[Dean's World] Aziz P: angry man for an angry party

[notify at powerblogs.com]

Posted by Aziz P:
angry man for an angry party
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1199887096.shtml


   The TNR has [1]a lengthy article on Ron Paul, looking beyond the short
   horizon of his campaign and at the years of newsletters he has written
   over the years with his political screeds, and concludes he is
   "angry".

     Ron Paul is not going to be president. But, as his campaign has
     gathered steam, he has found himself increasingly permitted inside
     the boundaries of respectable debate. He sat for an extensive
     interview with Tim Russert recently. He has raised almost $20
     million in just three months, much of it online. And he received
     nearly three times as many votes as erstwhile front-runner Rudy
     Giuliani in last week's Iowa caucus. All the while he has generally
     been portrayed by the media as principled and serious, while
     garnering praise for being a "straight-talker."

     From his newsletters, however, a different picture of Paul
     emerges--that of someone who is either himself deeply embittered
     or, for a long time, allowed others to write bitterly on his
     behalf. His adversaries are often described in harsh terms: Barbara
     Jordan is called "Barbara Morondon," Eleanor Holmes Norton is a
     "black pinko," Donna Shalala is a "short lesbian," Ron Brown is a
     "racial victimologist," and Roberta Achtenberg, the first openly
     gay public official confirmed by the United States Senate, is a
     "far-left, normal-hating lesbian activist." Maybe such outbursts
     mean Ron Paul really is a straight-talker. Or maybe they just mean
     he is a man filled with hate.

   What the essay completely misses is that Ron Paul's views and his hate
   towards minorities and gays is actually well within the mainstream of
   the GOP, a party that has exploited divisions in its cultural war (one
   that promises to be waged anew should Huckabee take the nomination).
   The essay describes Paul as an iconoclast within the GOP, but other
   than his view on Iraq, he isn't really beyond the party orthodoxy (and
   even is Iraq views have a solid grounding in the paleocon school, who
   are out of favor at present but clearly remain a part of the base).

   Paul's candidacy is one that has exposed the fault lines within the
   GOP, but within the GOP he remains. It isn't that Paul is an angry
   man. It's that he's an angry party man, however much the party today
   tries to deny it.

References

   1. http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=e2f15397-a3c7-4720-ac15-4532a7da84ca