Conservative blog Red State has had it with Ron Paul supporters spamming its comment sections: it has decided to implement a new policy. “Effective immediately, new users may *not* shill for Ron Paul in any way shape, form or fashion. Not in comments, not in diaries, nada. If your account is less than 6 months old, you can talk about something else, you can participate in the other threads and be your zany libertarian self all you want, but you cannot pimp Ron Paul. Those with accounts more than six months old may proceed as normal,” Red State’s Leon H. Wolf writes.
He explains that he “could offer a long-winded explanation for *why* this new policy is being instituted, but I’m guessing that most of you can probably guess. Unless you lack the self-awareness to understand just how annoying, time-consuming, and bandwidth-wasting responding to the same idiotic arguments from a bunch of liberals pretending to be Republicans can be.” He also offers an alternative explanation: “we are a bunch of fascists and we’re upset that you’ve discovered where we keep the black helicopters, so we’re silencing you in an attempt to keep you from warning the rest of your brethren so we can round you all up and send you to re-education camps all at once…” whichever you prefer.
We have written about Ron Paul on several occasions, and although there certainly are / were some Paul supporters who added a lot to the comment sections at this blog, there were sadly also quite some who spammed our comment sections with “go ron go” and that was it. Such commenters add nothing, and I mean nothing, to the debate, which is why I understand Red State’s decision to ban all of them. Having said that, we won’t change this into a ‘no Paul-zone.’ Paul is a phenomenon and to ignore this phenomenon is silly. Furthermore, as said, quite some of the commenters do add something and do have something to interesting to say.
Red State is just mad that Ron Paul is the only real conservative among the group of buffoons the GOP has running for 2008.
I can understand how those short, cheerleader chant posts can annoy the folks who set the blog up with the expectation of thoughtful dialogue.
I am an enthusiastic RP supporter, but I do try to type a thoughtful blog post that addresses the article or topic up for discussion. I hope all Ron Paul supporters are not painted with the brushstroke of being “zany”, as Red State puts it. I think you can find supporters in the camps of all of the candidates that are at all levels of passion about their candidate, and some who have more than one they are willing to consider and want to listen to others articulate why one governing style is perhaps better than another.
Chris, I find it amusing when those ideologically hostile to conservativism start trying to define what is a “good conservative”. Somehow I suspect that the standard used isn’t, shall we say, very charitable to the overall viability of the conservative movement.
As for RedState’s frustration with Ron Paul supports, I can say after having tried twice to provoke substantive debate with Ron Paul supporters by posting my specific disagreements (as opposed to the usual approach of just rolling eyes and moving on about which Ron Paul’s supporters complain) that RedState has a legitimate gripe. The high proportion of content-free, slogan-driven responses can make attempts to engage with the candidate’s ideas frustrating. When the candidate in fact does not have sufficient popular support to make them a serious contender for the nomination, as with Ron Paul, the costs of such attempts at interaction may outweigh the benefits.
That said, I have enough respect for the minority of online Ron Paul supporters who DO have serious arguments (even though I don’t agree with them, several have posted here) that I would not endorse RedState’s approach here, even though I find it tempting.
[...] Michael van der Galien understands the impulse to ban the Paulites, but won’t do it: We have written about Ron Paul [...]
“a bunch of liberals pretending to be Republicans can be.”
Crossing the line, intelligence-wise.
Jason,
Ron Paul is the only candidate in either party that actually seems interested in limiting the power and the expenditures of the federal government. He’s the only Republican not advocating for an interventionist policy.
I still stand by what I said
From what I understand, fiscal responsibility and a non-interventionist foreign policy used to be pillars of the conservative movement.
Do you disagree with the substance of that argument?
The fiscal conservativism is a traditional part of the conservative movement.
The “intervention is ok sometimes (Afghanistan), not others (Iraq), but there is no governing criteria to differentiate them (we take no position on Rwanda or Darfur or any future genocide)” foreign policy approach is not a traditional element of anything. It is too poorly defined to be that. “Non-interventionist foreign policy” isn’t a policy proposal at all, it’s just a marketing term.
The attack on Afghanistan was a direct response to an attack on our soil. Please point me to the documentation of Iraq’s strikes on American territory.
Stop trying to force me into a strawman position. I never said anything about justifying the Iraq invasion. My point is that the “non-interventionist foreign policy” does not articulate a clear enough distinction between Afghanistan and Iraq to provide the basis for prediction about how such a framework would react to other crises. It is, instead, purely arbitrary. They like Afghanistan, so that’s ok. They don’t like Iraq, so that’s not. And the whole thing is tied together with a meaningless label of “non-interventionist foreign policy” that is meaningless because it IS interventionist under at least some circumstances, as proven by the intervention in the Afghan civil war.
The government of Afghanistan did not attack us. Al-Qaeda did. Our attack on the Taliban was out of the belief that it was a sponsor of al-Qaeda. Furthermore, our method was to intervene in an ongoing civil war in Afghanistan to effect a “regime change” in that country followed by a long-term occupation with state-building. The attack on Afghanistan thus has both realist components (realism is associated with traditional conservativism) and liberal components (the misnamed “neoconservativism” is, in fact, an extreme form of Wilsonian liberalism, i.e. “making the world safe for democracy”).
As such, it is not possible to fully and completely separate Afghanistan from the critique leveled against Iraq in the “non-interventionist foreign policy” of the Ron Paul supporters. Because the distinction between Afghanistan and Iraq is so unclear and reliant upon interpretive moves, there is no reliable basis to predict how the “non-interventionist foreign policy” would assess other situation. It is too vague to be anything except just another arbitrary, case-by-case framework attached to a marketing slogan.
It is completely unclear what the constituent components and underlying theories of a “non-interventionist foreign policy” would be because its supporters have never done anything more than provide opinions on single cases. They have not provided an overarching philosophy. A few (like Alan) have provided the beginnings of one (no intervention except out of self-interest) but have omitted crucial details (i.e. WHICH self-interests).
I agree with most of what you’re saying here Jason. In both cases the distinction blurs the further you move away from the pretext for going to war.
Jason wrote: “The fiscal conservativism is a traditional part of the conservative movement.” And to add to that, it should be added that Chris’ assertion that Paul is the only candidate interested in fiscal conservatism is just flat-out made up. Moreover, to be sure, Paul has the narrowest, most extreme view of limited government — I’ve referred to it in previous posting as a proclivity for not limited but outright emasculated government — of the candidates running, but that doesn’t mean that he’s the only candidate who wants to eliminate
Darryl Schmitz wrote:
They certainly are. I’ve been trying to work out why it is that I have such a visceral dislike for Paul and his supporters, despite the fact that I agree with him to an extent on many issues. And I think it comes down to the fact that he’s a total loon, and many of his supporters are even worse. The way he talks comes across as borderline unhinged, and his supporters troll around the web acting for all the world like an even more supercilious and patronizing version of the 9/11 truth movement.
Okay Simon, which of the other candidates are concerned with fiscal conservatism. Really concerned, as in they have plans to balance the budget and pay down the debt.
I have no problem with any blog banning obnoxious posters, but that’s not what Red State did — they banned an entire area of discussion. The put the ban in place not just on a few bad apples, but on the whole train load of apples.
I find it very peculiar for a supposedly conservative site to ban talk of arguably the most conservative candidate in the race. Other candidates take more serious diversions from conservative orthodoxy — see Giuliani and Romney on abortion and guns, McCain on amnesty and guns, and Huckabee on spending. Yet new members on Red State can “shill” for them all day long.
The stated reason for the ban was bogus, too. Several of the new members were making thoughtful posts about Ron Paul’s conservative credentials, from a conservative perspective, but were slandered as “liberals pretending to be Republicans.”
Blogs are supposed to be about the free exchange of ideas, and perhaps advancing the ideology of a blog’s founders. Yet a candidate with a pristine record on taxes, spending, the Constitution, the Second Amendment, abortion, states’ rights, and free markets can no longer be championed there.
It makes you wonder why.
Craig:
Not so. What they did was shut down drive-by spamming: henceforth, you won’t be able to sign up purely for the purpose of spamming RedState posts with the usual Paulista drivel. Registered users who have participated in RedState can still discuss Ron Paul, and I suspect that if you’re a regular participant at RedState who engages in discussing other topics routinely and participating in discussions about Paul, you may well get away with it. Discussion is fine. Drive-by evangelizing is not, still less attempts to commandeer RedState as a promotional tool.
Chris, I think all of them are, and I have no idea what this idea that Paul has some unusually concrete plan for dealing with the issue is grounded on. Doesn’t seem to me like Paul has much of a plan - his website says little more than that “[w]e need a new method to prioritize our spending. It’s called the Constitution of the United States.” Which isn’t even the sort of vagueness you’d expect - it’s vacuous, amorphous nonsense. The federal Constitution doesn’t micromanage the federal budget. If the argument is, as is hinted, that Paul will eliminate spending on programs he doesn’t think are validly in the federal ambit, he should say what he has in mind. But saying that the Constitution settles this is either brain-dead or disingenuous. It’s the kind of hogwash you expect from Obama, not a Republican. Compare Huckabee, for example, who proposes replacing all extant federal taxes with a sales tax, which he argues more efficiently distributes the tax load, reduces compliance costs, and increases real revenues by reducing evasion. You can certainly disagree with that, but it’s an awful lot more specific than anything I’ve heard from Paul. Romney talks about rejecting new entitlement spending and so forth, and even Giuliani does better than Paul, running rather vaguely on his record of “cut[ting] the size of city-funded government bureaucracy by nearly 20% … prov[ing] he can deliver results and return fiscal discipline to the federal government.”
I saw a comment from one Paulista the other day that asserted that the majority of our spending is on military adventurism and what have you, so Paul’s isolationism alone would balance the budget — so these folks don’t even know at the most general level how the federal budget’s allocated and we’re supposed to take them seriously? Please.
Simon,
You’re right, Ron Paul has no specific plan to balance the budget either. But I’m guessing that his plans to abolish the majority of the federal government would take care of that.
As for Mitt and Rudy, I don’t see anything beyond paying lip-service to fiscal discipline. Rejecting new entitlement spending does not balance our budget. I suppose if Rudy can magically cut 20% of the federal budget, that could do the trick
But aside from that, both of them keep talking about spending more and more money on war. Not just Iraq, but Iran. That’s gonna take lots of $$$.
Red State can do whatever they want. It is thier blog. But I can’t leave without saying that Americans need to wake up. This is just another example of the Neocon Propaganda machine trying to silence Freedom of speech.
Check , what D.Larison from Eunomia said about this.
Perfect IMHO :
The presumption behind the ban that most Paul boosters are liberals is embarrassing to RedState. Sadly, it says a lot more about what passes for conservatism at RedState than it does about the Paul supporters. Rather than reaching some reasonable middle ground, punishing posters who abuse their privileges, their solution is a ban against new members saying anything about Paul. The symbolism of this move is terrible for RedState. It says to all those enthusiastic Paul backers that there is no point trying to talk to most Republicans, and after this I would be hard pressed to contradict such a view. It also puts the lie to the oft-repeated myth that the conservative coalition is brimming with intellectual diversity and thrives off of energetic and spirited debate, when it has been clear for some time that a great many Republicans have wanted Paul himself gone from the debates. Were I tempted to participate in a RedState forum, this move would cure me of that temptation very quickly. This is a move that represents a stagnating movement that is shedding supporters and gradually breaking to pieces on account of its own ideological rigidity and brittleness.
Unfortunately, this latest is just a symptom of the broader conformism on the “mainstream” right, particularly on matters of foreign policy, and represents the mentality of a movement that has been losing its ability to maintain and grow its political coalition. Paul’s campaign has thrived on the message that conservatism and Republicanism can and should still mean respect for the Constitution, liberty and a sane foreign policy–the very kind of rejuvenating and reforming message that the GOP needs if it is to retain the loyalty of millions of disaffected small-government conservatives and libertarians–and where Paul is making converts the folks at RedState, to adapt a phrase, are interested in finding heretics. It is a great irony this year that it is the purists who are actually swelling Republican ranks, while the pragmatists and big-tent folks are doing their best to empty that tent. Republicans will object that new Paul supporters will not support the GOP once Paul’s campaign is finished, and they may be right. RedState has just given Paul supporters one more reason to stay home or vote third party.
Chris, are you a Liberal?
Ron Paul supporters are too often fanatics. If they would behave more reasonably (and I know a few reasonable paleocons who like Paul) and stop spamming polls and message boards they might win more supporters. Ron Paul’s supporters turn me off far more than does Paul’s extreme libertarianism.
Yeah, the spamming is certainly counterproductive. I’ve seen some of them try to defend it by saying supporters of the other candidates are free to to the same things, and the fact they don’t shows just how much more support Ron Paul has than the others.
I’ve come to suspect that Ron Paul’s popularity in straw polls and fund-raising has more to do with moderate Republican’s dismay at the other choices they’ve been offered.
I’m an Eisenhower-Republican and I could no more vote for Thompson, Guiliani, Romney, Huckabee, et al, than I could stand on my head. What do you do about a group of old white guys who don’t “believe” in evolution? Good grief. Not to mention “let’s go bomb a country with the GDP of Finland”!
I find Huckabee the least offensive, but there’s still that evolution thing.
As to RedState’s ban - it’s certainly up to them to do as they wish, but I think they’ll find that by banning an area of discussion, their influence will wane.
Chris:
If you want to call that his plan, that makes his position even worse. Any ambition to abolish the majority of the federal government lies outside the power and ambit of the Presidency, so between Paul’s vague plan to curtail spending through means he’d have no power to implement, on the one hand, or any other candidate’s vague plans to curtail spending through means that they would have the power to implement, the latter wins every time. Simply rejecting new entitlement spending combined with a plan to limit new discretionary spending (with a veto as necessary) is far more realistic and concrete a plan than offering vague notions of revolutionary changes in the structure of American government that a President alone cannot effect.
Well, I’m coming at this from the perspective of a pro-war liberal Democrat, but let me add a couple of things. In my view, Ron Paul is something of a crazy person, emboding the worst of 1930’s isolationism, and Lew Rockwell-style hardcore libertarianism. His supporters are almost cult-like in their zeal. The way I see it, no self-respecting liberal would support him.
That being said, Paul’s candidacy is a legit phenomenon, and ought not be ignored. It’s bad form to exclude certain groups from the discussion out of hand. RedState can do what they want, but it’s bad form if you ask me. Meaningless cheerleader posts should be met with equal mental energy, which is to say, not much. Thoughtdul and substantive posts should be encouraged. As I’ve said, throwing the whole bunch out is bad form, and I’ll leave it at that.
That’s complete BS. I was banned for quoting Barry Goldwater Sr. and pointing out that Barry Goldwater Jr. is very friendly with Ron Paul.
It’s not “brain-dead or disingenuous” if one has actually read the Constitution and supporting documents (e.g., the Federalist papers, and specifically many of James Madison’s arguments).
Or if one bothers to actually look at the history of federal spending, as a percentage of GDP. (Hint: What was the highest level of federal spending as a percentage of GDP between the signing of the Constitution and WWI, excluding the Civil War and War of 1812?)
Or if one bothers to look at the history of when various government departments were introduced. (Hint: The Department of Education was not an initial department of the U.S. government…or even an agency. Neither was the Department of Education. Or the Department of Health and Human Services. Etc.)
[...] by robnesvacil Boohoo. Red State has had enough of actual paleocons dropping by and is banning Ron Paul supporters from posting at their collapsing tent [...]