Ron Paul - Dead Babies in Trash Cans

Amanda Marcotte has a great piece about why Iowa is really all about abortion, which is why Ron Paul has been surging. Apparently, Mr. Paul has been running an ad in Iowa where he claims to have seen abortion providers leave a live baby in a trash can to die. As Marcotte points out, this fantastical urban myth led to a bit of a problem for Paul when a radio host - in complete sincerity - dissed Paul's "life" creds because he failed to swoop in and rescue the trash-can baby:

It is true that if you think Republican voters in Iowa really are motivated by the economy, Paul’s newfound popularity is a bit hard to grasp. But if you realize that they’re mostly obsessed with women’s uteruses, suddenly his popularity makes a lot more sense. Paul has been blanketing Iowa with anti-choice ads that make the risible and extremely unlikely claim that he saw doctors throwing a live baby away to let it die. This kind of story is the sort of urban myth anti-choicers exchange amongst each other: fantasies generated to justify their irrational fear and hatred of abortion providers, because the alternative is to admit that they’re just out to control women’s bodies. By speaking to anti-choice fanatics in their own language of fantasy over reality, Paul signaled that “libertarian” is a meaningless label, and that he’s actually one of the tribe. (Interestingly, the danger in indulging elaborate religious fantasies like this is that other fantasists will engage you, which Paul found out when a radio host asked him why he didn’t swoop in and rescue the supposedly living baby. The more elaborate fantasy of the radio host inadvertently exposed the giant plot hole in Paul’s story-spinning.)

I can't tell you how happy this makes me that his crazy backfired when a person - who totally bought the story - called him on just walking away and leaving the still-alive baby to die in the trash can. I mean, he had a point: What kind of monster does that?