I think this commercial is absolutely fair game, Randall “Rand” Paul and Ron Paul to Reverend Jeremiah Wright.  Jeremiah Wright really didn’t say anything substantively different from the Pauls on 9/11, he just did not have the opportunity to use any sort of bully pulpit  to defend himself from the constant attacks of the controversy starved media.  I’m interested to see how Fox News and CNN will decide to treat this commercial, given that they demonized Wright at every opportunity.  In the following video, it is extraordinarily clear Dr. Ron Paul and Rev. Jeremiah Wright share quite similar views on the issue of “blowback.”

(h/t Chris Cillizza @TheFix (wapo))

More here from thefix

Harold Ford Selfish Party Hack

(Ford isn’t even a partisan loyalist, he really is only concerned with having a position IN the establishment).

We all know politicians (and even their families) have monstrous egos. From the average do-gooder running for local office, up to the presidential races, all the entrants believe that they can do the job — or even worse are running for office for the publicity (Al Sharpton, Carol Mosely-Braun, Ron Paul, Mike Gravel).

My all time favorite is Alan Keyes, who has run for president in 1992, 1996, 2000 and 2008 as well as been a Republican nominee for senate (in various states) in 1988, 1992, and 2004.
[...]

Talkingpointsmemo.com has an interesting catch from this weekend’s CPAC convention:

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) told a crowd at CPAC on Saturday that he could “empathize” with the suicide bomber who last week attacked an IRS office in Austin, and encouraged his listeners to “implode” other IRS offices, according to a witness. source: TalkingPointsMemo.com

As I said later last week I believe it is incredibly dangerous to hold different standards of terrorism based on relatively minor attributes of the perpetrator of the violence.   If Republicans want to reduce the tax burden on citizens, do the obvious reduce the size of government — all government including military spending, as Ron Paul advocates.

[...]

Ron Paul, the 2008 Republican candidate for president won the 2010 CPAC straw poll. Ron Paul is a congressman from Texas who has run for president as both a member of the Libertarian and Republican parties.

I find it quite interesting that Paul won the straw poll given his outspoken views on military non-interventionism — that pretty much puts him in an anti-thetical position to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney (Cheney received a rousing reception at CPAC). Given Cheney is probably the most pro-interventionist foreign policy person in the previous Bush administration, this really seems like a stark turn.

Additionally, Paul Broke Mitt Romney’s streak of winning CPAC. I wonder if this had to do more with the pool of voters this year as opposed to a change in the direction of CPAC itself.

Here’s the summary of the voting:

Ron Paul 31%

Mitt Romney 22 %

Sarah Palin 7 %

Tim Pawlenty 6 %

Mike Pence 5 %

Newt Gringrich 4  %

Mike Huckabee 4 %

Update I: 2,935 votes (out of 10K+ attendees), evidently Ron Paul was booed when he was announced as the winner.