That surprisingly fraught question has kicked off one of the most provocative conversations in American politics.

The parallel reality -- the undeniable fact -- is that all of these listed heinous views and actions from Barack Obama have been vehemently opposed and condemned by Ron Paul: and among the major GOP candidates, only by Ron Paul. For that reason, Paul's candidacy forces progressives to face the hideous positions and actions of their candidate, of the person they want to empower for another four years. If Paul were not in the race or were not receiving attention, none of these issues would receive any attention because all the other major GOP candidates either agree with Obama on these matters or hold even worse views. ...Paul scrambles the comfortable ideological and partisan categories and forces progressives to confront and account for the policies they are working to protect. His nomination would mean that it is the Republican candidate -- not the Democrat -- who would be the anti-war, pro-due-process, pro-transparency, anti-Fed, anti-Wall-Street-bailout, anti-Drug-War advocate (emphasis in original).

In an unsparing essay published on New Year's Eve, Glenn Greenwald attempted to tease out exactly what progressives are saying when they support Obama's reelection -- as most of them do -- and oppose the candidacy of Ron Paul, who agrees with them on some key issues."Progressives like to think of themselves as the faction that stands for peace, opposes wars, believes in due process and civil liberties, distrusts the military-industrial complex, and supports candidates who are devoted to individual rights, transparency, and economic equality," Greenwald writes. But "the leader progressives have empowered and will empower again has worked in direct opposition to those values and engaged in conduct that is nothing short of horrific. So there is an eagerness to avoid hearing about them, to pretend they don't exist. And there's a corresponding hostility toward those who... insist that they not be ignored."Where does Paul fit in?

As Greenwald acknowledges, there are all sorts of other issues where progressives prefer Obama, and deciding that he is the lesser of two evils is a reasonable position. Then comes the provocative part. Says Greenwald, "An honest line of reasoning in this regard would go as follows:

Yes, I'm willing to continue to have Muslim children slaughtered by covert drones and cluster bombs, and America's minorities imprisoned by the hundreds of thousands for no good reason, and the CIA able to run rampant with no checks or transparency, and privacy eroded further by the unchecked Surveillance State, and American citizens targeted by the President for assassination with no due process, and whistleblowers threatened with life imprisonment for "espionage," and the Fed able to dole out trillions to bankers in secret, and a substantially higher risk of war with Iran (fought by the U.S. or by Israel with U.S. support) in exchange for less severe cuts to Social Security, Medicare and other entitlement programs, the preservation of the Education and Energy Departments, more stringent environmental regulations, broader health care coverage, defense of reproductive rights for women, stronger enforcement of civil rights for America's minorities, a President with no associations with racist views in a newsletter, and a more progressive Supreme Court."



Is that a fair statement of the tradeoffs progressives are making? Dan Drezner doesn't think so.



Referring to Paul, he writes:

