It's hard for people who are new to the political process to understand that Ron Paul comes from a long and distinguished tradition of extreme nutbaggery. These are the people who think that The Trilateral Comission, The Council on Foreign Relations, and Colonel Sanders are controlling the world. They won't invest in the stock market or put their money in banks because (they believe) the banks are run by Jews. They buy gold instead. He's basically Dale Gribble with a lot of appealing catch phrases.
Most of the press understands this but they find him amusing so they won't completely torpedo him. Either that or they're hoping he will be a more prominent factor in the process say at the Republican Convention and they can torpedo him then when it can do more damage to the GOP.
For some background on the paranoid conspiracy strain in American politics, check out:
70, did you catch the debate last night? It's not so much that he has these extreme views, but he's so eager to be right about the war and how wrong it was. For instance, the Fox moderater asked him something about the scirmish the U.S. had with the small Iranian boats last week, amd Paul got all tangled up talking about Iraq and Bush and this and that. It was just uncomfortable watching it all.
01-11-2008, 02:37 PM
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