And These Voters That You Spit On

This Saturday, we will once again welcome Vox Day to the First Team of the Northern Alliance Radio Network airwaves. We'll discuss his forthcoming book "The Irrational Atheist" and will also likely get into his support for Ron Paul.

Now, I am not a backer of Mr. Paul. His proposed foreign policy solutions are not adequate to deal with the challenges we face in the world today and I don't believe that they will make America stronger and safer in the long run. I also think that he has done his campaign a disservice by embracing too much of the Left's rhetoric on Iraq. There is a principled conservative/libertarian argument against the war in Iraq, but Paul has too often strayed from making it. And I don't share his view that giving more power to Congress at the expense of the Executive branch is necessarily a good idea.

However, all that being said, I find myself appalled at the some of the mainstream conservative/Republican reaction to Paul and his supporters. While Paul's campaign has no doubt attracted a higher than average percentage of certified kooks, the vast majority of Paul's followers are solid, rock-ribbed conservatives who simply have lost confidence in the GOP.

They want fiscal constraint, smaller government, and secure borders to be more than campaign buzzwords. And you can't really blame them for that given the way the Republican Party has abdicated its commitment to these areas in recent years.

Ron Paul's candidacy and some of the policies he proposes may not be realistic, but the values underlying them are legitimate. For the most part, legitimately conservative.

And so, when I hear conservative commentators dismissing Paul and his supporters as a bunch of clowns or even worse accusing them of being anti-Semitic bigots, I get a little ticked. Last night, Hugh Hewitt was doing exactly this on his radio show.

After asking Paul backers to call in and explain why they supported him for president, Hugh alternated between condescension and outright smear. Just because someone likes Ron Paul and is suspicious of transnational financial institutions does not mean that he believes that "the Jews" are behind it all as Hugh tried to bait a couple of callers into saying. I'm sure that Hugh thought he was just having a little fun, but I found it shameful.

Instead of insulting Ron Paul supporters, we should be engaging with them. 2008 is going to be a tough enough year for Republicans already. Now is not the time to further alienate a group of folks who--despite their dissatisfaction with the Republican Party and differences on a few major issues--still share many common values. The GOP establishment should not look upon them as enemies, but rather as estranged friends who have parted company, but can still offer much-needed advice on how to at least begin taking steps (baby steps) to get back on the right path.