How does that follow?

It follows that in order to vote for a person, even the sainted Ron Paul, who is running as a Republican candidate in the Republican presidential primary, one usually has to be a registered Republican. It couldn't follow more doggedly if it was on a leash.

In any event, may I please have some of whatever that is in your glass this evening? It seems the most pure and evanescent sort of inspiration...

I have spent a week and a half wondering about this bit about whether there is a fundamental difference between thinking in metaphors and thinking in logical progressions. Unfortunately, if I zero in on the metaphors, they break down into small logically plausible steps taken to pull together all the meaning implied by the comparison. And if I zero in on the logical steps, they are compiled by adding a metaphor and pruning it to fit, adding a metaphor and pruning it to fit. Supposedly, the metaphorical process is beyond logic, but it just seems like it is too complex, not too different -- people forget that each step in a complicated proof requires a separate aha! experience, and then a vision sequence of where we have gotten to. I've seen that complex thing before, something is too complex, and you want to say it is infinitely complex, but that requires proof, because waiting to see the end of complexity doesn't work, and on, and on...xuan zhi you xuan, zhung miao zhi men (more mysterious than mysterious, the gate to the essence of all).

That's what is in my glass, I hope you find it all you wished it to be ;-)

I am sick to death of reading Andrew Sullivan's self-congratulations for turning against Bush, as if doing so redeems his spiteful attacks on "fifth-column" liberals. I'm also clueless why Glenn subscribes to this crap.

Andrew's change has nothing to do with conscience and everything to do with opportunism. He has a long and unseemly career of shifting his sails to accommodate prevailing winds, all along indulging his bilious tongue. Any longtime reader of Salon remembers his doing so here constantly, to the degree Salon's founding editor finally, mercifully, turned on him.

I won't bother to inventory the list of everything Sullivan has been wrong about, often to others' detriment, and his bald hypocrisy. It's all well known. And yet, here is Salon once again enabling his fiction of self.

And please note that Sullivan is so devoted to maintaining his self image as brilliant analyst OR marytred loyalist that he has never permitted comments on his blog. Intead, he selects mail he deems worthy of publication. It is, granted, occasionally critical, but never in the vein of his own bilious writing.

LWM, St. Paul, and William decided that a non-Democrat was just not going to work out and the rest is history.

You've dropped another veil, Salome. There are numerous non-Democrats among the regular (and respected) commenters here. You're not actually as familiar with this blog as you claim, or you're utterly blinded by your ideology, or you're just devious. I'm betting on the last.

Freedom scare you also?

Now there's an iron fist in a velvet glove -- a freedom-wielding bully!

Again, nice facade you've built, but it doesn't muffle the screams coming from the parlor. And "codswallop" isn't nearly as adorable a word as you seem to think.

Andrew's change has nothing to do with conscience and everything to do with opportunism.

--Anonymous

And maybe steroids, too.

I wish I still had that NY Times Magazine article in which he extols the transformative, masculinizing powers of his prescriptions. Why, it made him grateful for the gift of AIDS!

one usually has to be a registered Republican.

Not in any state in which I've ever voted, and that has been three. I've never registered for any party. Open primaries do exist, you know.

And whatever else may be a bit extreme about bucky1's views, I don't see how he could be faulted for supporting Ron Paul. Paul is actually against most legal abortion (tho he thinks the federal govt ought to stay out of it). And yet, during the last debate, and even tho he was the only Ob-Gyn on the panel, when asked what was the worst evil of the moment, the chorus from the others was abortion.

Paul said it was the war.

An ancient riddle. I'm not sure it needs to be solved, but it's certainly worth puzzling over a bit -- good practice, in fact, for sorting the libertarians from the liberals, and peering behind the bloviators' fans. See, not OT after, courtesy of a last-minute metaphor. :-)

Open primaries do exist, you know.

I know, and I'm sure millions of otherwise-affiliated folks vote in Republican presidential primaries out of sheer whimsy.

And I don't think Ron Paul is the embodiment of all things evil; yes, I even agree with him on certain issues. I just don't see how any responsible American, at this particular moment in our nation's hostory, can waste a moment weighing the merits of anyone in the Republican field when there's so much work to be done simply struggling to identify the least odious of the Democrats.

yes, I even agree with him on certain issues. I just don't see how any responsible American, at this particular moment in our nation's hostory, can waste a moment weighing the merits of anyone in the Republican field

Well, this is how I see it: I may well vote for Paul in the primaries, if his campaign is still alive at that point. The Republican Party needs to be bitch-slapped very hard, and support for Paul online is so intense he is winning polls and generating a totally unexpected level of interest, such as appearances with Bill Maher and The Daily Show. People online tend to be very politically active and are among the most likely to vote in primaries -- I'd love to see Paul cause a huge problem for the rest of that wretched pack. A significant vote for Paul lets that party know just how thoroughly enough of those who once tended GOP reject the neocon/theocon hijacking. They can learn their lesson, or not.

In which case, Democrats win for decades to come. And I'll vote Democrat in the general election. (Altho Hillary scares me silly, because she lacks principles and I can see her going all warmonger and finding she likes the Executive-cum-monarch trail Bush has blazed.)

(Altho he is too liberal for my taste on some issues, there is one Democrat who would have earned my ardent support, and whom I would have worked for in the primaries, and that is Russ Feingold. But, alas, he isn't in the race.)