Reposting about Paulbots

Lew gave us a June present by dusting off an old article he wrote in 2008.  This article is substantially correct, but is a classic case of editorialization being disguised as journalism.  We're going to take this apart and point out a few logical disconnects.

The article opens up with the assertion that Michael Delavar lost to Brian Baird by the largest margin in 20 years.  Yeah, Lew, that sort of thing happens when your party refuses to endorse or support you.  Whose fault is that?

Then he makes an innuendo about David Madore inadvertently using a video that Lew had produced that highlighted Tim Leavitt's absurdity. Newsflash, Lew: once you put something on the internet, it's out there, and may pop up just about anywhere.  If you wanted credit, you should have run a banner in the corner of the video. It's not incumbent on anyone to track down the source of everything they find on the internet just so they don't ruffle the feathers of an already overly ruffled old man. Madore, upon discovering that Lew had produced the video, apologized, but in the current state of Lew's high paranoia, that ain't good enough.

The article then delves into a flashback to 2008, and opens with the assertion that somehow Ron Paul Libertarians have "snuck" [sic] into the party as PCO's.  How does one "sneak" into a party as a PCO?  I must have missed the interview to make sure I was ideologically pure enough to be a Republican. I'm sure that in his dreams as King of the Clark County Republican Party, Lew will enact litmus tests and appoint himself as the filter for making sure that only people who agree with his political biases get to join the county government.

Lew goes on to make a brief but entirely correct criticism of Ron Paul's unrealistic and quite dangerous foreign policy.  This is appropriate, as many have discounted Dr. Paul for this very reason, and rightly so.

Then he stated that Michael Delavar did not receive the party endorsement before the primary.  WHAT THE HELL? That, right there, is the heart of what many local Republicans, whether they supported Paul or someone else, see as the problem with the Republican party.  The party should NOT be in the business of supporting one candidate over another before the primary.  The very idea that they would is so antithetical to the idea of a grass-roots organization that it leaves me spluttering.  This sort of thinking is why that idiot squish Rob McKenna was nominated in 2013 to lose to Inslee, instead of running a much better candidate like Shahram Hadian. McKenna had the party's endorsement going into the primary, I guess because it was "his turn."  And people like Lew can't understand why the rank and file conservative citizens are rising up against the establishment?

Lew closed out the article with general imprecations about Ron Paul supporters, and how they weren't Republican.  I can understand Lew's position.  I've encountered the same sort of Ron Paul arguments, the slavish devotion to poorly understood principles, and the chanting that they do without apparently considering realistic consequences of the actions they propose.  Lew's reaction is to knock them on their asses, and since he can't do that, he dismissed them as some sort of religious cult.  The fact is that we are in a marketplace of ideas, and once you get the RP supporters to quit chanting and start justifying their more ridiculous policy positions, they become quite easy to disarm.  To do so you must have facts at hand and reasonable debating skills, and not allow them to start chanting again. 

The sad thing is that Lew lacks discernment.  Just because Ron Paul's foreign policy ideas come from Never-Never Land does not mean that everything he says is to be disregarded.  On domestic issues, Ron Paul Libertarians are spot-on - the government MUST live within its means, spending MUST be controlled, and the Keynesian nonsense the Federal Reserve is practicing MUST be halted. The Constitution must be observed, and as the servants of the people, legislators are obligated to vote against any legislation that is not specifically allowed under the constitution.  These are core principles of libertarians, and should be congruent with the values of anyone else who calls himself a conservative.  These values are pertinent to Clark County - the foreign policy fantasies Ron Paul are not.  Lew needs to understand this, and realize that there is no local issue that he's not likely to find agreement with the Ron Paul supporters on.