Courtesy of the indispensable Scott Horton, here are the key excerpts from Ron Paul’s performance at the New Hampshire Republican “debate”:

By now it should be obvious even to the most insensate observer that the Republican Party — with the heroic exception of Ron Paul and a few over whom he’s had a healthy influence — is a fascist cult. Witness Herr Huckabee’s invocation of “ein Reich, ein Volk, ein Fuhrer” as a riposte to Paul’s irrefutable logic. (The same purported Christian, incidentally, is down with the Mark of the Beast, calling for a human inventory control system to track people like packages.)

Here’s the Fox “News” account of the key exchange between Paul and Huckabee:

“Texas Rep. Ron Paul stirred much of the excitement of the evening, repeating his anti-war stance and getting into a sparring match with Huckabee over whether it’s time for the United States to leave Iraq.

`Going into Iraq and Afghanistan and threatening Iran is the worst thing we can do for our national security. I am less safe, the American people are less safe for this. It’s the policy that is wrong,’ Paul said, adding that he disagrees with war supporters who warn against leaving prematurely.

`The people who say there will be a bloodbath are the ones who said it will be a cakewalk or it will be a slam dunk, and that it will be paid for by oil. Why believe them?’ he asked.

In response, Huckabee said that the United States agreed before the war started that if they break Iraq, it must buy it.

`Congressman, whether or not we should have gone to Iraq is a discussion the historians can have, but we’re there. We bought it because we broke it. We’ve got a responsibility to the honor of this country and to the honor of every man and woman who has served in Iraq and ever served in our military to not leave them with anything less than the honor that they deserve,’ Huckabee said.

Paul then responded: `The American people didn’t go in. A few people advising this administration, a small number of people called the neoconservatives hijacked our foreign policy. They’re responsible, not the American people.’

Huckabee retorted that the United States is one nation. `We can’t be divided. We have to be one nation, under God. That means if we make a mistake, we make it as a single country: the United States of America, not the divided states of America,’ he said.

`No, when we make a mistake — when we make a mistake, it is the obligation of the people, through their representatives, to correct the mistake, not to continue the mistake,’ Paul replied.”

Think of it: Herr Huckabee’s position is that Americans literally have a moral obligation to kill and die on behalf of a mistake: “Honor” requires no less. As an anti-Vietnam War activist in the early 1970s, John Kerry once asked: Who will be the last to die for a mistake? Huckabee’s position, shared by the Red State Fascists in the audience and the GOP leadership, is essentially that it is the duty of Americans to kill and die for as long as their rulers decree — even after the foolishness, corruption, and dishonesty of the policy is obvious.

This is pure, unfiltered cultism of an authentically fascist variety. Clearly, Ron Paul was the only sane man on the stage, which is why his statements were greeted with nervous laughter — as demented as it was derisive — by one of the cretinous fiends sharing that platform with him.

He’s on the wrong side of the biblical threescore-and-ten, his demeanor is as mild as buttermilk, and his physique is wraith-like, but Ron Paul is a steel-spined ass-kicker with dangling anatomy made of solid brass. He is a man in full.

In his honor, I offer the following Tom Petty video featuring my unofficial Ron Paul theme song:

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