Although these debates are by now monotonous, they have the effect of shaping up the candidates (who are doing much better in general) and reminding us why the pre-primary race is really between Romney and Gingrich.
I guess Ron Paul did not consider the incineration of 3,000 Americans on American soil on 9/11 — something that neither Fascists or Communists ever achieved, and that by now would have been replicated without the Bush administration’s anti-terrorism protocols, as apparently the Obama administration believed (it embraced or expanded them all) and over 40 foiled plots attest — an act of war. Foreign relations reflect Paul’s weaknesses, but his isolationism is masked with folksy “let each country be itself” and ”taking money from poor here to give to rich abroad,” etc. All that sounds superficially sort of neat — if we forget that his cocoonism was American policy in the 1930s. It sometimes seems that the candidates are careful to dance around his views, given his possibility of a damaging third-party run.
