How easily the neocons use it. It is quite something for a writer to accuse a presidential candidate of essentially supporting America's enemies, and of being full of venom and hatred for the United States, when he has served this country as a congressman for decades. But the neoconservative mindset always first reacts to criticism with smears. Anti-Semite. Racist. Traitor. Rather than reconsider for a second their own appalling record in foreign policy, and see Paul as an opportunity to air some vital questions about how the US conducts itself globally, they turn on the only figure in the current GOP race who got the Iraq war right, rather than wrong.
Somehow, he has something to answer for, while they never do.
And notice the baldly McCarthyite language by Dorothy Rabinowitz.
Paul is "the best-known of our homegrown propagandists for our chief enemies in the world." That truly is a foul accusation of treason, and one that takes not a second to explain the actual arguments he has used – arguments that involve important issues such as blowback, unintended consequences, and the risk of war. It is a sign of a movement that has so lost the narrative it can only smear or ignore those with whom it disagrees – rather than engage them.
But Rabinowitz is not done. Paul is "a leading spokesman for, and recycler of, the long and familiar litany of charges that point to the United States as a leading agent of evil and injustice". Anyone who has ever listened to Paul knows that his love for this country is profound, and his argument with the neocons is about the way in which we have conducted ourselves as a global power – a vital subject for discussion and scrutiny, given the catastrophe of Republican foreign policy under the last administration.
This is the debate the neocons do not want to have. Because they might lose it. A vote for Ron Paul is a vote against their attempt to shut this debate down.
The Dish 