Not mine! But a man who actually voted for Ron Paul in 1988, Clayton Cramer.

I voted for him when he was the Libertarian Party nominee for President in 1988--not because I thought he had a chance, or would make a good President, but because he was the standard bearer for the Libertarian Party, and the goal was to get people thinking about libertarian ideas.

I am no longer a libertarian. In the 1990s my libertarian beliefs started to morph into conservative ones for several reasons…

He gives his reasons and relates an experience or two that might explain why all the Ronettes that show up here seem to equate any one who disagrees with them with “Neocons”.

One of the Ron Paul newsletters that turned me off so much talked about how he would look up into the galleries of the House and see Israeli agents giving directions to members of the House as to how they were supposed to vote--and I begin to sense something about two steps back from “Jews are running the world.” Nothing quite so direct and paranoid--but it gave me some real discomfort.

At the GRPC, I spoke to several Ron Paul supporters (who seemed to be a large fraction of the attendees, based on the buttons and such), and I found myself increasingly reminded of that newsletter. While we were standing in line for the buffet, I joined a conversation about the mistakes that Bush has made with respect to the Iraq war. He’s made several very severe ones--even if you agree that the war needed to be fought. I pointed out that the several reasons for the war that enjoyed general support in the U.S. at the time, even among Democrats, and this one Ron Paul supporter suddenly said, “The Iraq War was about one thing: protecting Israel. Full stop.”

The idea that the Iraq War is all about doing Israel’s bidding--because those “Jewish neocons” ran the Bush Administration--is very popular in leftist anti-Semitic circles at the moment. For purposes of argument, let’s accept that there was concern in the Bush Administration that Iraq, once in possession of a nuclear weapon, might use it against Israel. This does not preclude the other possible risks of a nuclear-armed Iraq such as a threat to Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the dangers of escalation with Iran, or of Iraq supplying such weapons to terrorist groups. This complete oversimplification of the question to doing Israel’s bidding, in conjunction with that creepy newsletter some years ago, really makes me wonder what kind of a crowd Ron Paul is attracting.

Read the whole thing here.