Sad but True

It was a sad night for the Ron Paul campaign.

The quirky candidate had his worst outing of the debate season in last night’s South Carolina GOP debate. His campaign made a strategic error in accepting the invitation to the FOX news sponsored event. He had roundly criticized FOX on The Tonight Show and elsewhere after being excluded by the channel from its New Hampshire debate just a week earlier. I had said to someone earlier I the day that it was a dangerous night for Paul because the media has a way of having the last laugh. FOX was out to do him no favors and they achieved their goal.

That said, Ron Paul is not entirely a victim.

He just didn’t do well. His campaign staff has failed to prepare him for the sound-bite nature of televised debates. He seems unprepared to turn a question or an attack into an opportunity to point out his strengths. He can’t rattle off a succinct list of his main platform points. In short, one of his strengths – that he is not a slick politician – is his greatest weakness in a TV debate. He is quip-less, glib-less, pithy-less.

He also seemed tired.

Still, Ron Paul told the truth.

Despite the snickers and silence and jibes, the man told the truth.

When asked about the economy, he said that the dollar is losing its value and that “cutting the interest rate is the wrong solution.” They looked at him like he was nuts.

Today the financial page reports this:

NEW YORK – “Gold eased from a new record Thursday to end higher after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke pledged to cut interest rates, further undermining the dollar…Lower interest rates can weaken a currency and prompt investors to shift funds to hard assets.”

He said that we are in a recession and that given our current monetary policy we will be headed for much worse days ahead. Giuliani et al looked on with smirks.

But here is Jim Rogers on Bloomberg today:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkuV9gwEqcQ

He was asked about the Iranian speedboats and the verbal threats made toward a U S Naval ship. He said that we should use caution and that our own Admiral now says that the threat may not have come from one of the speedboats. Romney said, “You’ve been reading too many Ahmadinejad press releases.” Everyone laughed.

Now ABC News reports this:

“Today, the spokesperson for the U.S. admiral in charge of the Fifth Fleet clarified to ABC News that the threat may have come from the Iranian boats, or it may have come from somewhere else. ‘We're saying that we cannot make a direct connection to the boats there,’ said the spokesperson.”

Sad but True.