The Ron Paul Ad — Calling Out Gingrich

This is an interesting ad, clearly a hit piece. Politics by sound bite may not lead to the best decision making. But it's clear that Newt has a lot to answer for. But then Ron Paul has lots of strange things in his closet. This kind of politics is something I abhor. Politics of personal attack and destruction is no more attractive when practiced by the right than when practiced by the left. There may not be bimbos being rolled out to claim the candidate is a serial sexual harasser, but it isn't serious engagement on the issues either. When you're in the Congress you end up voting for and against almost everything just because of the way a legislature works. I watched Tom Hagedorn play an opponent for the Congress when I lived in Minnesota. Whenever his opponent took a position Hagedorn would say he'd voted for it. In some obscure way Tom had voted for everything. His opponent would finally blow up and get mad and that sort of behavior is death in the Mid-West where raising your voice is seen as being angry and being angry is seen as a personal flaw. It gave me a lesson in contradictions however. I don't doubt that Newt Gingrich, given more than 30 seconds, could explain most of what appears so damning in this ad, but of course he won't get the opportunity.

We live in a time where there are no serious people because there are no people who will spare the time to be serious. Everything is decided on the basis of sound bites and 50 second analysis by a talking head that doesn't likely know much about what he is talking about. Is it any wonder than that things go from bad to worse? We need to recover the habit of reflecting deeply on the important and permanent things or we will assuredly lose our Republic and with it the way of life that we and our parents and our parent's parents have enjoyed in this great country.