Ron Paul and his Tinfoil Hat

Townhall.com's Dean Barnett is tired of the angry emails from Ron Paul supporters. Barnett opines, "I also decided that doing a serious post on Ron Paul would be tantamount to answering a question that no one was asking. Other than his 83 followers across the nation who seem to have nothing better to do than send angry missives when someone has the audacity to question their hero, the rest of the country is completely indifferent to the daffy Congressman."

Right Angle's Nathanael Blake links to Russell Kirk's classic essay, "Chirping Sectaries" and adds, ", Ron Paul is an ideologue who refuses to deal with the realities of the world as it is. His extreme non-interventionism didn't even work at the beginning of the American Republic, and is impossible now. He is lacking in prudence, the hallmark of the conservative statesman."

National Review's Jonah Goldberg found Paul's fondness for Robert Taft to be irrelevant to the threat we face today:

. . . Declaring in 2007 that we should adopt [the late Senate Republican Leader] Robert Taft's foreign policy is flatly childish and absurd. But it's intellectually safe because it forces the opposition to prove a negative.

By invoking the memory of Taft, Paul snatches Mr. Republican out of history and holds him up like a false god. And the key word here is "false." Sure, Taft was a "non-interventionist" -- though that term had a very different resonance back then -- and yeah, he probably would have opposed the Iraq war. But Paul's argument from authority amounts to a classic neo-isolationist gambit because he knows nobody is going to get into an argument over WWTD? (What Would Taft Do?)

So, for the record: Taft believed the Soviets presented "a menace greater than we have faced before in our history." Taft supported the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan. It's true he voted against NATO (and let the record show Taft was very, very wrong about that; William F. Buckley -- presumably an authentic conservative -- called Taft's foreign policies "otherworldly"). But Taft voted for the U.N. charter. In fact, his rationale for opposing the North Atlantic Treaty was that it violated the "theory" of the U.N. charter. He favored "one hundred percent support for the Chinese National Government on Formosa." And he was adamant that America do whatever it takes, even send U.S. troops, to protect the Suez. He favored "occasional extensions . . . into Europe, Asia and Africa," and favored keeping six divisions in Europe until the Europeans could defend themselves. Oh, and while he disagreed with Ike about sending troops to Korea, once they were committed, Taft's view was that they had to be supported.

RedState's Pejman Yousefzadeh reminds Ron Paul that Dwight Eisenhower- as Paul noted, was elected to bring an end to the Korean War- was quite the interventionist himself.

And Eric Dondero, a former Ron Paul Staffer, on RedState, announced he will run against Ron Paul!

Little Green Football's Charles Johnson removed Ron Paul from LGF's online poll because of spamming: "Even if they weren’t doing this pathetic maneuver to artificially pump up Paul’s support, I’d very seriously consider removing him anyway, because I found his remarks last night about 9/11 insulting and dangerous, and highly offensive. But make no mistake, he’s not being removed simply because I disagree with him—he’s off the LGF poll because I don’t want my site being used to falsely inflate his popularity. Ron Paul’s supporters are becoming notorious for sleazy, essentially stupid tactics like this."

Hillary Clinton's Campaign Theme Song

Hillary Clinton's campaign is asking for your input on what her campaign song should be.

The Club for Growth's Andrew Roth has some excellent suggestions:

"Lost Cause" by Beck
"I Can't Win" by The Strokes
"The Art of Losing" by American Hi-Fi
"Don't Know Much" by Linda Ronstadt and Aaron Neville
"Fly Me to the Moon" by Frank Sinatra
"Disaster Waiting to Happen" by Jefferson Denim
"Let's Call The Whole Thing Off" by Harry Connick Jr.

Scurrilous Rumor About Fred Thompson?

Hotair's Allahpundit reports that the "Fred Thompson campaign" wants to claim their own web presence on Twitter.com.

Fighting the Democrats' Stalinist Tactics

As reported by Congressman Eric Cantor on his blog:

House Republicans are shutting down the floor, because the Democrats are threatening to change a rule and deny Republicans any opportunity to offer a motion to recommit on the "paygo" provisions of their legislation. That’s a lot of wonky talk; bottom line - the Democrats are preventing their Members from having to vote on the tax increases that they are trying to impose on the American People.

It is simply stunning that House Democrats want to change the germanenss rule on motions to recommit; this would be the first change to the germaneness rule since 1822.

Check back for updates. We will be updating on this showdown as it unfolds.

UPDATE: Rep. Westmoreland just moved for a recorded quorum call, then a motion that the committee will rise. Expect to see more of these…

Don Surber wonders how could Nancy Pelosi talk about protecting minority rights, then propose stripping away those rights which have been in place for 185 years?

Powerline's John Hinderaker is happy to report that the Republican response worked, and opines: "Let's give some credit to conservatives in the House. The conventional wisdom is that in the House, unlike the Senate, the minority is more or less powerless. But the House Republicans seem to be well led and to be using effective tactics. They have foiled a number of pieces of bad and unpopular legislation with motions to recommit; hence today's effort by the Democrats to change the rules to take that option away from the minority."