Opinion: Ron Paulites confront, taunt Giuliani

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(UPDATE: Note to Readers Go to www.LATimes.com/topoftheticket

A band of noisy Ron Paul supporters (are there any other kind?) angrily confronted former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani during a 15-minute ferryboat ride last weekend, accusing him of being involved in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center.

According to a Detroit Free Press account, dozens of Paul supporters leaving a Michigan Republican conference on Mackinac Island encountered Giuliani doing the same and began taunting him with shouts of ‘9/11 was an inside job’ and ‘Rudy, Rudy, what did you do with the gold?,’ a reference to legends that millions of dollars in gold were secretly recovered from the collapsed towers.

An eyewitness who’s a supporter of Mitt Romney, Ed Wyszynski, said the Paul supporters threatened to throw Giuliani overboard and forced him into the ferry’s wheelhouse for the trip’s duration. ‘It was awful,’ he said. ‘I was embarrassed to be a Republican.’

A Paul campaign spokesman, Jesse Benton, said the campaign had no involvement in the outburst, did not condone harassing Giuliani and did not believe the terrorist attacks were ‘an inside job.’ He explained that while the Texas representative had called for a new commission to investigate 9/11, it was because he believed there was more undiscovered government incompetency, not complicity.

A Giuliani spokesman said the mayor was not intimidated by the confrontation, but at least one Ron Paul blog suggested the encounter with 200 Paul supporters was ‘Rudy Giuliani’s worst nightmare’ and suggested the mayor should not laugh at another Paul answer in the next GOP debate.

It should be O.K. for the rest of us though.

--Andrew Malcolm