Posted on 06/17/2015 3:43:46 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
PHILADELPHIA — Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, running for president on a platform of keeping the government out of people’s business, took a deep breath when asked at a recent stop in Philadelphia whether he’d make addressing abortion a part of his campaign.
“I didn’t run for office because of the social issues,” Paul answered. “It wasn’t what got me to leave my practice. I ran for office mainly because I became concerned that we’re going to destroy the country with debt.”(continued)
(Excerpt) Read more at tri-cityherald.com ...
Loose cannon looking for a gun port.
Look what's happening to the military, with the homosexuals and transgendered crap.
Diseases spread by promiscuous homosexuals is a public safety issue. That means more taxpayer dollars is spent on AIDS and other diseases than money for Veterans.
Any politician who says we need to ignore the social issues isn't getting my vote.
Yes, they are intertwined. And America is losing ground on all of them One would think gay marriage would have been a place to make a stand, but the nation has moved on, and there are precious few conservatives willing to buck the tide. Some admit it, most try hand waving.
Which candidate will come out against gay marriage. I would not expect Rand Paul to be that candidate, he’s never presented himself as the ultimate red-blooded conservative, that’s not the Paul brand. But what about Ted Cruz — the most he will do is say “let the states decide” which is absurd when the Supreme Court and Federal Courts are deciding for everyone — and also, to point out the obvious iT’S A COMPLETE DODGE.
Ok, Ted, you live in a State, Texas I believe. Do you support gay marriage in Texas? If imposed by courts? If passed by legislature? If created by voter initiative? Or, are you actually opposed to it (and willing to stand up to the gay mafia).
I’m picking on Ted but this pretty much goes for all of the candidates except possibly Santorum on social issues. At most they will pronounce some perfectly crafted statement soundbite, and hope to move on to the better issues.
So, while I agree that the issues are all intertwined, I don’t think running on them is going to happen, and that is probably because it’s a sure loser to be branded “intolerant”. Santorum is near dead last, under 2%.
I don't get what you're after. If the people wanted it and the legislature wanted it, he can still be against it, but what then? He can oppose it, but what do you expect him to do about it, if the voters actually want it?
Diogenesis....are you there?
Rand is struggling,...go figure
In our enthusiasm for our respective candidates, we ought not to emulate the Demonrats in our treatment of other conservative candidates. We risk doing the Demonrats' job for them and more effectively.
Rand Paul is NOT my candidate but the message of recent elections from millenials, from low info voters, from "minority" communities, etc., is that our RINO nominees McCain and Romney have been found wanting by the electorate as a whole and by an increasing number of conservatives as well. I refused to vote for Romney for a wide variety of reasons (just about every available reason).
The GOP is doing a LOT of things wrong, as most here would readily agree. Each CONSERVATIVE candidate seeking the GOP nomination has SOMETHING positive to offer. Now is the time to pay attention to their virtues. We can dwell on their shortcomings in due time and choose accordingly at primary time.
I trust that no one familiar with my attitude against Ron Paul will imagine that I have some automatic respect for his son. Let's look at Rand's virtues nonetheless.
Read the text of the Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution. That is an important part of Rand Paul's playbook and he BELIEVES in it: passionately. That is the most radically conservative stance taken by any candidate of a major party in my lengthening lifetime.
Unraveling the New Deal is a BIGGER task than establishing it. FDR had the easier job and circumstances to support his efforts. Eighty years on, the New Deal has added so many, many programs not delegated to the federales by the US Constitution.
Rand wants the GOP to reach out meaningfully to minorities as we never have done in recent decades. Speaking at historically black colleges, to groups of black ministers, To inner city parents on the abysmal failure of urban gummint skewels and how to remedy it, taking on black issues, etc., is long overdue. When the referendum on enacting a state constitutional amendment against "gay" "marriage" in California succeeded only because black majorities voted for it in a narrow victory, a Dubya appointed federal judge discovered a heretofore unnoticed "gay" "rights" guarantee in the 14th Amendment and overturned the voters' verdict in favor of the elitist fashionable position. It was rumored that His Judicial Majesty is of the lavender persuasion.
I want my candidate to seek black and Hispanic and Jewish votes (Rand may have serious problems being trusted by Jews) as we have never sought them before, in addition to ramping up our voter registration and GOTV efforts. I want the party to suppress voter fraud by every means necessary. I want the party to explain respectfully but effectively to minority voters why it is necessary to suppress voter fraud. Investigate "motor voter."
Rand Paul says he left his medical practice as an opthalmological surgeon to seek office because our national debt threatens to destroy the nation. I want my candidate to believe that and believe it passionately as Rand Paul and act accordingly. Shouldn't we all?
I had questions about Rand Paul's commitment to the babies. He answered them in his announcement speech and answered well indeed. He would prefer it be handled by the states because of his commitment to the Tenth Amendment. I would prefer that the issue be recognized as the personhood of the unborn protected by the 14th Amendment. Herod Blackmun noted in his infamous Roe vs. Wade decision that, if the unborn is recognized as a person under the 14th, that would trump all other arguments. So Herod rejected the personhood of the unborn and here we are standing next to 60 million corpses and counting. I think Rand Paul is persuadable but even his current position is a vast improvement over that of those who have served as POTUS in recent decades.
In short, Rand Paul has some qualities that should be emulated by all GOP candidates. He is also quite plain spoken and outspoken. He really communicates with millenials with $100,000 college loans and no jobs and sick of living with mom and dad and ready to roll for the right candidate. We need his sort of effective outreach to them. He is not bashful.
Many here reject Marco Rubio for his disastrous involvement in the "gang of eight" trying to cram amnesty down our throats. My view of Rubio is more charitable than my language suggests.
I find Marco Rubio quite charming otherwise. So do many voters. I am, alas, no longer young but I remember my youth and I salute him for his youth. It is again a time for the torch of liberty to pass to a new generation (as JFK put it). For good or for ill, we baby boomers are largely done. Our successes and failures are in the books. God help us. It is time for history to judge the good and the bad.
Rubio serves on Senate Foreign Relations. He has a track record of supporting renewed American authority in the world. He knows, as a first generation Cuban American, what tyranny can do to the aspirations of ordinary folks and how it can leech all vitality out of the human soul. He would understand Solzhenitsyn's observation on "the accursed capacity of our people to endure suffering." We are not quite as bad off as residents of the Gulag but we are getting there. Rubio oozes charm and knows the popular mind and culture and talks familiarly and comfortably about both.
We have people here rejecting Rubio absolutely because of his former immigration stand. Rubio politically executed Lavender Charlie Crist, an evil thing if ever there were one. Now he is giving up the Senate seat and risking all on the POTUS race. Don't bet against him. He is a remarkable young man and not my candidate but I could vote for him eagerly. I am a belated convert on the immigration question primarily because Obozo has behaved sooooo abominably in violation of law. I blame him and not those seeking a better life.
I could continue to analyze the GOP conservatives. Right now, I favor Scott Walker. I live verrrrry close to Wisconsin geographically and I have been more impressed than I can express at the way Walker has handled everything the left could sling at him. He is the most vetted candidate since Reagan and the left has failed to destroy him.
I am thrilled by Ted Cruz's every effort. He needs more traction and I hope he gets it. Lesser candidates (by far in some cases), in no particular order, and I will refrain here from criticizing them, include Lindsay Graham (strong foreign policy), Dr. Ben Carson (steel backbone, character, dignity and a GREAT back story), John Kasich (intimate familiarity with fed budget excesses and how to deal with them) and others that this old fellow is too tired to mention right now. If I did not mention your favorite candidate, forgive me. I will make up for it later.
Nonetheless, respecting my fellow FReepers as I do, I look forward to the discussions here to further refine my analyses and theirs, so that we may unite by primary time. May God bless all of us and every conservative POTUS candidate and, most of all, this Free Republic.
After Huckabee, Santorum and Cruz, not much left in that enclave.
Elk, there are two reasons I am hesitant to cross swords with you. The first is my inherent and well known non-confrontational and gentle nature and second, they you have a wealth of actual experience dealing with these matters.
But I’m going to do it anyway.
The time to deal with and discount any pol is the nanosecond they hit ones personal threshold for BS. I think we agree that actions, not words are what matter and some actions are so abhorrent to the idea of conservatism that an automatic DQ is applied.
Memories are funny things. We paint some with vivid colors and they always look shiny and new in the theater of the mind. Others we compartmentalize and bury so deep that Agent K and his neurolyzer could be put out of a job.
Rand Paul spent several weeks siding with every piece of leftist verbage and policy that fell within the time frame. During that period, FR was awash with people rightly commenting in that leftism and vows were made.
I was one of the people who correctly pointed out that those vows, as always, would be discarded as soon as “The Fear” staged it’s inevitable return. This feat of Prophecy is akin to predicting the sun’s rise in the east, but with every Paul, every Romney, every one of these leftist idiots, the sheep always run to the salvation du’jour, no matter what. Because it’s a lesser evil.
Paul happens to be right on a very narrow scope of issues. And very very wrong on many more. His actions of pushing the wrong, siding with and protecting GOP misleadership and backing profoundly liberal ideas is what DQs him not only today, but pretty much weekly since his election. Many had high hopes for him. Many claimed that he was his own man, not Ron Jr. Many say that in America everyone is their own man and the sins of the father and blah blah blah ad infinitium.
Rand id Ron in youngface. The sins of the father are his own since he adopted most of them. His actions speak louder than his words and those actions DQ him from consideration.
If that standard applied across the board adds up to Hillary, then the fault lies in our mewling acceptance of liberals in our own ranks that work tirelessly to enshrine one liberal savior after another in the Cooperstown of right wing politics.
The solution is as it always has been. Stop fawning over and electing liberals calling themselves conservative or even Republican when their actions mark them as leftist garbage.
We saw it throughout the past 3 election cycles and it is worse than ever this one especially with the circus of Trump.
Get them out early and often. Support actual conservatives early and always.
I do concur, BlackElk. And thanks for posting this reminder. We need to defend our field. I am praying that God will show us His mercy, forgive us, sort through this broad field and lift up the leader we need and not what we may deserve.
It is absurd to tear one another up and our candidates when they are what they are— prolife, and defenders of religious liberty— a supremely intelligent group of individuals, some of them superbly educated in the right stuff, like technology, the Constitution, military history and tactics, big business, brain surgeons, excellent and proven governors, and mostly very excellent and proven senators, family men and women who are decent, quick, and sincerely longing for change to save our country.
They are all capable of running circles around Barack Obama and this time there are really none I can’t vote for on Christian moral grounds.
May God bless you, dearest Elk, all of us, and the USA. Rita
“but what do you expect him to do about it, if the voters actually want it?” ———
That is a great question. I just heard that Carly Fiorina said that, in the case of the SCOTUS ruling favorably for gay rights, that she would have to support that ruling.
I would rather hear these candidates say that while they can not make law as the SCOTUS is attempting to do, they would nevertheless protect religious liberty and give exemptions to Christian churches who are under siege and Christian businesses and organizations affiliated with the Church, such as the Little Sisters of the Poor finally received.
Retaining religious liberty covers a multitude of cram down intrusions against Christians.
Neither you nor I nor RitaOK, nor Finny, nor Dr. Sivana. nor Eternal Vigilance nor an increasing number of other fine folks here EVER succumbed to "the Fear." I trust we never will. Our consciences are clear.
I am only saying that we should recognize good qualities in the various candidates and try to cobble together the best qualities among them and leave the rest behind. There will be time after Christmas to winnow the survivors.
Every once in a while, we should indulge a pleasant disposition.
Norm is my very favorite old poop. I love his inherent, well known non-confrontational and gentle manner. We have all had a little fun together on Norm’s best days.
I feel like you do. There isn’t much Norm could do to run me off either. I’m a fan.
I thought it was interesting what you said about December.
I don’t know what Norm thinks but I had wondered about the best time to coalesce around a single candidate? I know the debates could be important, that is, if the debate panel makes them important rather than a food fight. (The first primary ballot will be cast in February.)
So, that’s my question— when exactly to put up or give up, and unify around one primary candidate, whether I like him or not?
Every single prospective GOP presidential candidate has already told us that they will not keep the most important obligations of their oath. They’ve disqualified themselves.
I don’t necessarily disagree. But the problem as I see it is that when I look back through the dusty tomes of history, (going back, say 4 days or so, no need to go further), people simply discount -ALL- the bad for the one bright spot of good. It reminds me of the line in the original Mad Max movie when the old bald cop, Max’s boss says “People want their Heroes Max!”.
This week, Trump is the conservative savior. Forget all the DNC donations. Forget the Oprah comments. Forget trashing Pam Gellar. Forget the Jenner-tranny crap. Donnie said something that we all wanted to hear! And like magic, history began the morning he announced.
Just like, -JUST LIKE- the Democrats.
Ron, oops, I mean Rand Paul occasionally has two conservative thought molecules racing around the inside his skull like Tron on a light cycle and every so often they collide and a conservative thought forms. And it must be a high energy reaction at the Planck scale because when it occurs, time is altered and history begins that morning. Forgotten is his ongoing water carrying for Mitch and his ‘I wanna be John McCain’ Maverickey history.
That tendency also carries over to our punditry. Mark Levin gets on some media outlet screaming bloody murder about the GOP’s latest affront to God and all his angels and everyone goes weak kneed at his bold conservatism. While simultaneously a malfunctioning dylithium crystal in the Enterprise’s warp core tears a rift in the space tome continuum, causing the tithing masses to forget he was ‘this close’, nay, “About an inch” from telling them to FOAD about 30 evermore serious issues ago. And the train to GOPland and their liberals keeps right on a’rollin’.
Meanwhile, Ann Coulter causes the vapors to the devoted ladies and grown gentlemen to weep at the eloquence with books detailing the daily conversations on illegal immigration on FR as some heretofor unknown, new and revelatory insight; while a gamma burst from Quasar X-453 scattered all memory pathways in the human mind relating to her rabid if flip flopping support for a guy caught twice with the same illegals serving his own household.
Some people just need to be written off because their actions prove they cannot be trusted. Sure they can say things we all want to hear. We have been eating that Ambrosia for a long time now and that’s the problem. As long as someone tells us what we want to hear, we sit enraptured instead of doing much of anything to change our prediciment.
As I said in a post the other day, I can take a handful of cash up the road to Vegas right now and have some of the hottest women on the planet bark like a dog and tell me that John Holmes would blush in my presence. But even if they would be right in that particular example, everything else they tell me would most likely be what I wanted to hear and not what actually ‘was’. And I would have to have a magical cosmic reality displacement of my own to keep the fantasy going.
Because ultimately Elk, that’s what ignoring the reality of our ‘heroes’ is. One big reality displacement. Or compartmentalization. A bunch of names for the same thing. Our own self inflicted bread and circuses with us as Cesar, the lions and the Christians all rolled into one big gay gladiator movie.
As Eternal Vigilance observes, none of these guys is perfect. He seems to say that none are acceptable. I voted for EV last time but I am not ready to be quite as pessimistic as EV. OTOH, Norm Lenhart is also quite pessimistic and I suspect he would substitute that he is realistic. Perhaps but I am not ready just yet to agree.
God loves drunks, cripples and the US of A, not necessarily in that order. How's that for a non-PC statement?
We must develop a consciousness that it is NOT what the respective candidates may want, whether Ted Cruz, Scott Walker, Marco Rubio, Dr. Ben Carson, Rand Paul, John Kasich, Jeb!, Mike Huckleberry, Carly Fiorina, The Donald, or a dozen wannabes to be named later. What EACH of them wants is to be the nominee. Choosing same is OUR job. It is what WE want that counts until we choose and nominate. Until then, it will be the job of each of them to suck up to us for our votes. The more firm public policy commitments we can exact out of their hides the better. Not that we will really trust them, of course. As with "Read my lips! No new taxes!," it sets them up for deep humiliations and chastisements yet to come and that is good in reducing their overstuffed egos.
Lately, resisting any further steps toward a one world government or "New World Order" (see the proposed Transpacific whatever it is treaty) has risen near to the top of my list. Like the Founders, I prefer not to live under foreign tyranny (or Obozo's or the Arkansas Medusa's for that matter or Mitch McConnell's or the Tan Alcoholic Man's). I would also prefer not to live through the alternative of a genuine world war between American patriots (we would likely lose) on the one side and every other nation and person on the other. I want my country and I can keep it (maybe)! I would s*itcan the existing "world order" and the UN and the EU, etc. Let's hear from the candidates.
My other priorities remain substantially the same. Service to God remains the perennial top priority, including the freedom of the Catholic and every other Church, Pope Chatty Cathy notwithstanding. In light of the immediate crisis of Transpacific whatever, guns are even more important than ever. The babies, marriage, shrinking the federal Leviathan, dealing with the illegal immigrants (in light of their and Obozo's lawlessness), cleaning up the voter rolls, right to work (a new priority for me), American Exceptionalism, resistance to the public school monster and Common Core, etc. These are shiny toys that I had better find under my Christmas tree or the candidate who fails to put them there has little or no chance of getting my vote.
These candidates have less than six months to get it together on these issues or face the consequences. If they don't and EV is again available, he gets my vote again next November. Let there be no doubt. EV is better than any o them but I want to translate my principles into public policy reality and, with all due respect, I don't yet see a mass movement toward Eternal Vigilance although It wold be wonderful to contemplate and observe.
....We must develop a consciousness that it is NOT what the respective candidates may want, whether Ted Cruz, Scott Walker, Marco Rubio, Dr. Ben Carson, Rand Paul, John Kasich, Jeb!, Mike Huckleberry, Carly Fiorina, The Donald, or a dozen wannabes to be named later. What EACH of them wants is to be the nominee. Choosing same is OUR job. It is what WE want that counts until we choose and nominate. Until then, it will be the job of each of them to suck up to us for our votes. The more firm public policy commitments we can exact out of their hides the better. Not that we will really trust them, of course. As with "Read my lips! No new taxes!," it sets them up for deep humiliations and chastisements yet to come and that is good in reducing their overstuffed egos....
....Lately, resisting any further steps toward a one world government or "New World Order" (see the proposed Transpacific whatever it is treaty) has risen near to the top of my list...My other priorities remain substantially the same. Service to God remains the perennial top priority, including the freedom of the Catholic and every other Church, Pope Chatty Cathy notwithstanding...guns are even more important than ever. The babies, marriage, shrinking the federal Leviathan, dealing with the illegal immigrants (in light of their and Obozo's lawlessness), cleaning up the voter rolls, right to work (a new priority for me), American Exceptionalism, resistance to the public school monster and Common Core, etc. These are shiny toys that I had better find under my Christmas tree or the candidate who fails to put them there has little or no chance of getting my vote. These candidates have less than six months to get it together on these issues or face the consequences.
BlackElk, many many thanks for pinging me. My thoughts and priorities are very similar to your own, so it's comforting to know that I'm not out here alone in my thinking. I'd like to throw something out that I've posted several times before, re how ol' Alex votes and will vote. I'd like to offer it up to each of you for comments and criticisms:
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During the 2012 election cycle, an uber-liberal friend of mine asked me how I felt about "having to vote for Romney to get rid of Obama". I responded by saying "who says I'm voting for Romney? I'm a political conservative first, not a Republican."
As I told that friend, I don't vote against candidates. I vote for candidates who will represent and advance my political views (which include pro-life, pro-self-government, reduction of income taxes, permanent reduction of the size of federal government, pro-military, school choice, border protection, and pro-Christian religious freedom). Up until 2012, there were still some Republicans who represented my own interests. In 2012, not so much. I challenged my friend by asking "Why should anyone vote for a candidate who does not, or will not represent their interests?"
That's the whole point of representative government - the candidate that you vote for represents your interests. By voting for him or her, those interests become your interests. If your vote is "against" the liberal candidate, then you've signed your name to a blank check politically. Any policy can be enacted, any growth in government can occur, but you don't care so long as the other guy didn't win. You've thrown away your conscience, in order not to throw away your vote.
So in 2016, I'll be asking people these three questions:
The naysayers can blast me for "wasting my vote" or "helping [fill in the blank Democrat] win" all they want. I cannot honestly see where there has been an real difference in presidential candidates since Reagan left office. Sure, I hate Bill Clinton, but I'd be hard pressed to tell you what GHWB would have done differently. I hate Obama, but Obamacare is nothing more than the extension of Romneycare.
When the best we can come up with is someone who isn't quite as liberal as the Democrat, we're not offering much to vote for. I was too young to vote for President Reagan, but I can remember people being excited about voting for him and I recall Democrats being excited about Bill Clinton and Obama, but the GOP candidates from 1988 onward haven't produced enthusiasm in anyone as far as I can tell.
I haven't done as much research on the current candidates as many on here, but I can tell you that I will not vote for anyone who supports abortion or same-sex marriage IN ANY WAY. I will not vote for anyone who thinks that SCOTUS has the final say on everything. And I sure as hell won't vote for anyone who runs around saying that America's best days are behind us.
You should have asked how they felt about how they felt about voting for Obama to get the Romney-created Obamacare and same-sex "marriage".
This cycle, so far, with no matters of Life or religious liberty issues in danger from most all of our candidates, I am left free to vote for just about any of our field to beat out Hillary, who is a danger to human life, religious liberty and my conscience.
Last time Romney was no different than Obama, or Hillary. I wrote him off. I could write in, I could vote for another. When McCain ran, I was able to vote for Bob Barr.
I can’t imagine not voting this time against such an improved lot, on matters of life and liberty and religion.
Objections of conscience against not voting at all, for me anyway, are not so much about politics, process, or policy “preferences”, per se, but narrowed to human life and religious liberty (spiritual life). Beyond those basics it’s pretty much all just gamesmanship. We can deal with that.
Anything less, ushers in the seems to me we’re in the weeds, we’re already dead.
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