Mars Attacks!
Being a cat's paw whose presence in the race is useful to one candidate or another but who poses no real threat will only protect him for so long.
Once Paul himself is exposed to the kind of scrutiny he wants to turn on the others, he's toast. Major ad campaigns highlighting the details of the Paul foreign policy, the newsletter business, and the kind of people who form a large part of his following will probably be required to fully inform the electorate about just how far out of the American mainstream Paul is, but a flaying or two at the hands of Gingrich in this weekend's debates couldn't hurt.
A candidate who won't man up and accept responsibility for the contents of an entire decade of a newsletter he paid for, profited from, and listed himself as editor of is on very shaky ground attacking other candidates on the grounds of character, as he's recently been doing.
You should talk, Ron.
HT: Drudge
Comments
They could run newsletter ads too, of course. I think those would come off like petty negative ads, though. The thing about the Santorum ad is that it actually points out some things voters probably don't know about Santorum that are very relevant to his fitness as president.
It would be fun if the other candidates come out swinging in the upcoming debates. If you think Ron Paul hasn't faced heat in debates before, you should rewatch the ones from '08.
Nobody remembers 2008- when Paul attracted the support of pretty much only his small cadre of fellow whack-jobs. Jeff, as hard as this is to accept, Ron Paul is a distraction. He's irrelevant. Nobody cares.
Nobody but the small number of Paulbots and the smaller number who pay attention to him because they know what a kook he is realizes that Paul thinks America is the bad guy and the terrorists are the good guys, that America was responsible for 9/11, or that he's irresponsible enough to "edit" and publish a newsletter for ten years without knowing what's in it. To the extent that Paul attracts a larger following this year due to the usual boost protest candidates get in bad times, his positions and record will be known- and he'll be exposed as the extremist fanatic he is.
The last thing you should want, Jeff, is for people to get to know where Ron Paul stands. He's so far outside the American mainstream of thought that he might as well really be a Martian. He lives on a different planet- and so do you.