Is Ron Paul's re-election in danger?

We don't think so, but the Dallas Morning News has noted he has three opponents in the Republican primary -- "more than he has faced in his past six primary campaigns combined" -- and they have ties to "have ties to the anti-tax Tea Party movement."

Paul spokesman Jesse Benton pooh poohed the opposition.

"We are not taking these challengers very seriously," Benton said. "But we would never take any votes of the 14th District for granted."

Benton, we suppose, is being honest, but we think it's a mistake to admit you don't take three primary opponents "seriously."
Better to say something innocuous if you're a spokesman for a congressman up for re-election; there's no sense in waving a red flag in the face of the opposition, gettin' them all stirred up, but we could be wrong.

Over at The Raw Story, a writer sees irony in the Tea Party-based challengers taking on Paul, a venerable figure among many of our citizenry fed up government taxation.

The Washington Independent's Dave Weigel, meanwhile, said Doc Paul may be vulnerable on one point:

There is one thing Paul does that might backfire. While Paul votes against basically all spending bills, he notoriously gets earmark requests into those bills, so that local projects survive when other members vote those bills through. That barely dinged Paul in 2008, but it may become an issue now.

Yeah, maybe. But we doubt it.

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For his part, Doc Paul himself tried to explain the difference between himself and the Tea Party movement during an appearance on MSNBC's Rachel Maddow show, according to the Houston newspaper (guess the newspaper's Washington Bureau couldn't get Paul on the horn and interview him their ownselves) ...

Appearing on MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show," the Lake Jackson Republican said a hawkish foreign policy separated the Tea movement from his 2008 Paul "revolution."

Paul cited his support for a non-interventionist foreign policy, support for civil liberties and an end to the war on drugs as key differences between his libertarian style of small-government conservatism and the neoconservative interventionism of Tea Party leaders.

"My message is somewhat different," the Houston-area congressman said. "I've been much more precise in what we should do."

Paul said there is widespread public unhappiness with government because "they know there's something wrong in Washington."

"The people are coming together because they're unhappy," he said. "Our country really is bankrupt...It's out of control government."

But Paul, who faces Tea Party opposition in the March 2 GOP primary, said Republicans have infiltrated the Tea Party movement to push it toward an interventionist foreign policy that is anathema to Paul's approach.

"The Republican Party wants to make sure that there is a kind of neo-con influence" on the Tea movement, he added.