Ron Paul’s Republican Refugees

Ezra makes a valuable point:

Paul’s candidacy is an indictment of the system, not an argument for who would best administer it.

Peter Suderman asks:

What’s the breakdown of issues that matter to his supporters, and after the campaign is over, are there lessons to be drawn for other candidates or issue-oriented groups? Why and how, in other words, did this unassuming country doctor – a man who, between his personality and his positions, is almost the antithesis of the modern American politician – become a political cult hero?

My suggestion: Paul’s candidacy is a moment of protest from all those who once saw the GOP as their home and who have become enraged at what Bush and Rove have done to conservatism. So many of us feel like refugees – forced out of our homes by Christanist intolerance and neoconservative fanaticism. The Paul campaign is a refugee camp, pitched temporarily at the border of old-school conservatism, as we wait to see if our politics is really over in the Republican party, and whether a freedom agenda can still have a future in America.

“I saw my father march with Martin Luther King.”

Romneymandelnganafpgetty

That was Romney’s boast. Is it true? Or was it a Grosse Pointe Blank? Money quote:

Asked about the specifics of George Romney’s march with MLK, Mitt Romney’s campaign told the Phoenix that it took place in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. That jibes with the description proffered by David S. Broder in a Washington Post column written days after Mitt’s College Station speech. Broder, in that column, references a 1967 book he co-authored on the Republican Party, which included a chapter on George Romney. It includes a one-line statement that the senior Romney “has marched with Martin Luther King through the exclusive Grosse Pointe suburb of Detroit.”

But that account is incorrect. King never marched in Grosse Pointe, according to the Grosse Pointe Historical Society, and had not appeared in the town at all at the time the Broder book was published.

“I’m quite certain of that,” says Suzy Berschback, curator of the Grosse Pointe Historical Society. (Border was not immediately available for comment.)

Berschback also believes that George Romney never appeared at a protest, march, or rally in Grosse Pointe. “We’re a small town,” she says. “Governors don’t come here very often, except for fundraisers.”

In fact, King’s only appearance in Grosse Pointe, according to Berschback, took place after Broder’s book was published.

That was for a March 14 speech he delivered at Grosse Pointe High School, just three weeks before King was assassinated. But there was no march, and George Romney was not there.

Hmmm.

(Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty.)

Savior Mitt?

Romney unveils a new ad. JPod’s unimpressed by the story of how Mitt allegedly saved some lost soul, proving what a Great Leader and Commpasionate Statesman he is:

a) she wasn’t in need of “saving” in the way the ad’s narrative implies and b) there’s no evidence in the open record that the Bain Capital search, wonderfully well-intentioned, was responsible for Melissa’s safe return to her family.

Maybe it’s time for Romney to cry on TV again.

Judging Clintonism

Althouse on the Bai article:

If you were writing a novel about the 2008 presidential campaign, wouldn’t you want Bill Clinton as your main character? What a complex situation he is in. He stands to gain power, but his time is also over. He can help his wife, but he can also hurt her. He is supposed to fight for her, but he’s continually tempted to justify himself. He has the more creative mind, but he cannot outshine her.