As far as Mace’s bragging of his forebears’ suffering, big deal. My grandfather and great-grandfather homesteaded their first winter up here in a converted chicken coop, in weather most southerners would shrivel up and die in. My ancestors didn’t raise a bunch of warmongers either.

1) As someone nominally involved in the online aspects of the Paul campaign, I can assure you that that campaign is about as diffusely organized (and centrally unorganized) as any active election campaign could ever be. There’s no mastermind telling Paul supporters to vote in those straw polls. The very notion is laughable to anyone who’s been observing even half-way from the inside.

The Paul candidacy is naturally blessed with many enthusiastic, tech-savvy, computer-loving men and women. It’s that simple.

Perform this thought experiment: Suppose there was no Paul candidacy. As now, all the Republican candidates profess to oppose any tax increases (whether they’re sincere or not is beside the point here). Except one, who loudly calls for big tax increases.

Now suppose that tax increase proponent, though very low in the scientific polls, was easily winning most of the straw polls. Then you’d have a very different story. The MSM (except maybe FOX, unless this candidate was earmarking the increased tax revenue for warmaking) would be celebrating this candidate to high heaven, insisting that it means Americans are determined to be “realistic,” “humane,” or whatever about taxes.

Not so with Paul, of course. He doesn’t have the right message. Not only is he against the occupation of Iraq, but, far worse, he’s against foreign interventionism in principle, the very lifeblood of the Democrat Establishment as well as the Republican one.

2) Giuliani’s boastful demagoguery is just the sort of thing we’ve all learned to expect of professional politicians:

“That’s an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of September 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don’t think I’ve heard that before, and I’ve heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11th.”

How does being in NYC on 9/11 make him an authority on the causes of the attacks on the WTC? Would a survivor of Hiroshima automatically qualify as an expert on the origins of WWII? Would a survivor of the Oklahoma City bombing have to qualify as an expert on the Waco massacre?

In any case, Giuliani surely had heard of the various explanations for 9/11. No, he simply (and probably accurately) assumed that most of the people in the room were too ignorant and/or too prejudiced to take anything into account but the dopey speeches of Bush, Cheney, and their various henchmen.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/buchanan/buchanan58.html

I’ve enjoyed the reactions to the Giuliani/Paul debate incident from left to right. I came by to share a link to a petition to the RNC to keep Ron Paul in future debates:

http://www.petitiononline.com/r0npau1/petition.html

Maybe someone should set up a petition to remove Giuliani from future debates because of his delusions and irrational behavior.

I think Chris may be right about the debate being a setup. Next time (if there is a next time), they may dredge up Dr. Paul’s position on drug prohibition from his 1988 campaign.

I will answer my own question: When hell freezes over.