ArtLindsey.com

The truth is, I always wanted to be a football player. Let me clarify that. I wanted to be an *American* football player. I have no interest in soccer. Call me crazy, but I have never been inclined to embrace a game in where you have a chance of being killed as a spectator. Along with that, I imagine I wouldn’t fit in with the European culture. I don’t have a snobby accent, I believe in God, I bathe, and I’d never drop my gun and run away from a fight. So, it’s obvious to me that American football is where it’s at, indeed.

Yes, I’ve had dreams of knocking the snot out of quarterbacks ever since I was a little kid, but my physical limitations keep me from doing so. This is unfortunate, but these things happen. The closest I’m ever going to come to playing football is by winning the Super Bowl on the latest edition of John Madden NFL . In fact, I have done this. I’ve done it multiple times with every installment of the game since the early 90’s and I’ve also done it with a few offshoot game titles. I’d really have to stop and think about it to be accurate, but if I were to guess, I’d say I’ve won at least 30 Super Bowls by now.

Yes, that’s right. I, your good friend Art, am a 30+ time Super Bowl champion. Come over to my house and I’ll show you my rings. I don’t even have enough fingers to wear them on! I am a legend! A man among men! Now, if I could just stop playing for 7 years, the NFL would most certainly induct me into their Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.

Sure they would…if I was completely delusional. See, here’s the thing:

Madden NFL is a video game. It’s not real. Just because I’ve hoisted armloads of Lombardi trophies on a screen doesn’t make it so. I know this. I’ll admit to getting into my gaming at times, but my grip on reality is firm. All of my victories are the mythical outcomes of some serious button mashing.

…Much like the Presidential debate polling victories of Congressman Ron Paul.

Just because Ron Paul has a rabid following a few thousand who take the time to participate in un-moderated text and web polling does not actually mean he won the debate on substance. I have watched several debates already this year, and I can honestly tell you that Ron Paul has not even come close to winning a debate on substance.

I’m sure I’ll be totally disemboweled by the Paul-ites as a hater, but I’m not. I’m being 100% intellectually honest. I myself am a Fred Thompson supporter, and I have been for some time now. I admit it. I’m on the guy’s bandwagon. *However*, while he is improving, Fred Thompson has not won any of the debates in which he has participated. He may in the future, but he hasn’t yet.
See that? I’m man enough to admit that. Why don’t the Ron Paul supporters admit the same thing about their candidate?

Anybody who truly watched last night’s Republican debate *knows* that Congressman Paul did not turn in a winning performance. Let alone one of a double-digit margin. Just because they mashed their cell phones in Fox’s unlimited text polling last night, that doesn’t make it so. The Libertarian Party (Paul’s true affiliation) really needs to put the pipes down, here. Perhaps literally.
To this date, Ron Paul is the only GOP candidate to receive large choruses of boos from thousands of people at the Republican debates. Keep in mind, these aren’t mixed crowds. We’re talking about auditoriums full of party faithful. I will concede that he has received cheers, but again, he is the only one to receive boos. I imagine the passion of the boos could be up for debate with some, but nonetheless, that means something. If you’re being booed even a little bit by a room of party faithful, you’re screwed, because you’re already in a supposed “friendly” room.

The truth is, Ron Paul is not a Republican. Ron Paul is a Libertarian who used the Republican banner to win his congressional seat in Texas. While I abhor such things, I can’t necessarily crucify him for it, because sadly, a lot of candidates use the GOP to get elected. Because of that, I’d have to go down a huge list and trash everyone who has ever done it. For the sake of brevity and my own sanity, I will not. I’m not saying it’s OK, it just is what it is.

In the interest of intellectual honesty, I will say that I understand why Congressman Paul did what he did. The Republicans, for better or worse, cut a wide swath in the conservative spectrum, and regardless of exactly where each individual Republican stands on the ideological line, Republicans politick better, and are far more palatable to the electorate. The LP’s reputation as closet anarchists (deserved or otherwise) is their greatest downfall. It’s just one issue, but as an example, you aren’t going to be able to sell drug legalization to the Bible-belt voting block. And quite frankly, from some of the LP discussion groups I’ve witnessed, I doubt they could sell anything, to tell you the truth, but I digress.

All that being said, despite Paul’s best intentions, it does not serve him well to bring up the GOP as an entity in the debates. Whenever he publicly frets about the future of the party and includes the pronoun “we”, true Republicans smirk a bit, because we know exactly what he did to get where he is. Ron Paul doesn’t care about the Republican Party. He cares about his seat. You don’t think he’s run as an LP’er if he thought he could win? Of course he would. But he can’t. Even if by a tremendous stroke of luck he maintained his House seat, there is no way he could win the presidency. Ron Paul isn’t fooling anybody.

Look, I agree with Ron Paul on some things. We do need smaller government. We do need lower taxes. The IRS needs to take a long walk of a short pier. I’m with him on those types of issues. He seems like a nice guy. In fact, I’d love to sit out on a porch somewhere in Texas and have a lemonade with him. He reminds me of my grandfather, in appearance as well as demeanor in *some* ways. But unfortunately for him, he lives in the past, and while I have an affinity for that, and I have undying respect for the older generation. His propensity to ignore reality in favor of recognizing the past does not serve him well. His current attitude has brought much fire from the base he is futilely attempting to woo. That being said, sometimes I wonder if the source of the ire is because of his policies, or the fact that we feel our time is being wasted by his mere presence in these forums?

Probably a bit of both.

I’m sure Congressman Paul is a smart man. He’s just a bit out of touch. He loves to bring up the way we did things over 100 years ago, and somehow, he expects them to apply. I am not a progressive by any means, but facts are facts. Technology has done away with the world in which he lives. His non-interventionalist policies, which sound great on the surface, just won’t work anymore. The oceans don’t protect us. I’m thinking it’s a safe bet that we won’t see al-Qaeda and Hezbollah sailing over the horizon in the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, hell-bent to make land in the United States. The threat of Islamofascists with a nuclear device is very real, and for some reason, Ron Paul doesn’t seem to be taking into account the advent of the ICBM. Lest I remind Congressman Paul that Pakistan has ICBM’s, and when you take into account the various news reports over recent weeks, Pakistan is teetering on the brink of a militant Islamic takeover. If that happens, terrorists will have completed our true nightmare scenario. They will have access to a WMD *with* launch codes. Sitting back and merely shoring up our homeland won’t prevent that. I’m all for protecting borders, but it won’t do us much good if we get our borders blown off.

I find Ron Paul’s insistence that we abandon our Middle East operations immediately immoral if not out and out naïve. I believe we should have gone in, but I’m not here to debate that one way or the other. The fact is that we are where we are, and we have a responsibility to the respective citizens and governments of Iraq and Afghanistan. If we leave before the job is complete, we will betray all of the good citizens of both countries. While they had horrible systems of government, they at least had stable systems. In no way am I condoning said systems, but when you have structure, you can work the system, and you at least have a chance to navigate around it. By retreating, we will leave behind large powderkegs with very short fuses for Iran to control, and the world would be a much more dangerous place, for us all, and that doesn’t even take into account the genocide which would occur. Of course, I don’t think Ron Paul condones genocide, but he certainly isn’t showing it as a concern. He idea of “just leaving them alone” is ludicrous. Neville Chamberlain tried it, and it didn’t work out so well.

Ron Paul likes to site how George W. Bush ran for office on a non interventionalist platform. That may be true. But things change with the times, and that is something Ron Paul seems to be unable to do. Bush for office prior to 9/11. For some reason, Paul doesn’t seem to acknowledge that fact. That fateful day in September changed a lot of people’s minds on a lot of things. You cannot plan your entire life out in advance. Life is indeed a journey, but it is not a ride on a monorail. There are forks in the road. There are forces which will compel you to modify your course, and you must adapt. Ron Paul cannot seem to adapt and that is his biggest downfall.

Despite his marked intelligence, his insistence to tie every problem, (real and imagined) the United States has to our foreign policies is completely inane and maddening. In the last debate as of this writing Paul even tied our *private* healthcare shortcomings to our Middle eastern conflicts. If he were to mention Walter Reed or perhaps Bethesda Naval, that is one thing, but the money *the government* is spending in the Middle East has nothing to do with our medical industry woes. We had high premiums before the wars, and we’ll have them afterwards. He had to make quite a roundabout stretch to get there, and it really disappointed me.

Because, as I am often reminded, ad-nauseam, the Congressman is a doctor, and I was really looking forward to some deep professional insight on his part. Instead, all I got was a shallow lambasting of “Big corporations and HMO’s.” Which was nothing more than a stunted insult which to brush the meat of the question aside and engage in another one of his redundant foreign policy ramblings. He seemed to imply that the money spent overseas would be better used to serve the medical system. Seeing as we’re talking about government coffers, that would seem to lean its way in the direction of socialized medicine. Now, that would certainly fly in the face of everything Congressman Paul professes to believe, and I’m not saying he secretly pines for government health care. Sadly, what I’m saying is when it comes to verbally framing his arguments, Ron Paul is a bit of a goof. While it is true that George W. Bush is also a bit of a goof, he is not an angry, one-trick pony like Ron Paul. Despite his service to the nation, which I applaud him for, is not qualified to be president, and is eternally doomed on the national stage.

Over the course of this writing, something has occurred to me:

Do the people who support Congressman Paul actually care about him? Despite my differences with him, I see him as a no nonsense fellow, and I’ll bet dimes to donuts the guy wants to win. I’m not saying he’s Moses, but when you reach a certain age, you lose desire to waste time. Why isn’t anybody helping Ron Paul change or reshape the part of his message that is a complete no-sell with the voters he is trying to woo? Do you know why people boo Ron Paul? People don’t feel safe with Ron Paul, and because of that, he will never win. Ever.

I am not a Ron Paul supporter, but he deserves better from his “faithful” supporters. Calling him “Doctor” whenever you feel he has been slighted, does not help him. It hurts him, because Ron Paul is an OBGYN, and while that is admirable, it has nothing to do with foreign or domestic policy. Former Senate leader Bill Frist is also an M.D., but his supporters never demanded he be referred to as “doctor” whenever he was slighted. Why? Because it’s irrelevant, and it makes the claimant look like a petulant fool. If it were so important, how come no one calls General David Patraeus. “Doctor”? He has a Ph.D . in Foreign Affairs, and it applies to what he’s doing. That is an application of the title which would make sense, not in the case of Ron Paul, or any other MD in the Senate for that matter. I would ask anyone who engages in this to stop, because you are doing nothing but making a mockery of yourselves, and that does not help Congressman Paul.

It’s just as silly as the left’s affinity for him, they only like him because of his weakness with the base, and the fact that Hillary would whip his butt in the General Election.

Perhaps this is nothing more than some sort of twisted reality show to the Ron Paul fanatics. Is it like American Idol to them? They all sit back and hammer away like mad at polls via the web and their cell phones, and thinking they are changing the face of things, when the actual engaged electorate knows better. Ron Paul will not win the nomination. He may be nothing more than a tool for his “faithful’s” amusement. Because, deep down, they know it too. But they are doing nothing with him (that is noticeable) on a personal level to change it. His supporters are doing nothing more than aiding his mockery. It’s “Survivior D.C.”, and they get to vote to keep him on the island. It’s never been about winning or losing to Ron Paul supporters. It’s seems like it’s more about their fifteen minutes of fame.

You and I will never agree sir, but I would at least have the guts to look you in the eye and tell you the truth.

You deserve better.

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