The GOP convention next week in Tampa will feature a video tribute to Congressman Ron Paul– which gives you an idea of some of the grassroots Republicans that party leaders feel they need to appease.
Paul, who sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 and 2012, is best known for his quasi-libertarian views and his opposition to the existence of the Federal Reserve. But he has said and done other things which I’m sure won’t be mentioned in the tribute:
Paul has praised accused Wikileaks source Bradley Manning—charged with the capital crime of “aiding the enemy”—as a “true patriot.” In 2009, Paul appeared on Iranian state-funded television and referred to Israel’s embargo of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip as a “concentration camp.” Last year he attacked President Obama’s order to execute Osama bin Laden as “absolutely not necessary.” And he continues to speak regularly before the John Birch Society, an organization so reactionary that William F. Buckley Jr. wrote it out of the nascent conservative movement that he was building—in 1962.
And when the overwhelming majority of Republicans and Democrats in the US House of Representatives passed a resolution during the Gaza war– supporting Israel’s right to defend itself against Hamas, reaffirming US support for Israel and backing a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine– Paul was one of a handful of representatives to oppose it. Here’s the explanation he gave on the House floor:
As far as I know, the Democrats are planning no sort of tribute at their convention to Ron Paul’s Democratic equivalent (more or less)– Dennis Kucinich, who, like Paul, is leaving Congress at the end of the year.