Ron Paul listens at yesterday's Rally for the Republic at Target Center (Photo: DavidAll06/Flickr)

Over the course of some eight hours of speechifying, videos and music at yesterday’s Rally For the Republic at the Target Center, I didn’t hear a single laudatory word uttered by Ron Paul or his supporters regarding the current state of the Republican Party. Considering that Paul garnered more votes than supposed party stalwarts (and fleeting presidential flavors of the moment) like Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson in the Republican primaries, the apparent loss of this constituency by John McCain and company would seem to be big news. Yet it has received scant attention in the perpetual horse race handicapping that frequently passes for political reportage in this country.

Anyone who assumes a majority of Paul supporters will pull the lever for McCain and other mainstream Republican candidates on election day obviously wasn’t around for yesterday’s rally. Their disaffection with the current state of governance as practiced by both Republicans and Democrats was rife was palpable emotion and elaborate policy prescriptions. Paul’s Libertarian-oriented philosophy of less government has always been to the right of the Republicans. But the umbrage he and his supporters have taken to the Bush Administration’s assault on the Constitution and assumption of greater executive power over the last eight years have also increasingly cast the Paul movement to the left of the Democrats, who have either enabled or offered feeble resistance to those power grabs.

No single day at the Democratic Convention in Denver focused on issues such as torture, illegal wiretapping, and preemptive war as much as the speakers at yesterday’s rally. No Democrat in Denver laid out the case for Bush’s impeachment as starkly and thoroughly as Bruce Fein, who served in the Justice Department under President Reagan. The scorn directed at any footage or mention of Republican media organ Fox News was loud and prolonged. It was matched by the scorn exhibited by upper level Paul supporters as they talked of their man being snubbed by RNC at the convention across the river in St. Paul.

Lest there be any doubt, Ron Paul himself explicitly ruled out endorsement or compromised accommodation with the Republicans in the evening address that climaxed the rally. “This is much bigger than the Republican Party,” he declared. “A true revolution isn’t reflected by one political party.”

Let there be no illusions about the darker side of the Paul movement. Fifteen of the 16 speaking slots listed in yesterday’s program contained the name of the person who would be appearing in front of the microphone. In the middle of the day, when the program noted that a “Special Guest” would speak, the person who strode to the podium was John McManus, current President of the John Birch Society. There is a reason why even the Paul campaign was abashed enough not to tip off McManus’s identity in advance. The JBS is a fringe-right organization founded by a dozen men in 1958—one of whom went on to co-found the Hitler-glorifying National Alliance. Birchers worked vociferously against the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and earlier accused President Dwight Eisenhower of being a communist. Ignoring this shameful history, Ron Paul instead lauds the JBS for its anti-government stance, and, as McManus announced from the podium, has agreed to speak at the John Birch Society’s 50^th anniversary convention next month.

Beyond this despicable bedfellow, Paul would essentially bankrupt government’s social safety network. Last night he declared that even “a one-cent income tax is morally wrong because it sews the seeds of destruction” by allowing government influence into our lives. Yet when it comes to the mixing of church and state, or the right to choose whether or not to end a pregnancy, Paul’s unvarnished desire for freedom and liberty often take a back seat to his own staunchly conservative religious beliefs.

Both at the Target Center yesterday and across the nation during this political season, the broadening of Paul’s appeal came in large part due to his anti-war views and his defense of the Constitution against encroachments by the Bush Administration. A remarkable amount of time and care in Paul’s speech yesterday was devoted to peace issues. He asked why American history seems to confer greatness only on presidents who served during times of war instead of those who emphasized peace. “We have the threat of terrorism, but that is the consequence of a seriously flawed foreign policy,” he said.

To an arena of people who cherish the second amendment and fantasize about physically defending their constitutional liberties, he asked, “What if someone who looked different than us, with different values and culture invaded our country and set up an air base?”—an obvious reference to the experience of a variety of Muslim countries in the Middle East where the U.S. military is situated. Toward the end of the speech, Paul talked about how the lust for combat by leaders of both parties would inevitably lead to the reinstitution of the draft. Explicitly citing Gandhi and Martin Luther King, he said, “there is a time and a place for civil disobedience,” adding, “if there is a draft, there will be some very tough decisions.”

Eight years ago, the presence of Ralph Nader on the ballot damaged the candidacy of Al Gore in his razor-thin race with George Bush. While Ron Paul abandoned his own presidential run back in June, his lambasting of the Republican Party leadership yesterday will not be helpful to McCain. “Our message is growing,” Paul reminded his loyal audience. “It seems like even if they tried, they can’t stop us.”

More details to follow…

The Target Center is between a third and a half full. One of the volunteers asked another if any more tickets were needed because she still had 15 left. The guy with her smirked and slowly shook his head no.

Grover Norquist (pictured) gave a speech which he crystallized his position as “Taxes bad. Guns good.”

Fox News in general and Sean Hannity in particular are subjected to enormous boos and catcalls whenever they appear on the screen during the various Ron Paul bio bits and campaign highlights that occur between speakers.

President George W. Bush is also getting royally roasted. Author Lew Rockwell, who used to be Paul’s chief of staff, said of Bush, “He hasn’t done a single decent thing for the country,” that he “tricked the people into voting for him twice.” As for the price of gas, Rockwell thundered, in reference to Bush, “your wars, your regulation, your failure to open up the market to anyone but your cronies have resulted in the quadrupling of energy prices.”

MnIndy: Obvious first question, who are you voting for?

TC: Oh I don’t know. I don’t have any clue. I’m not much of a voter anyway.

MnIndy: Are you here in support of the candidate, Ron Paul?

TC: Not the candidate, but the man. His ideas. Not all of his ideas, I disagree with him on a couple of significant things but on most things I agree with his ideas and I think—I’ve covered a ton of politicians and he’s probably the only one I’ve ever met who didn’t have any interest in winning, or in controlling other people, building power.

MnIndy: Probably his most controversial statement during the campaign was during the Republican primary debates, when he said 9/11 was the chickens coming home to roost.

TC: Right.

MnIndy: That seemed to get the Republicans very upset. What was your take on that?

TC: Well I’ve talked to him about this. I think it is completely unfair to blame the United States for 9/11. And so if he was doing that I reject it completely and aggressively. But if he was making a point, as he said he was, that our interventionist foreign policy has consequences, that’s obviously true. Do you see what I mean? I mean blaming the United States for 911 is outrageous. I have certainly interviewed a lot of people, especially in other countries, who think, “You got what you deserved.” And I think that’s a repulsive idea. But that’s not where he was coming from.

Jesse Ventura, who is a featured speaker at Ron Paul’s Rally for the Republic today, just held an impromptu press conference of sorts with half a dozen people, myself included, who gathered round him in the hallway at Target Center. Here’s the transcript.

Q: Tell me what you think about the people who are fired up about this movement.

JV: Well, it is an underlying movement that has been going on since Perot. How do you think Ross Perot in the early ’90s got the power he got? He was an alternative, and when the media doesn’t distort it, we take advantage it of it. I’m an example. I was polling at 10 percent and we needed to be allowed into the debates. I was polling at 10 percent in the primary and won. Why do you think they won’t let us into the debates? Because I proved they can be beaten. I have never lost to the Democrats or the Republicans. You’ll hear me today: I’m the most dangerous man in America.

Q: Governor, who are you going to vote for in November?

JV: Not for Obama and not for McCain, that’s for sure. I’ve got to look at the ballot and see who’s running.

Q: What’s wrong with McCain?

JV: What’s wrong with McCain? He’s a Republican. How’s that for an answer?

Q: What’s wrong with Obama?

JV: He’s a Democrat. They make decisions based on their parties, not based on the Republic. That great HBO movie we just saw on John Adams, with Paul Giamatti starring. The big message of that movie was what? That the downfall of America would not come from an external sources; it would come from within. And George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and John Adams agreed, they said the downfall of this country will be when the political parties control the government.

Q: Do either of those parties represent any people?

JV: Sure they do. Of course they do.

Q: A lot of people argue that Obama is very much a part of the grassroots, people-oriented movement.

JV: Well they’re going to be sorely disappointed. Because when he is all done—I hope I’m wrong—but in my opinion he’ll be just another democrat. You know the only change that will happen? My taxes will go up. That’s the only change I am going to see. Change, change, they will be reaching into my wallet. Fifty percent is not enough.

Q: [inaudible; question about living in Baja much of the year]

JV: I go down there to escape the media, to escape the United States life and to escape everything that I have known. I have a lifestyle down there that is completely different. Down there I wake up every morning with nothing to do and when I go to bed I am half done.