Hawkeye Hoopla and the Rueful Paul Reality

By Jan LaRue

My New Year's resolution is never hearing the words "Iowa caucuses" ever again.

The ceaseless and breathless media reporting about which Republican presidential candidate is leading in the Iowa polls is about as trivial as a tractor pull in Treynor.  Iowans are good people, but let's get some perspective here.

Recall that Mike Huckabee, winner of the 2008 corn caucuses, is hosting a show on Fox News rather than playing bass guitar on his "Hail to the Chief" CD.

On Jan. 3, beginning at 7 p.m. CST, about 21 percent of registered Republicans, that's about 119,000 voters based on 2008 figures, will meet in about 800 locations across Iowa to toast ethanol subsidies and cast a preferential presidential vote -- preferential as in non-binding.

It's far too much ado about picking the next president.

We're told that the caucuses are important because they can reveal candidates' strengths and weaknesses. And their craziness, too.

The prospect that Rep. Ron (Terrorists are people too) Paul may win is fueling the hype.  A Paul win would prove, among other things, that they should stop allowing Democrats and Independents to crash the party by registering as Republicans on caucus night.

Iowa caucuses are a political "Field of Dreams" for Democrat saboteurs and Occupy Wall Street squatters who can walk out of the cornfield onto the Republican field and throw the game to the Lion of Leftist Libertarianism. A win would encourage Paul to run as a third-party candidate, assuring Barack Obama's re-election in the spirit of crazy Uncle Ross Perot who put Bill Clinton in the White House.

According to John Swain of the UK Telegraph:

"Thousands of members of Barack Obama's Democrats, disenchanted but with no contest of their own, are set to turn out at caucus sites on Tuesday to do just that.

Almost one in four caucus-goers is expected to be an independent or Democrat, according to a Public Policy Polling (PPP) survey.

Polls suggest that even the unearthing of newsletters produced by Dr Paul in the 1990s containing homophobic and anti-semitic material have not hurt him. "People just don't believe he is racist," said Tom.

Dr Paul has even attracted members of the Occupy protest movement, which is generally assumed to be Left-wing. "Like us, he wants to end the military-industrial complex," said Clarke Davidson, a 28-year-old unemployed television producer, who registered as a Republican last week to caucus for Dr Paul."

The Paulites will be cleaned up in order to fool gullible Republicans. Swain continues:

"But so committed are his [Paul's] young fans that a secretive army of volunteers, who paid for their own flights, have arrived from outside the state to tread pavements for their hero, and are staying together in a YMCA. Banned from speaking to the media, they have been instructed to remain sober and clean-shaven and cover up any tattoos that might offend the state's socially conservative voters."

Paul and his campaign staff are denying that he wrote or read incendiary letters that have surfaced from around 1993 expressing racist, anti-homosexual and anti-Israel statements. Blogger Ben Barrack has posted a screen shot of an eight-page solicitation letter from 1993 allegedly bearing Paul's signature. According to Barrack:

"The Ron Paul defense when it comes to those damaging newsletters has been that he didn't write or read them. Unfortunately, the latest 8 page letter to come out circa 1993 bears his signature at the bottom and his letterhead at the top. This would be the equivalent of Barack Obama denying he heard Jeremiah Wright scream 'G-d D-n America' in video that showed Obama in attendance that day.

"The eight page letter, which appears to bear Paul's signature at the end also warns that the U.S. government's redesign of currency to include different colors - a move aimed at thwarting counterfeiters - actually was part of a plot to allow the government to track Americans using the 'new money.'"

And what are Iowans and other Americans to make of Paul's praise of the traitor Bradley Manning, the mentally confused cross-dresser who stole classified information and gave it to Wikileaks? Paul mused this way about the man whose treachery has damaged America and almost certainly cost lives: "Should he be locked up in prison or should we see him as a political hero? Maybe he is a true patriot -- who reveals what's going on in government."

Aside from such kookiness, Paul's record in Congress belies that he would be an effective president. According to non-partisan GovTrack.us:

"Ronald Paul has sponsored 421 bills since Jan 7, 1997 of which 418 haven't made it out of committee and 1 were [sic] enacted."

Here's a new conspiracy theory for Paul to ponder. Expect some Iranian agents to be among the incognito zealots who vote for you Tuesday night.