Is Weekly Standard chief Bill Kristol secretly rooting for Obama?
Neocon-in-chief and Weekly Standard top-dog Bill Kristol wants Ron Paul to run a third party ticket:
A lot of people when they criticize Ron Paul have to preface their criticism by saying, ‘you know, he’s good guy, he brings a lot to the debate,’” Bill Kristol said on C-SPAN. “I actually don’t buy that. I do not think he’s a particular good guy . . . I think it would be better for the Republican party, if he left the Republican party.” …
“[Buchanan] left the party in 1999 and a lot of people, and I was one of them, said, goodbye and good riddance, you’re not in the mainstream of the Republican party, go run as some Reform party candidate . . . he did in 2000 and he didn’t get many votes and actually George W. Bush I think was helped—and the Republican party was helped—to be free of Buchanan’s extreme isolationism, protectionism, anti-Israel views, and the like. Ron Paul is a little different from Pat Buchanan—but he’s no better, in my view. And I actually think we’d benefit in the long run—but even in the short run . . .”
The boss concluded: “I don’t think anyone should plead with him not to run or to stay in the party. I would be comfortable in a general election if Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum as the Republican in the Reagan tradition and debating both Barack Obama and Ron Paul.”
Ed Brayton chuckles:
You know who else would be comfortable with that? Barack Obama. If Ron Paul runs in the general election as an independent or on a third party ticket, his reelection is guaranteed. Obama’s campaign leaders would be doing back flips if that happens.
Maybe Kristol understands that Obama has actually done a much better job of tracking down terrorists like, I dunno, say Osama bin Laden, than his Republican counterparts. Maybe this is Kristol’s way of secretly rooting for a second Obama term. Those neocons were all socialists in the beginning, back before they got mugged by “reality.”
Maybe Kristol understands that Obama has actually done a much better job of tracking down terrorists like, I dunno, say Osama bin Laden, than his Republican counterparts.
“Terrorists.”
Oh, don’t get me wrong, he’s done just as good a job at killing innocent people with drones and assassinating US citizens as any Republican as well.
Hey, you have a new blog!
I couldn’t ever get past the first seven words of the headline…
Of course a lot of this is one of the most militaristic pundits being predictably unhappy with a very anti-militaristic candidate, but don’t discount the contribution of both men’s views on Israel, a key issue for both of them.
Yes, Israel looms large in this debate. Frankly I think that Kristol’s views on Israel are particularly pernicious in that he’s likely to stir that country’s worst impulses. I’m not entirely sure that Paul’s views are terribly realistic either. Sadly, no good options exist in that conflict.
I had been long thinking of writing a post for the League saying that Paul ought to run as a thrid-party candidate or independent, because it’s basically a conceptual fraud to suggest that the Republican party represents his views. I’m god with him running in the GOP primary while it lasts, becasue that is contest to try to define the party as well as nominate a candidate for president 9the two are largely the same act). But thereafter, regardless of whether he endorses that canddate or abstains from doing so, in my view not to offer the vision to the full country that he has offered to just GOP primary voters amounts to a kind of fraud. At the very least, it anounts to a tacit statement that, despite whatever extent the GOP is not even in his end of the pool on economic issues, still he finds the affinity of his odeas to those of his party’s in those area to outweigh the complete incomaptibility of his views with theirs on foreign policy. And that is a failure to represent a huge part of the people who have given him his prominence and propelled his campaign. If I felt represented only by Ron Paul on foreign policy and civil liberties, I would feel betrayed if he did not follow through on his primary campaign with a third-party bid in the general. I think he really owes it to his supporters to allow them to express their support for his ideas in the big show. I’m not at all convinced it would be Mitt Romney’s death knell, though it might(?) put the likes of Mr. Kain in a bit of a tough spot. Or maybe, just facing a defining choice of just the kind that we should want democracy to confront us with.