During the ABC News debate on January 7, 2012, the moderator brought up a statement Ron Paul had recently made regarding “chickenhawks,” or politicians who are hawkish about going to war but personally shirked the opportunity and dodged the draft and/or chose not to enlist to serve in the U.S. military.
When asked if he would recant this statement, Dr. Paul stood his ground and said, “I think people who don’t serve when they could and they get three or four or even five deferments have no right to send our kids off to war,” in a clear reference to Gingrich.
Gingrich responded: “I was married with a child.”
To which Paul shot back: “When I was drafted, I was married and had two kids, and I went.”
Paul finished his sentence with pursed lips and a steely gaze. The crowd was silent for a moment, then broke out in applause.
Earlier in the exchange, Gingrich tried to use the excuse that he was an “Army brat”, as though his step-father’s service in the military somehow was equal to actually serving himself. Then he tried to explain how being a politician serving on committees and boards related to military make him as good as a veteran. He also tried to blow off the charge that he got deferments, even though it is a well-documented fact that he did. Check out the article from the PBS program Frontline from 1989 entitled “Good Newt, Bad Newt.” A snippet from the article:
His singular determination was perhaps best seen in his first successful romance, a schoolboy crush he developed on his high-school math teacher. Lots of boys get romantic notions about pretty young teachers, but Newt Gingrich didn’t let go of his. After graduation, when she moved to Atlanta, he went to Atlanta too, enrolling at Emory University. Gingrich pursued his former math teacher, seven years his senior, until Jackie agreed to become his wife. They were married at the end of his freshman year, and soon they had their first child, Kathy. Gingrich then entered that hazy passage through ambiguity experienced by the majority of young American men during the 1960s. Like most of his generation, Gingrich was moderately anti-Establishment (he tried pot, and participated in a campus protest at Tulane University) and chose not to go to Vietnam, opting for deferments available to him as a father and a student. But unlike most young men his age, Gingrich would be haunted by his decision.
So in the early 1960′s Newt was pursuing his bachelor’s degree from Emory University, raising his newborn daughter with his first (of three) wife (his former teacher), experimenting with marijuana and participating in hippy protests on campus. Meanwhile, Ron Paul was married with two kids and working on completing his medical degree and he did not take a deferment – he chose to serve his country in the Air Force when drafted, even though he was a father and a student like Newt.
Early 1960′s photograph of Ron Paul and a young Rand Paul:
