The Real Ron Paul

I took this photo of a Ron Paul supporter at the Oct. 27 anti-war rally in SF. Perhaps the gas mask is worn to shield the man from Paul's noxious views on race, abortion, education or sexuality, among other things.

Fellow blogger Snave over at Various Ecstasies has a laundry list of reasons why Democrats (or unaffiliated liberals or progressives) should want to rethink supporting a Ron Paul presidential candidacy, despite his opposition to the continuing debacle in Iraq (a position with which I agree -- but we part company very soon after that). Included among them are some rather extreme views on gay people, people of color and environmentalists, just to name a few. You can find all sorts of documentation on his positions here at Orcinus, in a more recent article spelling out his white supremacist views and ties to questionable organizations at The New Republic, and at plenty of other sites linked to in all the posts mentioned here. As I said in the comments section at Snave's site, I don't understand the attraction many Democrats have to this otherwise batshit insane Republican Congressman from Texas. Yes, he's for pulling out of Iraq, completely and unconditionally, but his stance on virtually every other policy that those of us on the left care about is the exact opposite of what we would want in a Chief Executive. I saw dozens of people, many of whom I would expect to support leftist causes otherwise, carrying signs and banners supporting him at the last anti-war rally here (not all of them wore gas masks, however), and I found it puzzling indeed. Single-issue supporters who do no research and contribute to his campaign do a great disservice to those of us who understand that there are many, many issues that a President has to face, and that Paul is on the wrong side of pretty much all of them.

As our friend Tom Hilton of If I Ran The Zoo put it back in November, any Democrat who supports Ron Paul is simply "too stupid to live."

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