Great post below from Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish on the Warcons’ increasingly amusing attempts to smear Dr. Paul as an anti-semite:

“The right has a new line of attack: some Muslim-Americans and Arab-Americans support him! Muslims supporting Republicans? The horror … Look, it seems to me that Paul needs to do better at trying to distance himself from some others on the fringes, and his campaign is still a little not-prime-time in dealing with the usual suspects. But the general line of questioning – “Are you now and have you ever been an anti-Semite?” – is offensive. As Derb points out:

Has anyone else noticed that “Ron Paul” almost rhymes with “Goebbels,” if you drop the “s”? And look—it has the same number of syllables!

I see no reason why the campaign should not return any money given by neo-Nazis who are subsequently identified as such. But Jonah is right that this whole thing tells us more about Paul’s amateurism in rapid-response than anything else. It’s also a function of some neocons’ unfortunate tendency to cry anti-Semitism if anyone disagrees with them on foreign policy. Meanwhile, Wonkette offers a bipartisan “anti-Paultard” olive branch to RedState. Heh.”

Sullivan also has it right about the wind behind the Paul campaign:

“Along with conservative desperation at the Republican betrayal, no one else is urging a withdrawal from Iraq. It’s as simple as that, in some ways. And in Iowa, that could mean something: 53 percent of Republicans there want a withdrawal of all US troops within six months. The poll also confirms Huckabee’s current second place and the extremely tight race among the Dems. And check this out:

2. Do you see President George W. Bush as a conservative Republican in the mode of Ronald Reagan?

Yes 7%

No 74%

Undecided 19%

Comment:

My take on the reasons why Ron Paul has the following he has:

1. The number one spot goes to Paul’s record on Iraq: He voted no to going in, and he’s also the only one willing to advocate immediate withdrawal. I don’t mean just from Iraq, but from from the Warcon’s bloody little daydream (more like a psycho nightmare) of taking over planet earth (and a chunk of space) and killing anyone who objects too strenuously. Let’s just say Paul has an adult’s foreign policy.

2. A close second – and maybe even sharing first spot – is widening appreciation of the level of corruption and financial finagling that’s all in a day’s work on Wall Street. The college crowd seems to have got it. I was talking to a nineteen- year old the other day, who wasn’t especially political. And I got a earful about the bankruptcy of American empire, the rise of China, the death of the dollar, and – ye gods – the federal reserve.

Voting? Pure waste of time, he said, with a shrug. Both parties were full of it

I didn’t ask what.

Update:

I forgot the third major reason. It’s an important one too. Immigration. Looks like most of the pols have a tin-ear about it. We the People – left and right, natives and immigrants — can’t believe it’s this difficult for all these Ivy League educated yuppy lawyers to understand:

If illegals can get driver’s licenses — why should anyone bother becoming a citizen?

Oh, they’ll be driving anyway, you say? Here’s a thought. How about making car dealerships require a valid license before you buy a car. I mean, we seem to be able to have some kind of requirement for buying guns — which are a lot less deadly to the general population.