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I'm tossing my hat in the ring for Ron Paul.

Montgomery Brewster

Ron Paul. Foreign policy is the main reason I'm voting for him. The other candidates are in the twilight zone when talking foreign policy. And Paul is the only candidate to mention inflation.

I wish William Kristol or Richard Pearle were running or a candidate with a more of a neo-con flair. But if I must I'll go with Rudy.

Yea, I was an idiot 2 years ago, I freely admit it.

Don't be so tough on Ben, like the Virginia Slims ads he's come a long way!

It is well known that as a vigilante for justice I am supporting Ron Paul. I am also a delegate alternate for him in Gotham. I encourage anyone who can to sign up to become a convention delegate. Let's move the GOP back to a traditional conservative standpoint and give ourselves a real choice between authentically distinct parties.

I like Homer's thought as well, I recall that Brewster actually wanted "none of the above" to win the election and Paul is so distinct in the GOP field (by being a throwback to a Reagan/Goldwater conservatism) that he is the "none of the above" candidate. Let's reject the elite establishment dopes.

Ron Paul

Dr. Ron paul. I agree with him on pretty much every issue.

Doesn't matter does it? A bunch of dumbed down candidates for a dumbed down voter base.

Outside of the Paul cool aid drinkers who seem to have an educated bead on what their candidate stands for, it's not clear that other voters have a clue what their candidates would do once in office. But I'm sure they know what their favorite color is. Scary.

McCain? MCCAIN??? What the f'k?!!

I agree with David Limbaugh who writes:

“I must confess that Fred Thompson is the only one [of the GOP presidential candidates] I don’t have major reservations about—apart from his electability. Yes, I worry that he supported McCain-Feingold and that he might not be a strong supply-sider. But on most issues, he seems reliably conservative and appears to have a solid and strong character. I do believe that with Fred, we know what we are getting. I find his lack of ‘fire in the belly’ refreshing. He strikes me as one of the few presidential candidates since Ronald Reagan whose primary motivation is not personal aggrandizement but rather serving and leading the nation in very troubled and dangerous times. I see him as almost being drafted into this project, and his refusal to drool publicly over the prospect of becoming the most powerful man in the world is positively delightful.”

I could say just about all those same things about Ron Paul, but I see our military actions in Iraq as generally successful in taking the fight to the enemy, and, unlike Paul, I can't make myself believe that we can win this critical struggle against Islamic extremists by just playing defense.

DocMcG,

What about the argument that we cannot fiscally carry out a strategy of "taking it to the enemy" IF the occupation of Iraq is what is meant by "taking it to the enemy"? I guess I am asking 2 things:

First, what is your opinion about our economic viability (inflation, weakening dollar, recession, deficit, etc.) and

Second, do you disconnect your opinions on our economic security from our strategic considerations for combatting the terrorist threat we face?

Now, you may be more optimistic than I am about our current economic state of affairs, I peronally think we are on the brink of disaster. Therefore, you may think we have the economic means to "take the fight to the enemy" through the rather costly means of indefinite and permanent occupation in the region they hail from.

I am not presuming where you stand on the economic issues but I do think the two have to go together.

I think we can still be on the offense against Al Qaeda w/o open-ended and fiscally profligate invasions and occupations in the Middle East. Intelligence and insurgent police/tactical strikes as well as use of proxies cost far far less and are far more manageable than on the soil occupation of foreign territory.

It also is not presumptuous of me to think that Paul would still be on the offense against Al Qaeda in ways I just mentioned, after all, he has repeatedly attempted to have Congress issue letters of Marque and Reprisal against them. Some find this idea quaint but I suspect that a Madisonian like yourself would not think so unkindly of them.

Bruce Wayne,

If I am right about the need to take some offensive measures against the Islamic extremists, then the cost of such actions in the long run will be cheaper than the strategy of just playing defense. I really don't add up the costs as long as 1) I perceive the survival of basic liberties are at stake and 2) we have enough extra money to spend fortunes on counterproductive programs such as government schools.

But if I did add up the costs I would include a calculation of whether the economy grew or shrunk during the period of these expenditures. Since we got richer while doing this, I can't assume that the monetary cost is too high. I would need strong theoretical evidence that debt causes unacceptable economic damage, evidence I have never seen, before I would risk not taking the fight to those who threaten our freedoms.

The program you advocate of occasional tactical strikes appears to me indistiguishable from the Clinton administration policies which I perceive to have been a complete failure.

DocMcG,

Except that Clinton never made any "tactical strikes" he lobbed a few missiles at an aspirin factory and otherwise completely ignored Al Qaeda. His decadence w/ our safety doesn't mean trading individual and precise attacks of actual terrorist networks (much of it below the radar) for large scale ineffectual occupations of non-threatening Arab states that have nothing to do with the international radical terrorist movement makes any sense whatsoever. That is still to be argued for.

On the economic side you're first point puts off the economic debate until after a debate on "tak[ing] some offensive measures against Islamic extremists" since you think that if you are right on that point than cost no longer is a factor. I do think that no matter what the conclusion of the preliminary question it can never follow that cost is not an issue b/c of the problem of willing the means w/ the end and that taking on a sisyphean task can only hasten the collapse of the nation even when done in the name of the defense of the nation's existence.

Be that as it may, I (and Dr. Paul) have never disagreed on your preliminary argument, that is no debate is needed over whether or not "some offensive measures against the Islamic extremists" needs to be taken. That just isn't even controversial, the argument is over what actions need to be taken, what actions should be taken, and what actions can be taken. This is still and always an area for serious political debate (something Thomspon the Lobbyist never engages in) and ideally the virtue of prudence will hold court. In this debate we have to consider the scale of different options and all of their costs.

As for the 2 points you make that make you discount the costs here is my response:

1) It is the survival of basic liberties that makes our fiscal problems so vitally important. I am sure that your study of history has made you familiar w/ what sorts of losses of basic liberties followed in Weimar Germany in the wake of their disastrous inflationary banking policies (done deliberately by their equivalent to the Fed to destroy the debt they owed in war reparations), and other historical examples abound including in our own Civil war era.

2) This comment precisely misses the point. We have NO "extra money" to spend fortunes on counterproductive domestic social programs . . . we have NO money at all. Our politicians are spending money that they create out of thin air or borrow from China et. al., thus inflating our currency, debasing all of our wealth, and destroying our children and granchildren's futures. Besides the one trillion dollar Iraq Occupation is the most counterproductive government program going today. And this last point is still precisely what is at issue.

In recent communications Al Qaeda has made the claim that they destroyed the Soviet Union by bleeding their economy dry in entangling them in a never ending occupation in Afghanistan and that they are happily doing the same thing to us now. Now, they are exaggerating the importance of the Afghani campaign to destroying the USSR's economic stability and causing its eventual demise. However, no historian would not say that it was a very significant factor.

Don't you see that any number of radical Islamic terrorists can't bring us down through violence here? That is, it is not terrorist attacks like a 9/11 or even the potential (God forbid) nightmare scenario of setting off some form of a wmd in a city here that would destroy our nation, but only something that can cause our economic ruination? The real scariness of 9/11 was the fragility that it showed underpinning our economy, hence the shutting down of Wall Street in the immediate wake of 9/11 to forestall a crash as well as the very choice of the WTC's as Al Qaeda's primary target. The power of these terrorist attacks isn't in the amount of people murdered by them but in their impact on our economy which is the basis for our political stability. So we have to make our economic security paramount in deciding how to protect ourselves from terrorism, as well as how to combat it. Destroying our economy (dollar weaker than Canada's, that is such a scary fact!) in the name of saving it through these occupations strikes me as completely misguided.

I saw Dr. Paul on a talk show last week particularly say that we should guard our own borders and then no one would dare attack us. I believe he has misperceived 9/11 which was an attack that hurt us significantly and to which we could not make a direct, timely, and effective response. You note the fragility of our economy at 9/11 but seem to assume we can make it invulnerable by making it richer. All modern economies are, by their interdependent natures, fragile. The richer they are the more fragile they are. We cannot change that in the short term. We must then find ways to attack our opponents' vulnerabilites. Neither you nor Dr. Paul have articulated any realistic way to do this. At least you try. He does not even try.