If you can't beat'em, shut'em the hell up

No, I still don't support Ron Paul's campaign for the Republican Party's presidential nomination -- I've never voted for a Republican for president and don't plan to start now; I'll stick with my own party and my own candidate, thank you very much -- but ...

He done good.

Real good.

So good, in fact, that the Osama-Enablertarian wing of the Republican Party is desperate to get him off the stage for future debates.

Sean Hannity smirked his way through the whole "text message us your vote" commercials during the thing, but pretty much blew his stack in the post-debate show when he had to tell Ted Danson Norm MacDonald whatever that blow-dried idiot from Massachusetts's name is that the Rudy McRomneys were getting their asses kicked by the Texas Tornado. You suck, Hannity.

But, you know, who can blame the Bushevik America-haters for wanting Paul gone? Sure, the hand-picked Faux "News" audience of Republican Surrealist groupies erupted in bellicose applause at Rudy Giuliani's admission that he's clueless about the causes of 9/11 and prefers to remain so, and keep everyone else equally ignorant, and thereby keep the 9/11-induced gravy train running for his "security consulting" business and his presidential aspirations ...

... but the rest of America, including the 70%+ of us who live in the real world, was watching too. And we just can't have that, see? When the Republican Surrealist line conflicts with reality, the penalty for mentioning it is a pink slip if you're lucky (or a ball gag and an economy class ticket to Gitmo if you're not and if they think they can get away with it).

The GOP is circling the drain, for the same reason the Whigs went down it. For the Whigs, the problematic, divisive issue was slavery. For the Republicans, it's foreign policy.

The Whigs had a flat wrong platform on slavery; the GOP circa 2007 has a flat wrong platform on foreign policy.

The Whigs were unwilling to correct themselves on slavery and unable to keep their dissenters loyal to the party line; the GOP circa 2007 is unwilling to correct itself on foreign policy and unable to keep its dissenters loyal to the party line.

Abraham Lincoln ended up leaving the Whigs and helping form the Republican Party after:

- Giving a stirring proto-Ron-Paul oration in Congress on the Mexican War. Excerpt courtesy of Wikipedia: "God of Heaven has forgotten to defend the weak and innocent, and permitted the strong band of murderers and demons from hell to kill men, women, and children, and lay waste and pillage the land of the just."

- Finding himself on the receiving end, in his congressional district, of proto-Rudy-Giuliani comebacks (op. cit.): "[T]reasonable assaults of guerrillas at home; party demagogues; slanderers of the President; defenders of the butchery at the Alamo; traducers of the heroism at San Jacinto."

Paul already left the Republicans once, for the Libertarian Party -- and if, as seems likely, he is forced to leave again in search of a sane platform, he'll likely take a significant segment of the dying GOP with him.

I'm sure the paleo gorge rises at the comparison of Paul to Lincoln, but hey, gimme a break -- I'm on a roll here.

The cherry on top: Osama-Enablertarian Republican Eric Dondero has announced his intention to run for Paul's US House seat. This is a winner all around!

- If Paul decides not to run again and if the Republicans can't find a man, woman, child or three-legged goat to contest the primary with Dondero, the GOP loses yet another seat in Congress, accelerating its demise.

- If Paul decides to run again, Dondero wastes his time and energy getting his 2% of the primary vote instead of on his more generalized campaign to destroy the Libertarian Party, the libertarian movement and western civilization.