Scandal!

Colin McNickle searches high and low for a genuine conservative to undo the damage done 1994-2006 when the Republicans outright succombed to temptation and betrayed long-held principles.

Unlike most informed Americans, he does *not find what he's looking for in Congressman Ron Paul. Why? McNickle has discovered a scandalous flaw:

... you simply can't put out of your mind his resemblance to Timothy Leary. On paper on many issues Paul doesn't look bad. Watch him in a debate and two words come to mind: blotter acid

Is there a dailywtf for politics?

The other candidates on the GOP side get pretty competent refutations of how their conservative words don't match their records, or in a couple cases how they don't even bother with conservative words. Dr. Paul gets the oddest guilt-by-association attack I've seen (and if you're an RP watcher, you've seen some odd ones).

In fairness, McNickle takes a moment to add that Paul is also "a flop on defense". No explanation of that charge seems necessary to him.

Here's the official platform of the GOP of my state (Texas) on National Defense:

We continue to encourage and support:
1. funding for a strong national defense, which guarantees maintaining a military which stands ready to defend our nation and increases combat readiness;
2. continued funding and development of the Strategic Defense Initiative
3. disengagement from countries in which we have no clear national defense interest;
4. “America First” priority in protecting the citizens and borders of the United States;
5. not entering into any new arms control agreements with any nation that is not currently complying with previous agreements;
6. the military never being deployed except to defend against an invasion or in protection of the United States’ direct, vital interests; and which may include pre-emptive action
7. maintaining our military’s effective combat strength sufficient to defend our nation’s borders and its strategic interests;
8. expiration of the special emergency war powers of the executive branch unless renewed by Congress in 6 month intervals; and,
9. the immediate deployment of the United States of America’s Military Forces to secure America’s southern border.

If you don't have time to read all that, I think it can be summarized as "Ron Paul is pretty much right about everything." We could quibble about things like the definition of "pre-emptive" (google is your friend), but the fact remains that RP is far from a "flop".

He doesn't look all that much like Leary, either.