An Adam Kokesh interview at Reason magazine raises a bunch of interesting concerns in the comment section:
ZacksReasonUsername| 8.28.12 @ 6:17AM |#
Ron Paul should fight for whatever he wants to fight for. I think the main concern of people is honesty. Did the Ron Paul campaign spend most of the year raising money for a Rand Paul 2016 campaign while telling the contributors that it was for a Ron Paul 2012 campaign, when as Kokesh correctly points out, those two people have radically different philosophies?
It’s been quite awhile since I started to feel this was about building an e-mail list for future Ron Paul Inc. endeavors and less about running a successful campaign. Nothing wrong with “if the country is worth saving, it is worth saving at a profit” but this became a bit too money grubby like a hundred conservative outfits that provide a good living for a handful of operatives.
Everyone around Paul lost two consecutive campaigns by wide margins despite tens of millions of dollars in donations. That’s not shit, that’s fact.
Adam Kokesh doesn’t display the worlds most amazing critical thinking skills when it comes to what are commonly referred to as “conspiracy theories”. He doesn’t seem to have what I would call a realistic idea of human social structures or psychological commonalities. If you look up the phrase “Messiah Complex” in an encyclpedia, there will certainly be a big ol’ picture of his mug.
Having said all that, he’s essentially correct about all of the above points he makes about the ethics of the 2012 Paul campaign and the fundraising. Jesse Benton is a troubled young man, and not in the good-intention style of Kokesh. Contrasting someone with Benton is a wonderful way to make that person look really, really good. That may be the best explanation as to why Ron Paul has kept Benton so close by his side.