Below I have a story applauding the decision by Young Americans for Freedom to expel Ron Paul thereby taking a small step at excising this particular tapeworm from the conservative body and foreshadowing an action that all responsible conservatives and Republicans should consider.
Paul promotes a fiscal and security policy that would be disastrous to the nation for reasons no more substantial than self aggrandizement. Were that the limit of his damage he would be easy to ignore. It isn’t like he’s the first crank or nutjob we’ve had in the movement and the GOP. Far from it. What makes Paul so distasteful is not so much his policies but the classless twits who follow him like rats leaving Hameln.
If you think I’m being less than charitable to otherwise unoffending Ron Paul supporters, think again.
Here at RedState we have experienced several influxes of Ronbots but our first real introduction to the type of person we were dealing with occurred as the 2008 primaries were heating up. Their monomania — along with mouthbreathing and poor personal hygiene — forced us to take the unprecedented step of banning them on sight.
Any doubt that we have unfairly maligned them disappeared this past week at CPAC where they booed and shouted anti-Semitic slogans at two of the pre-eminent public servants our side has produced in the past couple of decades.
It started with former Secretary of Defense being invited to receive an award by CPAC and to speak. In response, Ron Paul’s supporters, many of them paid to attend, booed him and staged a walkout.
A steady stream of Texas Rep. Ron Paul’s supporters walked out of a planned tribute for Donald Rumsfeld at CPAC Thursday afternoon. The walk-out had been planned ahead of time in part by Campaign for Liberty organizers and it seemed to be supported by more than 100 CPAC attendees.
The former defense secretary was also booed when took to the stage.
While one is free to believe what they will about Rumsfeld’s second tour as Secretary of Defense, I happen to believe that history will judge him to be one of the most able and productive men to have ever held the job, there is no excuse for adults walking out. If you ever needed proof that class and breeding aren’t something that you can teach you need look no further.
The real fun started when Dick Cheney showed up to pay tribute to Rumsfeld. Dave Weigel was apparently at CPAC doing his Conservatives in the Mist schtick and reports in Slate:
When Rumsfeld takes the stage, the boos keep going, because some anti-war conservatives have stuck around to heckle. When it sees Dick Cheney, the crowd’s din drowns out the boos… for a while. I find a place on the floor next to several activists wearing Ron Paul gear.
“Bringing in Cheney made it worse,” says Nathan Cox, a Richmond, Va. activist and member of Iraq Veterans Against the War. “I kinda feel like yelling something.”
He doesn’t yell, but another activist yells “Show us the shekels, Dick! Show us the shekels!” It’s a not-so-veiled critique of Israel that gets him immediately kicked out. Another anti-war conservative yells “Draft dodger!” and he’s kicked out.
By this point, enough supporters of the last Republican administration are in the room to fill it with cheers of “Cheney 2012!” and to drown out a heckler who yells “Where’s bin Laden?”
Vanity Fair also reports on the incident.
On hand to share in Rumsfeld’s happiness was former vice president Dick Cheney. If your initial reaction to this news is, say, an urge to boo, you are not alone. Cheney, too, engendered spirited jeering. Anti-war hecklers yelled the following insults: “Show us the shekels, Dick! Show us the shekels”, “Draft dodger!”, “Murderous scum,” “Where’s bin Laden?” and “Liberator,” which was possibly meant ironically.
Show us the shekels. Draft dodger. Murderous scum.
Foul epithets directed at men who accomplish more in any given day than the combined mass of Ron Paul supporters will accomplish in the totality of their miserable pissant lives.
These are people who fancy themselves conservatives and believe they have some place honor within the conservative movement. They are wrong. This odious behavior will be neither forgiven nor forgotten.
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