There has been a great deal of noise lately over Congressman Ron Paul's candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination. According to most recent polls, he's in third place, but well behind front runners Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney.
Part of this is the nature of Paul's support, which is an interesting mix of younger voters who like Paul's stance on legalizing drugs, hardcore libertarians, paleo-conservatives and isolationists along the lines of Pat Buchanan, and conspiracy theorists and hard core anti-Semites. Many of them are fanatic about Paul to the point of almost religious obsession.
That works well in Iowa, where you're dealing with caucuses rather than an actual vote and the name of the game is to get your footsoldiers out in the January weather to swamp and dominate them.
Paul has run before, but there's something different about this year's campaign. It seems a lot more organized and well funded, Paul is being featured in most of the media sponsored debates and is getting a lot more deference not only from the talking heads but from his fellow candidates.
I'd noticed it, but wasn't quite sure why until I received an e-mail from a long standing source of mine who has been extremely reliable in the past and knows both politics and DC fairly well. Along with some other items, , as an aside there was a little something about Dr. Paul and his campaign that connected a few dots for me.
According to this person, he has heard from someone whom should definitely know that Ron Paul is receiving considerable financial and logistical support from people connected at fairly high level with President Obama's re-election campaign.
From a political and strategic view, a tactic this makes a great deal of sense if re-electing President Obama is the goal. Since it does makes sense on so many levels, even though this is totally based on an anonymous source, I'm sharing it with you.
Ron Paul's chances of actually getting the GOP nomination are very slim, but he could definitely act as a spoiler. As I pointed out, because of the nature of Iowa,he has a shot at doing fairly well there, even a very outside chance at winning, since it's not an actual primary. If, say, he were to come second in Iowa, it gives him a fair amount of momentum. It also probably means that candidates who are down in the polls like Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum and John Huntsman might be forced to call it a day...even Rick Perry might be on that list. Ron Paul might pick up some of that support, and while it probably wouldn't get him the nomination, it gives him a much higher profile and increases the divisiveness within the GOP, especially given the fanatic nature of many of Ron Paul's followers.
Of course, if by chance Ron Paul were to end up as the Republican nominee, so much the better for President Obama, who would slaughter him in the general election in November. There are plenty of Republicans who would sit on their hands rather than vote to make Ron Paul president.
A third scenario that would also work well for President Obama would involve Paul running as a third party candidate. Ron Paul would have no chance of winning, but he might just get enough votes to make sure President Obama does. Dr.Paul, by the way, has repeatedly said he wouldn't rule out a third party run if he doesn't get the nomination.
All three of these scenarios play into President Obama's hands in helping his re-election.
When I asked my source if Ron Paul knew he was getting support from the Obama campaign or whether he was unaware, my source had no answer, and in the last analysis it doesn't matter.
Paul has already announced he won't seek re-election for his congressional seat,so this is pretty much his last hurrah in politics. I doubt he'd turn down an offer of financing or other help even if he knew where it was coming from.
Full disclosure here...I am not a Ron Paul fan in any sense of the word. I might agree with some of his stance on entitlements and fiscal responsibility, but I also see him as hypocritical since he's one of the chief practitioners of earmarks and pork in Congress.
I think his isolationist stance is dangerous in a world where we are no longer protected by two oceans and would lead to a lot of dead Americans if he were in the Oval Office.
And he's never come up with satisfactory answers as far as I'm concerned about a long history of racist and anti-Semitic remarks in person and in print.
Anyone who's ever criticized Ron Paul in print, including yours truly, can testify to the fact that among his most rabid supporters are a large number of vicious Jew haters who leave comments online and voice sentiments that wouldn't have been out of place in Der Stürmer. Neo-Nazi sites like Stormfront are packed with Paulistas. The only difference between now and the are the references to Israel.
For that matter, it was Ron Paul who introduced an amendment in Congress just this year, on February 17th to cut off all aid to Israel and only to Israel. Since most analysts estimate that doing so would actually cost the US between $10 and $15 billion per year conservatively, that's a definite mark against his fiscal conservative warrior stance as well as his foreign policy smarts.
As another interesting sidelight, no one in the pro Obama media is asking Ron Paul questions about any of this. You have to wonder why.
However I might feel about him, I wouldn't be printing this if I didn't think that there was a damned good chance that Ron Paul was being used as a pawn knowingly or unknowingly to help get Barack Obama his second term.
It fits in too many ways, and along with his other liabilities ought to make anyone considering supporting him think twice about the matter.
Selah.
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