I am writing this at 8:53 PM.

Obviously, I’m cheering for Ron Paul.

Of the rest of the condidates, I found Romney quite slick. Guiliani was also slick, but much less obviously, and he was also funny – especially when differentiating himself from Mrs. Clinton. I wouldn’t want him for president but he’d make a good stand-up comic, actually. To my mind, Thompson and McCain made a good appearance; they win the “does he look the part?” test, I guess. McCain had the best line of the night. That was also in response to the question asking him to differentiate himself from Clinton. Referring to Woodstock, he said he was “tied up” at the time – a joke about his years as a POW in Vietnam and a slam against her hippie past.

Hunter and Tancredo gave fluent answers, although brought in belatedly. And they sounded real. Huckabee didn’t get much of a chance, but when he did, he was forceful.

A note: Romney called the US government an “enterprise” – a business, which of course it simply is not. It is, as Michael Oakeshott wrote, a civil association. That misunderstanding is central to what is wrong with politics today.

Two columnists were referenced by Brit Hume (or was it a candidate?) – George Will and Charles Krauthammer. Both neoconservatives and both pro-war hawks. George Will used to get his policy line from the Jonathan Institute and Krauthammer is so influential he can singlehandedly set the tone of our public debate. I have written how these two journalists, especially, are often responsible for introducing “memes” into an apparently spontaneous public discussion, which end up taking over and shaping the debate by framing how it is conducted. You saw that at work here.

Paul fielded five questions – on gay marriage and health care, and then his difference from Hillary Clinton, and two more.

His first response was a little involved, and he slipped up by leaving the impression that he saw marriage solely as a religious institution, and not civil. Actually, he did mention the civil aspect, but it wasn’t clear.

His second answer on health care was much better. And he made the important point that our imperial policy is what makes it impossible for us to continue the managed health care system we currently have.
His third answer was boo’d – that the US empire was unsustainable and a bad idea. That threw him off a bit, but he regained footing. He’s not a candidate who thinks or talks in one-liners, which is unfortunately the way issues are decided these days.

I missed his following answera because I had to take a call, but they looked strong.
Now, some things about the debate which made me wonder how these things are presented and whether it’s all really above-board or not.

Question 1:

Why did we need to have a focus group ahead of the debate that promptly labels Hillary Clinton socialist (natural enough at a Republican debate) and Ron Paul “crazy”? And then tells us that ‘security’ and ‘being taken care of’ (presumably by an imperial president?) is the main need of the electorate? And that lets Alan Coulmes come to Paul’s defense by generously allowing he’s not crazy and Clinton’s not socialist (which she is) – a testimonial likely to be about as compelling to Republicans as a Bella Abzug make-up tip to a home-coming queen.

Update: I should add, my problem isn’t with socialism – especially of the anarchist strain. It’s with the state socialism right out of Bismarck that you find with people like Ms. Clinton. She talks about villages, which evokes a fuzzy sense of a community, but what she means is the state – a colder and more calculating beast.

I have no problem per se with socialists, liberals, humanists, conservatives, traditionalists, communitarians, some kinds of communists, anarchists….. or any other breed – so long as they respect the individual and don’t crush him or her under the state.

A little massaging of public perception ahead of time, maybe?

Question 2:

Why were Guiliani, Thompson, Romney and McCain questioned far more than the others? The race isn’t over, is it? Shouldn’t we hear from the candidates with smaller war-chests too? The ones who are less well known?
Question 3:

Why was the mike not on when that long, involved question about a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage was thrown at Ron Paul as his first question?

Question 4

Why was Paul subliminally associated with Hillary Clinton, first by the focus group comment, and then by the question equating Paul’s position on Iraq with Clinton’s – something that is palpably untrue, since she’s been hawkish and moderate by turns but never really antiwar or anti-imperial.
Question 5

How is the audience selected? From all over the country?

Suggestion:

I’d ask all you Ron Paul supporters to call into Fox and ask them those questions…..and any others that occur to you. Give them the same treatment that CNBC got for messing with Ron Paul fans.

And finally, I was thinking of moving to Florida. But after listening to the focus group and what the audience cheered for, I have to rethink that. Warm weather isn’t everything.

Most of the folks there seem to be making up their mind about world issues based on the culture wars at home.

Close down the borders and all programs for illegals, end affirmative action/PC speech codes, and voila, the will to empire will vanish too.

Meanwhile, Stephen Greenhut over at Lew Rockwell notes that the GOP is breaking down 3:1 in favor of big government conservatism over libertarians.

But, what I want to know is since when is Big Government conservative? I mean, the Catholic conservative tradition was never corporatist, was it?

In fact, Russell Kirk has been aptly called a Tory bohemian:

“A Tory, according to Samuel Johnson, is a man attached to orthodoxy in church and state. A bohemian is a wandering and often impecunious man of letters or arts, indifferent to the demands of bourgeois fad and foible. Such a one has your servant been. Tory and bohemian go not ill together; it is quite possible to abide by the norms of civilized existence, what Mr. T. S. Eliot calls “the permanent things”; and yet to set at defiance the soft security and sham conventionalities of twentieth century sociability.”
Update: 3 years ago when I was researching my first book, references to the Jonathan Institute abounded on the net. Today when I google, I see far fewer. Here’s one at Znet, in an article on propaganda by Edward Herman.

And for aficionados of the “War On Terra,” here’s a bit of deja vu:

“The Jonathan Institute had been founded earlier the same year by Benjamin Netanyahu, a young crazy of the Likud block, in memory of his brother Jonathan, who had been killed during the Israeli raid on Entebbe in 1976. The Jonathan Institute was a semi-covert propaganda operation and could only be defined as a branch of the Israeli government. The committee sponsoring this conference on terrorism was headed up by Prime Minister Menachem Begin, followed by Moshe Dayan and many other prominent Israeli politicians and generals.

The US delegation to the conference was divided according to partisan lines, but was generally united by sympathy for the ideas and outlook of the Bush-Cherne Team B. The Democratic delegation was led by the late Senator Henry Jackson of Washington. This group included civil rights leader Bayard Rustin, plus Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter of Commentary Magazine, two of the most militant and influential Zionist neoconservatives. Ben Wattenberg of the American Enterprise Institute was also on hand. Although the group that arrived with Scoop Jackson were supposedly Democrats, most of them would support Reagan-Bush in the November, 1980 election.

Then there was the GOP delegation, which was led by George Bush. Here were Bush activist Ray Cline, Major General George Keegan, a stalwart supporter of Team B, and Professor Richard Pipes of Harvard, the leader of Team B. Here were Senator John Danforth of Missouri and Brian Crozier, a “terrorism expert.” Pseudo-intellectual columnist George Will (“Will the Shill”) was also on hand, as was Rome-based journalist Claire Sterling, who had been active in covering up the role of Henry Kissinger in the 1978 assassination of Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro, and who would later be blind to indications of an Anglo-American role in the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II.

International participation was also notable: Annie Kriegel and Jacques Soustelle of France, Lord Alun Chalfont, Paul Johnson, and Robert Moss of the United Kingdom, and many leading Israelis.

The keynote statement was made by Prime Minister Begin, who told the participants that they should spread through the world the main idea of the conference, which was that all terrorism in the world, whatever its origin, is controlled by the Soviet Union….”

Comment:

That was in the late 1970s…..

Now, over 30 years later, all terrorism in the world, whatevr its origin, is controlled by the Sov — I mean the Islamo-fascists.

Say it again:

All terror in the world, whatever its origin, is controlled by the Islamofascists!