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Ladies and gentlemen:

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.