Justin Raimondo

March 21, 2008

From a review by Micahel Tomasky of Bill Kauffman’s Ain’t My America: The Long, Noble History of Anti-War Conservatism and Middle-American Anti-Imperialism, in Democracy:

“The Republican Party has become, in short, a party of empire. The conservative movement is now a movement dedicated to American hegemonic dominion. And, given the lack of debate, both will likely remain that way for some time. These statements are true not only of the major presidential candidates, but of the vast majority of Republicans in Congress, most conservative foreign-policy think-tankers, and most high-level GOP operatives involved in policy-making. If the travesty that was our invasion of Iraq has not had the power to change these facts, it is difficult to imagine what set of circumstances could.”

This is why I think that the “entryist” strategy of the Ron Paul movement in the GOP—while admirable and carried out with amazing skill and persistence—is largely doomed to frustration, if not total failure. The goal of such an effort has to be a “third” party, one which will—hopefully—come to supplant the “official” GOP.