Wednesday, December 28, 2011

What do Rick Perry & Ron Paul know about Canada that we don't?

Governor Perry on the stump in Clarinda, Iowa:
Every barrel of oil that comes out of those sands in Canada is a barrel of oil that we don’t have to buy from a foreign source,” Mr. Perry said [....]
Loud applause.

Did Perry simply forget that Canada is a foreign country? That would be a typically superficial, elitist response. But perhaps this apparent blooper has a deeper significance.

Among the various paranoid conspiracy theories endorsed by Ron Paul over the years ... no let me put that a bit less judgmentally ....

Ron Paul and others have discovered that there is a plot afoot to create a North American Union which, according to Paul, "would create a single nation out of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, with a new unelected bureaucracy and money system. Forget about controlling immigration under this scheme.” Ron Paul explained in 2006 that the first step in executing this nefarious scheme was the building of a proposed NAFTA Superhighway ("a ten-lane colossus the width of several football fields") and added that "Governor Perry is a supporter of the superhighway project".

So maybe Rick Perry was just being prescient—or, to put it another way, was prematurely spilling the beans about the forthcoming North American Union?

=> OK, I'm being facetious. In the real world, both the NAFTA Superhighway and the plot to dissolve the US, Mexico, and Canada into a North American Union are quite imaginary. But when Ron Paul denounces these imaginary dangers, he's not joking. And the fact that both Ron Paul and Rick Perry are potentially serious candidates for the Republican nomination for President of the United States is, unfortunately, also no joke.

—Jeff Weintraub