Confessions of a Neocon Assassin
7th July 2016
David Cole ‘fesses up.
When the Paulists started making a stink during the 2012 GOP primary, I was called into action for my—how would Liam Neeson put it?—“very particular set of skills,” namely my research abilities and a steady hand with a poison pen. It’s funny looking back on that election year, when the GOP establishment’s worst problem was Ron Paul, and let’s be honest, he was at best a persistent but nonfatal tick on the fur of the big Republican dog. Truth is, we didn’t know how good we had it (you know, compared with how things are now). But back in 2012, the Ron Paul challenge was seen as a major headache that needed to disappear.
I’ve always thought of Paulists as more of a distraction than anything else, the libertarian equivalent of the Ralph Nader PIRG crowd, but I admit that I don’t pay that much attention to ‘politics’ in the sense of who-gets-what-office-this-election-cycle; my interest is at a higher level, logically speaking, more what-are-these-idiots-doing-now and that sort of thing.