Why Ron Paul shouldn’t be taken seriously

Phillip Klein writes a great article in the Washington Examiner this morning disputing his colleague on why Ron Paul shouldn’t be taken seriously:

Let’s just focus on foreign policy, because that’s the area that separates him most from the Republican mainstream. Even if I were to grant that he was right about Iraq and Afghanistan (refighting the arguments over these wars is beyond the scope of this post), that still doesn’t validate his extreme foreign policy views.

Paul doesn’t just support pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan, but wants to close U.S. bases all across the globe. He not only wants to withdraw all foreign aid, and end our “entangled alliance” with Israel, but he’s spoken out against Israel’s efforts to defend its citizens against terrorist groups. When Israel invaded Gaza to prevent Hamas rocket attacks in 2009, Paul recorded a video calling it a “sad day for the whole world.” He said Palestinians were living in a “concentration camp” (a thinly-veiled attempt to liken Israelis to Nazis) and said terrorists had just “a few small missiles.” Well, try telling that to the Israelis whose daily lives were being disrupted by thousands of missiles being aimed at houses, schools, bus stations, hospitals, grocery stores and other civilian locations at random moments, with only seconds of notice.

In last Thursday’s debate, Paul dismissed the significance of Iran getting nuclear weapons (a radical regime that has called for “Death to America” and wiping Israel off the map). To be clear, it isn’t a matter of him being against sending troops to Iran, or bombing Iran — he is even against imposing sanctions, or taking any other actions to attempt to stop them from getting nukes. He also warned that assassinating terrorists would “translate our rule of law into a rule of mob rule.” In May, Paul said that he wouldn’t have ordered the raid that killed Osama bin Laden because “it was absolutely not necessary.” This is just a small inkling of the positions he’s taken recently.

And none of this gets into Paul’s penchant for indulging fringe characters – from flirting with 9/11 truthers to allowing racist newsletters to be published under his name.

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE >>

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Also read Ron Paul: The GOP’s Henry Wallace from Big Government today.


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