I watched a little bit of the GOP debate last night. It was obvious to me that Ron Paul was pretty much owning everyone. I noticed something interesting though.

Sometimes the camera would pan to another candidate while Paul was speaking and this is when I noticed some strange behavior in the other candidates’ body language. When Paul was talking about the fake budget cuts, Mitt Romney’s facial expression was one of incredulity. But it was obvious to me that this was a feigned expression. As far as acting goes, it was awful, like bad daytime soap opera eyebrow acting awful.

Here is the full debate. It’s really long, but I have tried to timestamp a few relevant items for you.

If you fast-forward to about 55:50 this is what I remember seeing. Paul says,

Nobody cares about the budget! We’re in big trouble and nobody wants to cut anything. So if you want to keep sending foreign aid overseas and these endless wars that you don’t have to declare and go in to Libya without going to without consulting Congress. The biggest threat to our national security is our financial condition and this is just aggravating it.

Romney responds, first by introducing the phony $1 Trillion spending cuts, lies about it being all cut from the defense budget and then by deflecting blame to Obama. Clever! Notice that even while Romney is puking out these lies, Paul is attentive to what he is saying. His body language shows he is engaged and although he disagrees he is paying attention and thinking of how to respond.

This is where I noticed Romney’s lie face. First, when Wolfie says Paul wants to respond, watch Romney shake his head dismissively at about 57:12. Paul’s rebuttal begins around 57:16 and 5 or 6 seconds later you can watch Romney give him the full on eye-rolling, head-shaking you’re-so-crazy look.

Romney needs to persuade others in to thinking “Oh that’s just crazy Ron Paul with his crazy ideas about sound money and non-intervention…” so he puts on this mask whenever Ron Paul makes a true statement.  If Romney can convince the majority of voters that Ron Paul (or any candidate, for that matter) is crazy, or has crazy ideas, then he improves his chances of winning the election.  As far as his political career is concerned, it is in Romney’s best interest to lie.

I feel like I caught him lying. The expression on his face was supposed to imply “Ron Paul you’re a fucking looney tune” but it was obvious to me that Romney didn’t actually believe this lie he was trying to put forth.

I also noticed Gingrich doing it in a few places, too, like here (timestamped from a different video):

As far as mainstream political candidates go, Ron Paul is without a doubt among the least-offensive. It is funny to watch the other parasites in the political class react to what Ron Paul says. They don’t know how to react without lying, and it usually shows up in their body language.

Ron Paul has some ideas that  I don’t endorse like his rather unprincipled wishy-washy anti-federalism (which clouds a lot of his prescriptions) and particularly his failure to embrace just a little bit of the left when it comes to things like labor or the environment, etc. But he also wants to abolish a lot of shit that, frankly, needs to be abolished. Like perpetual war in 100+ countries around the globe, and the corresponding export of weapons of destruction that serve only to enrich well-heeled capitalists and government contractors (paid for by our tax dollars) and make the rest of the world less safe for everyone in it.

On balance I think he would be an improvement over the status quo by a long shot. He was certainly better than any of the 6 clowns he shared the stage with last night.