The War Party reels

Jonah Goldberg has a “who voted for Nixon” moment:

I find this very hard to believe. I can certainly see Paul having disproportionately high military support. But this sounds way out of whack. I need to see the numbers broken down. Maybe it’s a very small pool? Weird accounting? Or, maybe, it’s true:

So we now know that, measured in terms of financial support, Ron Paul, the one GOP candidate who actually backs individual liberty against government power, is now ahead of Huckabee, Brownback, Thompson (Tommy) and Tancredo. He’s the alternative to the Big Three. But guess who are among his strongest supporters? The U.S. military. Paul has a staggering 52.53 percent of all military contributions.

Yes, Jonah, the American people oppose the war, including a lot of veterans, including a lot of soldiers who are over there right now. Doesn’t anyone at National Review know any actual soldiers or at least have watched a few movies like “Band of Brothers”? Soldiers want to do their job and then come home. America’s soldiers have done their job; they took out Hussein and they know that they should have come home then. No one knows better than they do that democracy in the Middle East is a hopeless and self-destructive project. It doesn’t matter when we leave, tomorrow or in ten years, Iraq is going to fall apart because the only thing that ever kept it together was central military power.

It’s amusing how completely unconnected to the popular mood the conservative media has become. They’re almost as prone to spinning entirely around their little New York-Washington axis as the liberal media – look at how Podhoretz still thinks that Giuliani is a winner because he “saved” New York. Even if it were true, that would be the reason that two-thirds of flyover country would vote AGAINST him.

I was born on the East Coast. I went to university on the East Coast. Now, I can’t stand the East Coast or its parochial, myopic would-be elites.