His speech at CPAC has Andrew Sullivan gushing once again. Given Sullivan’s laudable and oft-stated contempt for the tea party right, it’s odd he should still be so taken with Paul, whose backers are at the very core of tea party lunacy, according to Tom Schaller and Dana Goldstein.
And let’s not forget that after dropping out of the 2008 race, Paul endorsed Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin for president. Baldwin, as Adam Holland notes, just expressed sympathy for Austin suicide terrorist and murderer Joe Stack, whose demented views are “shared by millions of Americans who are also fed up with Big Brother,” Baldwin claims. Baldwin has also argued that “Martin Luther King, Jr. brought havoc and unrest to America as few men have ever done.” And as founder and pastor of Florida’s Crossroad Baptist Church, Baldwin also believes that “homosexuality is moral perversion.” We are just scratching the surface of Baldwin’s extremism, which Ron Paul in effect endorsed in 2008.
Look, people are hungry for noble anti-establishment politicians, and for good reason. But the issue isn’t that “pundits keep dismissing” Ron Paul, as Sullivan claims. Quite the contrary, Paul has so successfully whitewashed his far-right profile that he’s got pundits giving him mainstream cred at every turn. Scary.
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Actually, Paul was not going to endorse anyone for Prez but Barr dissed him and he went with Barr's biggest competitor. The degree to which Paul actually endorses all of Baldwin's views is debatable. Politicians endorse others all the time who have controversial beliefs. For example, Jesus Freak Pat Robertson endorsed pro-choice Giuliani. So, I think you may be giving the Baldwin endorsement ordeal more attention than it deserves.
Sullivan's judgment diminishes in inverse and squared proportion to his perception that something or someone is being "silenced". Cf his airing in TNR of Charles Murray's "findings" that black people are less intelligent than white people. This perception and his propensity toward histrionics impel him into fatuous gestures.
Paul is a noxious crank whose non-interventionism leads him to useful-idiot interpretations of American foreign policy, including Lindberghian attacks on Israel.
Maybe I missed something, but I don't think Mr. Sullivan is going to be voting for Mr. Paul anytime soon. Mr. Sullivan merely pointed out that he agrees with some of Mr. Paul's positions, and that–unlike the other names atop the CPAC straw poll–Mr. Paul isn't a pathological liar or a fraud.
If indeed this can be called "gushing", then conservative ideology is in serious trouble. Not that I have a problem with that, mind you…
"Go Ron Paul!" – Andrew Sullivan, Dec. 17, 2007, officially endorsing Paul in the GOP primary.
Paul, in my view, is indeed a fraud, just a different type of fraud – a man of the nativist nutjob right who's managed to mainstream himself by tapping into a widespread (and to some degree understandable) current of isolationism and anti-statist sentiment.