LD Jackson
Political Realities

It was inevitable, I suppose – Once Ron Paul rose to the top-tier of candidates, it didn’t take long before the accusations began to fly.

Old theories about his supposed racism, fueled by the continued discussion of the newsletters published some two decades ago, have gained new traction in the media. The new and old media have both been regurgitating the accusations, in spite of Ron Paul having disavowed them and his attempts to prove them false. We now have a former staffer who has came forward, claiming to have extensive knowledge of the real Ron Paul. Eric Dondero has written a fairly long article about his associations with Paul, including his “insider” knowledge of how the Congressman “really feels” about a range of issues. What I find odd about this is how Dondero’s word has been accepted as gospel by most in the media, yet when the Paul campaign points out that he was fired for performance issues, the media asks that they provide proof of that.

When I endorsed Ron Paul for the GOP nomination for President, I did not intend to turn Political Realities into a cheerleader for his campaign. I have written about him when I felt the need to do so, as was the case when I defended him against Michelle Bachmann’s charge that he would be a dangerous President. Such would be the case now, as I see the charges of racism, anti-Semitism, of generally being out of touch with his foreign policy, mount against him. To raise that defense, I want to use an email interview of Ron Paul by Haaretz.com, which addresses the issues of how he feels about Israel and about racism and anti-Semitism. Out of the horse’s mouth, so to speak. Haaretz has a unique perspective, in that they are a Jewish website.

Q. What was your reaction to your exclusion from the function held by the Republican Jewish Coalition, to which all the rest of the candidates were invited?

Paul: Well, it was a bit surprising and disappointing. I believe that Israel is one of our most important friends in the world. And the views that I hold have many adherents in Israel today. Two of the tenets of a true Zionist are “self-determination” and “self-reliance.” I do not believe we should be Israel’s master but, rather, her friend. We should not be dictating her policies and announcing her negotiating positions before talks with her neighbors have even begun.

Q. The RJC characterized your views on Israel as “misguided and extreme”. Why do you think they view your views in that way?

Paul: I do not know, as I am the one candidate who would respect Israel’s sovereignty and not try to dictate to her about how she should deal with her neighbors. I supported Israel’s right to attack the Iraqi nuclear reactor in the 1980s, and I opposed President Obama’s attempt to dictate Israel’s borders this year.

Q. Do you think that the American debate on Israel is stifled?

Paul: There is no question that the problems of the Middle East have been intractable and may take new solutions and ideas. These ideas should all be openly discussed. I believe that my opinions have been distorted by those who want to continue America’s current role as world policeman, which we don’t have the money or manpower to sustain.

My philosophy, like that of the Founding Fathers, is that we should use our resources to protect our nation. Our policies of intervention and manipulation in Iran and Iraq and other places have led to unintended consequences and have not made Israel safer. Many in the Jewish community share my opinion, and it’s vital for both nations that we continue to have an open dialogue.

Q. In a 2007 clip that is on YouTube, you say, “Israel should be treated like everybody else”. Is that still your position, or do you believe that Israel and the United States have a “special relationship”?

Paul: Well, we do have some unique arrangements. We trade intelligence in areas when it serves our mutual interest, for instance. But I believe we have gone too far, to Israel’s detriment. Instead of being her friend, we have dominated her foreign policy.

Q. In that same clip, you also say that the motivation of al-Qaida for the 9/11 attacks was American support for Israel. Do you still believe that?

Paul: I think most people in the Middle East and probably in Israel would agree that this was a major factor. That in itself does not make our policies right or wrong. Our policies need to be discussed on their own merits, but as a matter of course, yes, our support of Israel has made us enemies.

Other U.S. policies, such as our stationing of troops in Saudi Arabia and our support for repressive regimes in the region, also play a role in hostilities to the U.S. Those in the Arab world who object to the U.S.’ support for dictatorships and to our military presence there often see Israel as the agent of the U.S. Thus, not only do Israel’s relations with the U.S. cause some negative feelings toward America, but they further Arab hostility toward Israel, which is one reason why Israel would be better off without U.S. aid.

Q. In the Fox News presidential debate you expressed understanding and even sympathy for the Iran having nuclear weapons. But Israelis view an Iranian nuclear capability as an existential threat to their country. Do you disagree? Do you not believe Iranian leaders who say that Israel should be “wiped off the map”?

Paul: I am against the spread of nuclear weapons. But I do understand why other nations want them and why they don’t accept the nuclear monopoly as it now stands. You cannot change an opinion you don’t understand. I understand it and would try to change it.
However, there’s a key fact that it seems is being overlooked when my positions are discussed. I believe I’m the only candidate who would allow Israel to take immediate action to defend herself without having to get our approval. Israel should be free to take whatever steps she deems necessary to protect her national security and sovereignty.

Q. Do you support completely cutting all foreign aid, including the aid to Israel?

Paul: Yes, I am personally against all foreign aid. We give $3 billion to Israel and $12 billion to her avowed enemies. How does that help Israel? And in return, we act like her master and demand veto power over her foreign policy.
If I were President, such aid would not end until the Congress agreed and voted for it to end, because I would be President as the U.S. Constitution defines it. I am not running for dictator.

But I believe that federal foreign aid is absurd. We’re broke! We are like a man who used to be rich and is in the habit of paying for everybody’s meals and announces at a lavish dinner that he will pay the bill, only to then turn to the fellow sitting nearby and say, “Can I use your credit card? I will pay you back.” It is ridiculous for us to be borrowing money from China and giving it to Pakistan.
I have described foreign aid as taking money from poor people in rich countries and giving it to rich people in poor countries. I know that many in other nations are hurting, but I also know that the American people are a generous people. While we should end the unconstitutional federal foreign aid program, I would encourage Americans to continue to voluntarily contribute to the needs of other nations.

Q. In the past, you have been accused by various groups, including the Anti-Defamation League, of accepting the support of racist and anti-Semitic elements and of not doing anything to distance yourself from them. What is your reaction to this accusation?

Paul: I have always made it clear, and will continue to do so, that my message is based on the rights of all people to be treated equally. Any type of racism or anti-Semitism is incompatible with my philosophy. Ludwig von Mises, the great economist whose writing helped inspire my political career, was a Jew who was forced to leave his native Austria to escape the Nazis. Mises wrote about the folly of seeing people as part of groups rather than as individuals. Therefore, for me to advance anti-Semitism in any way would be a betrayal of my own intellectual heritage.

I know a series of questions and answers via email is not a definitive answer to the charges that are being thrown at Ron Paul. However, I think his answers give us a little insight as to how the man thinks and how he approaches the issues facing our country. He clearly has nothing against Israel, but he does want them to be treated fairly and equally. He has a point, in that our financial aid to them is dwarfed by the financial aid we give to some of her enemies. We should think about that, long and hard, before we classify Paul’s desire to cut off foreign aid to Israel and every other country who is holding out their hand. In my humble opinion, Paul’s position on Israel makes perfect sense.

I am not the only person who holds this opinion. According to Dr. Leon Hadar, who advised was an adviser to Ron Paul during his 2008 campaign, Eric Dondero’s classification of Paul being anti-Israel is simply not true. From Haaretz.com:

Speaking with Haaretz on Tuesday, Hadar discounted Paul’s characterization as anti-Israel, saying: “He is against Israel as I am against January. He is just against foreign aid, and does not see any reason to grant an aid to the country that is a member of OECD.”

“We should remember it’s the primaries, and the Republican party establishment is not happy about his popularity, because on many issues his positions run contrary to the traditional party’s agenda,” Hadar added.

The former aide also indicated that Rep. Paul was in favor of “economic cooperation with Israel, he was interested in the economic reforms in Israel.”

“He will be glad to see the conflict resolved and he said it’s the right of Israel to attack Iran if it thinks that is necessary – but it shouldn’t expect the U.S. to clean the mess,” he said, adding that Paul is “very familiar with Israel’s history. I didn’t hear his conversations with his former aide, but I personally have never heard him say anything against Israel or the Jews.”

Referring to claims according to which Paul was in favor of “handing Israel back” to the Arabs, Hadar said it was “absurd to say he is more supportive of Arabs or Iran than Israel – he just thinks the U.S. shouldn’t meddle in other countries issues.”

“I think it’s quite pro-Israeli, because the U.S. won’t stay in the Middle East forever, and Israel should figure out how to deal with its challenges,” Hadar said, adding that there “is little doubt the current campaign against him and the attempts to paint him as anti-Israeli might cause him harm among the Evangelicals, whose support is more significant during the primaries than the Republican Jewish support.”

As you can see, there are two sides to this story. Before we automatically accept a former staffer’s word of how Ron Paul “really feels” on certain issues, we need to take it all into context. All may not be as it seems.

By Stephanie Pappas
Published January 23, 2012
LiveScience

Cactu, Wikipedia

Psilocybe mexicana, the mushroom from which psilocybin was first extracted.

The active ingredient in psychedelic mushrooms decreases brain activity, possibly explaining the vivid, mind-bending effects of the drug, a new study finds.

The decreases were focused in regions that serve as crossroads for information in the brain, meaning that information may flow more freely in a brain on mushrooms. The findings could be useful in developing hallucinogenic treatments for some mental disorders.

"There is increasing evidence that the regions affected are responsible for giving us our sense of self," study author Robin Carhart-Harris, a postdoctoral researcher at Imperial College London, wrote in an email to LiveScience.

"In other words, the regions affected make up what some people call our 'ego.' That activity decreases in the 'ego-network' supports what people often say about psychedelics, that they temporarily 'dissolve the ego.'" [10 Most Destructive Human Behaviors]

Quieting the brain

Psilocybin, the chemical that gives mushrooms their trippy properties, has long-lasting effects beyond the initial high. A recent Johns Hopkins University study found that a single experience with psilocybin in a controlled environment can alter personality long-term, making people more open to new experiences.

"Healthy people given psilocybin often describe their experiences as among the most meaningful of their whole lives, comparable to such things as the birth of their first child or getting married," Carhart-Harris said. "We wanted to know what is going on in people's brains to produce such profound effects."

The researchers asked 15 people who had used mushrooms in the past to lie in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fRMI) scanner, which measures blood flow in the brain to determine brain activity in different regions.

After a few minutes, the researchers injected either psilocybin or a placebo into the participants' veins. (Each volunteer participated in two scans, so everyone had one experience with the hallucinogen and one with the placebo.) They then continued the scan to find out what changes occurred in brain activity.

A promising treatment?

The scans revealed a surprise: Psilocybin never increased activity in the brain, but only decreased activity in places, especially information transfer areas such as the thalamus, which sits smack in the middle of the brain.

"'Knocking out' these key hubs with psilocybin appears to allow information to travel more freely in the brain, probably explaining why people's imaginations become more vivid and animated and the world is experienced as unusual," Carhart-Harris said.

The researchers used multiple fMRI methods to validate their findings, and controlled for outside factors to be sure, for example, that psilocybin didn't cause breathing changes that, in turn, changed the brain. What actually seems to be happening, Carhart-Harris said, is that psilocybin mimics the effect of the brain chemical serotonin. In the brain, psilocybin sticks to serotonin receptors on brain cells, inhibiting the activity of those neurons. The effect lasts about a half-hour for a moderate dose given as an intravenous shot, Carhart-Harris said.

The researchers plan to further investigate these brain-bending effects as a treatment for depression. The regions quieted down by psilocybin are overactive in depression, Carhart-Harris said, so this mushroom ingredient could be an alternative treatment to lift mood.

But the findings aren't a license for anyone to start self-medicating with mushrooms, Carhart-Harris warned. The participants in this and other psilocybin studies have all been experienced and healthy psilocybin users in a controlled environment; some people can experience terrifying "bad trips" on psychedelics, he said. Without proper psychological care, the effects can be long-lasting and harmful.

"These are preliminary results, and a lot more research is required before claims can be made about the therapeutic value of psychedelics," Carhart-Harris said. "However, the initial signs are promising."

You can follow LiveScience senior writer Stephanie Pappas on Twitter @sipappas. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and on Facebook.

Jan 23, 2012 10:33am
By Sunlen Miller
Matt Hosford

Sen. Rand Paul told his communications director this morning he was being detained by TSA at the Nashville airport.

The Twitter account associated with Paul staffer Moira Bagley, @moirabagley, tweeted around 10 a.m., ET, “Just got a call from @senrandpaul. He’s currently being detained by TSA in Nashville.”

A TSA spokesman disputed that Paul was ever “detained.” But he was not granted access to the secure area of the airport when he tried to board a flight Monday morning.

The standoff was short-lived. By late morning, according to TSA, Paul had been booked on another flight and made it through the screening process.

The TSA version of events is that Paul triggered an alarm during routine airport screening and refused to complete the screening process (pat-down) in order to resolve the issue.  Paul was escorted out of the screening area by local law enforcement.

“When an irregularity is found during the TSA screening process, it must be resolved prior to allowing a passenger to proceed to the secure area of the airport,” according to an official statement released by TSA. “Passengers who refuse to complete the screening process cannot be granted access to the secure area in order to ensure the safety of others traveling.”

Paul’s office confirmed he set off  an airport security full-body scanner “on a glitch,” according to a spokesman.

The Paul staffer said TSA agents would not let Paul walk back through the body scanner and were demanding a full body pat-down.

The Paul spokesman said his office called TSA administrator John Pistole about the incident this morning.

The U.S. Constitution actually protects federal lawmakers from detention while they’re on the way to the capital.

“The Senators and Representatives…shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same….” according to Article I, Section 6.

The Senate is back in session today at 2 p.m., with votes scheduled at 4:30 p.m. It is not clear if Paul will make it to Washington by 4:30 p.m. on his new flight.

The issue of pat-downs has been an important one to Paul, the son of libertarian-leaning Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul. Sen.  Paul brought this issue up at a hearing earlier this year.

Watch it here. 

Congressman renews his call to abolish agency that “gropes and grabs” Americans

Steve Watson
Infowars.com
January 23, 2012

GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul issued the following statement on his campaign website this afternoon, following his son Rand’s treatment at the hands of the TSA in Nashville.

“The police state in this country is growing out of control.  One of the ultimate embodiments of this is the TSA that gropes and grabs our children, our seniors, and our loved ones and neighbors with disabilities.  The TSA does all of this while doing nothing to keep us safe.

“That is why my ‘Plan to Restore America,’ in additional to cutting $1 trillion dollars in federal spending in one year, eliminates the TSA.

“We must restore the freedom and respect for liberty that once made American the greatest nation in human history.  I am deeply committed to doing that as President of the United States.”

The website also posted a picture of Senator Rand Paul talking to reporters following the incident with the TSA:

Congressman Paul has been a long time critic of the TSA. In 2010 he introduced into the House the “American Traveler Dignity Act,” which would remove TSA agents’ immunity from prosecution for implementing invasive pat-down procedures. Paul re-introduced the legislation in the summer.

Related: TSA Directly Violated US Constitution By Detaining Senator Rand Paul

By Jim Forsyth
Sat Jan 21, 2012 11:44am EST

(Reuters) - When Patty Tegeler looks out the window of her home overlooking the Appalachian Mountains in southwestern Virginia, she sees trouble on the horizon.

"In an instant, anything can happen," she told Reuters. "And I firmly believe that you have to be prepared."

Tegeler is among a growing subculture of Americans who refer to themselves informally as "preppers." Some are driven by a fear of imminent societal collapse, others are worried about terrorism, and many have a vague concern that an escalating series of natural disasters is leading to some type of environmental cataclysm.

They are following in the footsteps of hippies in the 1960s who set up communes to separate themselves from what they saw as a materialistic society, and the survivalists in the 1990s who were hoping to escape the dictates of what they perceived as an increasingly secular and oppressive government.

Preppers, though are, worried about no government.

Tegeler, 57, has turned her home in rural Virginia into a "survival center," complete with a large generator, portable heaters, water tanks, and a two-year supply of freeze-dried food that her sister recently gave her as a birthday present. She says that in case of emergency, she could survive indefinitely in her home. And she thinks that emergency could come soon.

"I think this economy is about to fall apart," she said.

A wide range of vendors market products to preppers, mainly online. They sell everything from water tanks to guns to survival skills.

Conservative talk radio host Glenn Beck seems to preach preppers' message when he tells listeners: "It's never too late to prepare for the end of the world as we know it."

"Unfortunately, given the increasing complexity and fragility of our modern technological society, the chances of a societal collapse are increasing year after year," said author James Wesley Rawles, whose Survival Blog is considered the guiding light of the prepper movement.

A former Army intelligence officer, Rawles has written fiction and non-fiction books on end-of-civilization topics, including "How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It," which is also known as the preppers' Bible.

"We could see a cascade of higher interest rates, margin calls, stock market collapses, bank runs, currency revaluations, mass street protests, and riots," he told Reuters. "The worst-case end result would be a Third World War, mass inflation, currency collapses, and long term power grid failures."...

by Gary North

Issue 1135                                      January 17, 2012

                    AUDITING THE FED'S GOLD
 
        I have posted a video of something I thought I would
  never see: all five of the Republican candidates for the
  U.S. Senate verbally demanding an audit of the Federal
  Reserve System. You can see it here:
 
              http://teapartyeconomist.com/?p=2367 
 
        Bernanke is facing what no Federal Reserve chairman
  has ever faced: public awareness of the Federal Reserve
  System. From late December 1913, when an almost deserted
  Senate voted for the Federal Reserve Act, until 2008, when
  the recession confirmed Ron Paul's warning in late 2007,
  there was almost no public awareness or even a vague
  understanding of the Federal Reserve System. The genie is
  now out of the bottle, where it had been corked since 1913.
  Ron Paul has uncorked it.
 
        From the November 1910 secret meeting at Georgia's
  Jekyll Island until Ron Paul's 2007 candidacy for the
  Republican nomination for President, The Federal Reserve
  had received a free ride from Congress. There had never
  been much oversight. That's because FED regulation was an
  oversight. (The same word is used to convey opposite
  meanings.)
 
        The Texas Leftist-populist Democrat Wright Patman had
  been a critic. He had been the chairman of the House
  Banking Committee until 1975, a year before Paul arrived in
  Congress. He was a Greenbacker: a believer in a zero-
  interest economy that achieves this Utopian goal through
  the use of fiat paper money. Patman was not able to
  generate much interest in the FED.
 
        Patman did inflict one major wound on the FED. He and
  California Congressman Jerry Voorhis, another Greenbacker,
  in the early 1940s persuaded Congress to pass a bill, which
  Roosevelt signed, that forbids the Federal Reserve from
  keeping the interest payments from the government bonds it
  has counterfeited fiat money to purchase. Today, the FED
  must return to the Treasury all of this money beyond its
  operating expenses. For 2011, the FED will pay back $77
  billion. (http://teapartyeconomist.com/?p=2185)
                                                   
        A full-scale audit of the FED, if it ever comes, must
  include an audit of the gold every year. The auditors must
  see if the gold is in the two vaults. The first vault, at
  Ft. Knox, is more famous. The more important vault is
  located at 33 Liberty Street, New York City: the privately
  owned Federal Reserve Bank of New York. This is the "Die
  Hard III" vault.
 
        The auditors must do two things. First, they must
  determine whether there is the same amount of gold as is
  listed on the FED's books at the fake price of $42.22 per
  ounce. Second, the auditors must follow the paper trail of
  ownership. They must make sure that the gold in the vaults
  is still legally in the possession of the FED.
       
        There is a possibility that the FED has transferred
  ownership of this gold, through swaps, to European central
  banks, which have in turn leased -- sold -- their gold to
  private buyers. It is not enough to determine that the
  physical gold is in the two vaults. It is also mandatory to
  determine whether the FED has indirectly sold the
  government's gold, which it has held in trust for the
  government since 1933.       
 
        [Note to auditors: pursue this phrase in the
        FED's statements: "deep storage gold." As to why,
        read this: http://www.gata.org/node/4213]
 
 
  BERNANKE VS. A FULL-SCALE GOVERNMENT AUDIT
 
        Every FED chairman has resisted any attempt by the
  Congress to mandate an independent audit of the FED by the
  General Accountability Office of the U.S. government.
  Bernanke was adamantly opposed in 2009. He of course did
  not mention what I regard as the main reason for his
  opposition to an audit: the missing gold. For all FED
  chairman, gold is a four-letter word. He mentioned only
  monetary policy, as if Congress has no authority over
  monetary policy, despite that ancient "barbarous relic,"
  the U.S. Constitution.
 
        The Congress has recently discussed proposals to
        expand the audit authority of the Government
        Accountability Office (GAO) over the Federal
        Reserve. As you know, the Federal Reserve is
        already subject to frequent reviews by the GAO.
        The GAO has broad authority to audit our
        operations and functions.
 
        This of course was deceptive. First, the FED is
  audited by a rotating group of private auditing firms,
  which are appointed by the Office of Inspector General.
  This rotation system makes long-term accounting continuity
  far more difficult to achieve. The FED forbids the auditing
  firm to inspect all of the FED's operations. According to
  the Federal Reserve Bank of New York,
 
        Operations at each Federal Reserve Bank also are
        subject to review by the Government
        Accountability Office (GAO), the audit arm of the
        U.S. Congress. However, GAO auditors are
        restricted by law from reviewing monetary policy
        operations and transactions carried out by the
        Federal Reserve on behalf of foreign central
        banks. This restriction was imposed by Congress
        to assure the independence of the Federal Reserve
        from political influence.
 
        "Political influence." There is another term for
  "political influence." That term is "the United States
  government."
 
        The FED defends this principle: "Monetary policy is
  far too important to be audited by the government." After
  all, what claim to such authority does the government have,
  other than the fact that it created the Federal Reserve
  System?...

Editor's note: Matt Welch is editor in chief of Reason and co-author of The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What's Wrong with America (PublicAffairs).

(CNN) -- To get a sense of how Ron Paul is tying the GOP establishment in knots, look no further than Sen. Jim DeMint, the powerful Republican from the site of the next major primary, South Carolina.

Until November 2010, DeMint had a clear claim on being the most influential, populist-flavored fiscal conservative in the Senate. Then a wave of Tea Party freshmen helped bring a Republican majority to the House of Representative and a new breed of politician to the Senate -- one best exemplified by Kentucky's Rand Paul, whose post-campaign memoir was titled The Tea Party Goes to Washington.

DeMint, a strong social conservative, greeted it with both a hearty welcome ("[P]ut on your boxing gloves. The fight begins today") and an attempt at line-drawing. "You can't be a fiscal conservative," he claimed just after the election, "and not be a social conservative."

DeMint was totally wrong about that -- polling data has indicated that a majority of Americans feel comfortable with the label of "fiscally conservative and socially liberal" -- but that's not what's interesting here. What's interesting is that after pooh-poohing the existence of a species that closely resembles the politically homeless tribe known as libertarians, DeMint, in the wake of Rep. Ron Paul's solid second-place showing so far in the GOP presidential primary season, is using the L-word as a compliment.

"One of the things that's hurt the so-called conservative alternative is saying negative things about Ron Paul," DeMint told radio host Laura Ingraham this week. "I'd like to see a Republican Party that embraces a lot of the libertarian ideas."

This is a departure. In both 2000 and 2008, the top two GOP delegate-winners ran on explicitly anti-libertarian platforms. As John McCain wrote in his campaign memoir "Worth the Fighting For," "I welcomed a greater, if still limited, role for government in national problems, anathema to the 'leave us alone' libertarian philosophy that dominated Republican debates in the 1990s. So did George W. Bush, I must add, who challenged libertarian orthodoxy with his appeal for a 'compassionate conservatism.'"

The mix of compassionate conservatism, with its emphasis on domestic spending initiatives such as No Child Left Behind and the Medicare Part D, and neo-conservatism, with its emphasis on interventionist foreign policy, produced results that were both predictable and predictably repellent to libertarians: A 60% increase in federal nondefense spending under Bush, and a federal government that recognized no corner of the globe or hospital room as off-limits to American police power.

It's no wonder, then, that libertarians, like the rest of America, have been fleeing the Republican Party in droves. From 1972 to1988, libertarians voted Republican for president 69 percent of the time; since then the percentage has dropped to 46. Meanwhile the country, and especially younger people, have been turning more culturally libertarian on issues like gay marriage and marijuana prohibition, at a time when the mainstream GOP keeps fighting those lost causes...

by Daniel Larison
The Week
posted on January 4, 2012, at 11:24 AM

Rick Santorum and Ron Paul finished in a close second and third in Tuesday night's Iowa caucuses. But they could scarcely be farther apart in their foreign policy visions, not to mention their views on the proper role of government — revealing a massive fracture in the Republican Party. If the trajectory of their careers in the last five years is any indication, Paul's ideas are gaining influence, while Santorum appears to be one of the last of the completely unrepentant Bush-era Republicans. Paul was never going to be the nominee this year, but the party continues to move gradually in his direction.  

Paul was overtaken Tuesday by Santorum's late surge, but the Texas libertarian's showing in Iowa represented more than a doubling of his 2008 result, and his numbers were boosted by strong backing from independents and young voters. Unlike Santorum, Paul has a significant campaign presence in other early states, and will still be reasonably competitive in the weeks to come. Considering the amount of time Santorum spent in Iowa over the last several months (by far more than any other candidate), and the presence of a natural constituency of social conservatives and evangelicals he should have been able to win over, the former Pennsylvania senator's result is not all that impressive compared to Mike Huckabee's four years ago.

Santorum's presidential campaign is an exercise in continuing to deny that the public has already repudiated the foreign policy he promotes.

Santorum was a two-term senator who chose the worst year of the Iraq war — 2006 — to make his re-election a referendum on the most unpopular and aggressive aspects of President Bush's foreign policy. Santorum was clobbered by Democrat Bob Casey, and his re-election bid reflected the political fortunes of the party as a whole in 2006. The GOP lost control of both houses of Congress, in no small part because of growing public opposition to the war in Iraq and the reckless administration that launched it. Like the rest of the party, Santorum has not yet learned the lesson from those midterms: He and the GOP had been wrong on these issues. Santorum's presidential campaign is, in some respects, an exercise in continuing to deny that the public has already repudiated the foreign policy he promotes.

Indeed, Santorum's politics are nearly the essence of Bushism. Paul represents the full-throated rejection of the same. If Paul is well-known for his strong anti-war views and sharp criticisms of U.S. interference abroad, Santorum has been no less outspoken in favor of ever more intrusive and interventionist policies. While Paul has been the lone voice warning against a rush to war against Iran, Santorum demands a more combative Iran policy. Santorum's campaign rhetoric reads as if it were a caricature of neoconservatism. He believes that the U.S. is at war with "Islamic fascism," which he sees a global threat on par with 20th century totalitarianism. He insists that we must promote democracy, but we must never allow democratic elections to empower Islamists. Oh, and terrorists hate us because we are free. U.S. policies have nothing to do with it.

Santorum and Paul have also clashed over the size and scope of the state at home, as Santorum has regularly defended the PATRIOT Act, indefinite detention and torture of terrorist suspects, and illegal surveillance by the government. Santorum is also a strong believer in an activist, centralized government promoting morality nationwide. Paul, on the other hand, is a fierce critic of any federal government activity not explicitly authorized by the Constitution. The largest expansion of the welfare state in a generation received Santorum's backing, while Paul has been an inflexible, stalwart opponent of the expansion of government.  

Paul and Santorum represent the two poles of Republican foreign policy today, and their visions are completely incompatible with one another. On one side, Paul advocates for a libertarian and non-interventionist position that traces its origins to the pre-WWI foreign policy tradition of the republic. On the other, Santorum aligns himself with a fusion of "hard Wilsonian" internationalism and nostalgic rhetoric that frames every issue in terms of a Churchillian struggle against massive foreign threats. Despite sharing the same nominal partisan affiliation, the gap between Paul and Santorum is far larger than the differences between the rest of the Republican field and President Obama. At the same time, the former senator's combination of interventionism and "big-government conservatism" actually serves to make one of Paul's central arguments for him, which is that support for government activism abroad tends to encourage the same at home.