angry man for an angry party
The TNR has 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".
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.
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.
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