a single shot).
Still, I concur with Paul on countless
issues, and I've ruled out just about everybody else with any kind of
real prospect. I want to be able to support this guy, and I will if he
gives us the following four assurances:
1 He will build the border fence - across the entire Mexican frontier (he told John Stossel, ominously, that he opposes one),
2 He will not choose a leftist like Stalinist Dennis Kucinich as his running mate (he's hinted that he might),
3
He recognizes that communism and Islamism are imperialist movements at
their very core, and of the most brutal, bloody, ruthless types
(instead he repeatedly pins the imperialist tag on us,
pushing the ludicrous notion that the US is the great threat to the
international community, rather than the other way around), and
4 He recognizes that it has been the terrorists who have intentionally killed countless thousands of innocents in Iraq, not our troops (as he incredibly claims).
That
would be all it would take for me to endorse Ron Paul enthusiastically.
Moreover, if he gave these assurances, he could swallow the Fred
Thompson, Duncan Hunter, and Tom Tancredo support practically whole,
and siphon much of the tepid support from the four charlatans, as well.
This
is my olive branch to the Paul campaign, on behalf of the true
conservative segment of America politics. With Paul's fundraising
prowess and the boost this segment would give him, he should by all
rights have a genuine chance.
I'll bet I've seen over a thousand
Paul signs in my limited travels in upstate South Carolina (compared to
maybe one McCain poster). Yet Paul supposedly got 4% in Saturday's
primary, against McCain's alleged 33%. (I've written extensively on
such apparent voting machine incongruencies in recent days.) There were
evidently similar issues in New Hampshire, where voters testified to
having cast Paul votes in precincts that registered 0 votes for him in
their final tallies.
That's an issue we'll have to attack en
masse if we get to that point. But until Paul addresses the "4
assurances," conservatives don't have a dog in that fight. But boy, do
we need one.