According to Jonah Goldberg, Paul’s raising the banner of Robert A

According to Jonah Goldberg, Paul’s raising the banner of Robert A. Taft makes him “irrelevant.” But

then why is every commentary on the debate in NRO fixated on him? I’ll tell you why: because Paul

offers not only a coherent alternative to the crazed foreign policy views of the neocons, but also one

that has deep roots in the GOP (as I pointed out in my soon-to-be-reprinted Reclaiming the American

Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement). As I have argued at length over the years, the

anti-imperialist legacy of the Old Right is ready for a revival, and the neocons are deathly afraid of

it: that’s why the NROdniks are up in arms about Paul’s heresy.

To Jonah, bringing up the ghost of Taft is an “argument from authority” — which is an oddly anti-

traditionalist trope coming from an avowed “conservative.” As far as the neocons are concerned,

however, history is something to be made, not revered or even remembered. Yesterday may belong to Ron

Paul and Robert A. Taft, but tomorrow belongs to Benito Giuliani, who isn’t running for President but

for Maximum Leader.

At least Jonah tried to engage Paul, and what he represents, intellectually, albeit in his typically

facile manner, but the real exemplar of the new mutant “conservatism” of leader-worship and sado-

masochistic paeans to waterboarding is one Kathleen Parker, whose overtly sexual “big Daddy” imagery

of Rudy “spanking” Ron Paul shows the psychopathology of red-state fascism. She writes:

“Giuliani played daddy tonight and spanked Ron Paul for blaming the MBT shoes for 9/11. Big points for

calling on Paul to withdraw his absurd statement. Message: Don€™t mess with Rudy.”