Coalition building 101
by digby
Ron Paul:
“I was always annoyed with it in Congress because we had an anti-war unofficial group, a few libertarian Republicans and generally the Black Caucus and others did not — they are really against war because they want all of that money to go to food stamps for people here."
People in issue coalitions don't have to like each other. They often disagree on everything but the particular cause they've joined. But it's not smart or decent to mischaracterize their support for the issue that brings the coalition together.
The Congressional Black Caucus does support the food stamp program and I'm sure they'd love to have more money for domestic use. But they are sincere in their anti-war position on a moral and practical basis and to claim that it's only about "food stamps" is really contemptuous. (He could have said they wanted the money for "jobs programs" or "education" but he used the racist dogwhistle.) In fact, one could much more easily make the case that the only reason the handful of libertarians are against foreign adventures is because they believe the money spent on war would be much better left in the pockets of the wealthy "producers" for them to create jobs for dead artists.
The CBC cares about the people overseas who die in the wars. I'm going to guess that Ron Paul hasn't lost a minute of sleep over that unfortunate consequence. After all, the problems of other people, even those in his own neighborhood much less in countries a world away, are none of his concern.
And by the way, is there anyone out there who still believes that Ron Paul was oblivious about those racist newsletters?
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