musik_knut wrote: 
This is a clever Republican strategy to get power back. They want to convince the  "low information voters" and big gubmint haters to get rid of ALL "da bums".  Since Dems are in the majority this would probably benefit the Republicans, like they found out in Massachusetts.  

 Mark_E_DeSnow wrote: 

Good point...I should have said the politicians within each Party are the same...as for the Parties, they are polar opposites. Mr. Bennett was making that point and I would agree.

 Welly wrote: 

Mr. Beck continues a schtick that has made him a rich man and I don't have a problem with that. Mr. Bennett is of course correct when he admonishes Mr. Beck to acknowledge that there are profound differences between the major Parties. If Mr. Beck is promoting a third party, so be it. More voices can't hurt.

Right Wing Baclash to Glenn Beck
Beck may have received a standing ovation at the convention, but many high-profile conservatives have been less enthusiastic about his GOP criticism.
Right-wing pundit Bill Bennett wrote, “The first task of a serious political analyst is to see things as they are. … And there is a difference between the
Republican and Democratic parties. To ignore these differences, or propagate the myth that they don’t exist, is not only discouraging, it is dangerous.
” The Wall Street Journal’s John Fund said that several Republicans “complained that Mr. Beck is indirectly encouraging third-party candidates to
challenge them this year, threatening to divide the conservative vote.”

 kurtster wrote: 
Sen. Bernie Sanders is the only Independent and he is also the most Progressive Congress member. He's the only one that shuns corporate campaign donations. Sanders cannnot be bought by the rich!  Sanders For President 2012!

So why does a Third Party have to have a viable candidate for President in order to be legitimate ?  Who wrote that rule ?  I've never seen it. 

A Third Party presence in Congress large enough to prevent a majority rule (50%) or greater of either established party would force real debate and a real coming together in order to pass meaningful legislation that does not favor one particular side over another.  It would also change how a President governs in respect to policies and agendas.  That's enough, for now.

To dismiss a grassroots movement as illegitimate because it cannot organize itself to a national level and front a Presidential candidate is self righteous and elitist.  If candidates for Congress can arise that ascribe to a movements goals then elect them and throw out someone who doesn't.  For Congress to mirror the nation, it should consist of 30% Dems, 20% Repubs and 50% Independents.  That would certainly stop business as usual, regardless of who was in the White House.

 dionysius wrote: 
Yes it is, I think he's an obgyn - delivered over 4000 babies. I found this on his website:

Recalling his personal observation of a late-term abortion performed by one of his instructors during his medical residency, Ron Paul stated, "It was pretty dramatic for me to see a two-and-a-half-pound baby taken out crying and breathing and put in a bucket."

I also read he believes that life begins at conception.

This is also from his website:

At the same time, Ron Paul believes that the ninth and tenth amendments to the U.S. Constitution do not grant the federal government any authority to legalize or ban abortion. Instead, it is up to the individual states to prohibit abortion.

His usual position on many issues (legalized drugs, prostitution, etc.) is up to the individual state to decide.

I personally believe that life begins at birth, so he and I will disagree on this.

And individual rights are paramount.

A couple of views I generally agree with, here, and here.

Regards

 cc_rider wrote: 

No, Ron Paul plusgood doublethinker. 

 dionysius wrote:
 
You seem to think politicians should be incapable of having two diametrically opposed viewpoints at the same time. Shame on you...

 dionysius wrote: 

Exactly.

 miamizsun wrote: 

The citizens in question are women, and a woman's reproductive freedom is the right in question. Ron Paul opposes abortion rights. Which is actually rather odd, for a libertarian.

 maryte wrote: 
m, I know he's not perfect, but I'm not aware of him squelching anyone's individual rights.

May I ask why you think so?

regards

Conservatives Turn On Scott Brown Over Jobs Bill Vote: 'Low Life Scum Hypocrite!'

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 Isabeau wrote: 
There, fixed your typo.

As Ron Paul does not actually subscribe to individual liberties (at least for some citizens), I'd hardly call him a libertarian.

 RichardPrins wrote: 

Yeah I saw the short video. It was obvious that the Romney crowd was upset (as were many other politicians who didn't do so well in the Poll)
Hatemongers Attack Ron Paul

But the peacemaking libertarian will triumph. Article by Justin Raimondo (AntiWar.com). Some high lights from Justin's article....
Headlines reported Paul's win as a "surprise," but early indications of the Paulian domination of CPAC this year included the ubiquitous presence of Young Americans for Liberty (YAL) activists and the rock star reception given to Rep. Paul himself.

The former - and perhaps future - Republican presidential candidate gave a half-hour peroration that boldly stressed anti-interventionist foreign policy as the key to reining in big government on the home front. Invoking the shade of Robert A. Taft, and wondering aloud how we're going to pay for our empire, Paul traced the roots of our dilemma back to Woodrow Wilson, the quintessential "progressive" of Glenn Beck's worst nightmares. Unlike Beck, however, whose anti-progressive polemics only mention World War I in passing, Paul realizes that the whole kit-n-kaboodle of progressivism - the income tax, the Federal Reserve, and the philosophy of government as an instrument of moral uplift -all culminated in US involvement in the Great War.

Too many conservatives, averred Paul, take a piecemeal approach to liberty: they don't understand that freedom is indivisible, and that you can't have constitutional and strictly limited government while engaging in endless wars.

Paul's CPAC victory is a stunning repudiation of the War Party's long-standing dominance of the GOP, and is bound to ramp up the already quite active campaign to smear and destroy him. Neocon Dorothy Rabinowitz, in the midst of a jeremiad ostensibly aimed at Sarah Palin, points out that the liberals may hate Sarah for all the wrong reasons, but there are perfectly good neoconservative reasons for joining in the media pile-on, beginning with:

"The unsavory echoes of her regular references to ‘the real America' as opposed to those shadowy "elites," now charged with threats to the life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness of all real Americans. Neither does she seem to have any idea of how that low soapbox oratory - embracing one kind of American as the real kind, those builders in the towns and cities across America - rings in the ear today. It is not new."

A rebellion among conservatives has long been brewing, and the CPAC convention represents the first skirmish in a civil war on the right, a war that is essentially over foreign policy. The Paul movement is well-organized, activist-oriented, and well-funded: more importantly, it has a well-grounded ideology, one that offers an alternative to the brain-dead neoconservatism of Republican party hacks and third-rate politicians like Rudy Giuliani - whose single delegate to the 2008 Republican convention fairly represents the strength of the Rabinowitz wing of the conservative movement.

Rabinowitz & Co. have their work cut out for them if they're going to try and convince conservatives that the Paul movement is "leftist." Good luck with that one. The neocon method, however, is simple repetition: if you tell a lie long enough, and persistently enough, maybe, just maybe people will come to accept it.

"Conspiracy theorist," "zealot," "deranged," "truther" - rinse, and repeat. There is something oddly childish about the taunting polemical style of the neocons: what it boils down to is simple name-calling. Rather than engage Paul's actual views, the idea is to drive him out of the public square by means of pure epithets. Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson joins the chorus:

"The left has a political interest in defining the broad backlash against expanded government as identical to the worst elements of the Tea Party movement - birthers and Birchers, militias and nativists, racists and conspiracy theorists, acolytes of Ron Paul, Tom Tancredo and Lyndon LaRouche."

Ron Paul, avers Gerson, is preying on those "new to political engagement" who find "anger and paranoia intoxicating." (After all, there's nothing to be angry about only the "paranoid" get angry.) They "listen to Ron Paul attacking the Federal Reserve cabal, and suddenly their resentments become ordered into a theory. Such theories, in politics, can act like a drug, causing addiction, euphoria and psychedelic departures from reality."

Yes those drug addict-truther-paranoid-extremist-birther-militia types - how dare they so much as open their mouths!

The whole neocon pack of attack dogs is bound to be out in full force by Monday morning, on that you can depend. Angry, paranoid, and full of hate - that describes Ron's critics to a tee. They are merely projecting these attributes which they possess in full measure onto Ron Paul and his supporters.

The Rabinowitzes and Gersons of this world are angry that people are beginning to question the previously unquestionable: they're paranoid that their positions as opinion "leaders" and official arbiters of what's kosher and what's not are being overturned - and they're chock full of hate for anyone who, like Rep. Paul, challenges their power. As well they should be. Because if Ron and the movement he leads is successful, their day is over and done.