I just watched this montage of clips from the South Carolina debates featuring Ron Paul, who until now I did not know much about. He sounds like a classic neoliberal: laissez-faire economics, state’s-rights government involvement, and isolationist foreign policy… so why do the Republicans hate him? Well, it seems it’s because he is willing to state the obvious about 9-11. Both Giuliani during the debate and Sean Hannity (what a prick) after the debate came unglued at the suggestion that our interventionist foreign policy has directly led to the hatred-fueled attacks on September 11, 2001.
From what I can perceive about Ron Paul, he seems to represent what has been the classic Republican position throughout the 20th century. It is a curious situation that the man who sounds most conservative is continually accused of being “out of step” with his party. What happened to turn the Republicans into a party of jingoistic, big-government, empire builders?
