Posted on 04/30/2009 7:33:36 AM PDT by rabscuttle385
Over a year ago, Mitt Romney was losing primaries to John McCain, and conservative pundits from Ann Coulter to Rush Limbaugh predicted the end of the GOP – Coulter went as far as promising she would campaign for Hillary Rodham Clinton if McCain became the party's nominee.
By November 2008, the GOP had embraced a nominee who had considered switching parties twice, had opposed tax cuts, and had failed to advance an aggressive shift in a foreign policy that left the GOP discredited in an area it had always trumped in.
It's not that McCain's willingness to reach across the aisle was condemnable. On the contrary, had McCain been able to do that as a conservative, he would've had more than tepid support from voters.
It also has less to do with the reasons conservatives disagreed with him when they should have found common ground. For example, McCain angered many conservatives when he opposed the federal ban on same-sex marriage.
Here in New Hampshire, congressional candidate Grant Bosse was among the few Republicans who understood the importance of leaving some decisions for adults to make with God and their state, not judges and the federal government.
It's precisely the reasons many couldn't support McCain – even conservatives who stuck by their guns and refused to send him to the White House – that merit serious reflection.
So far it's difficult to sense the fundamental message shift required for the GOP to make inroads in 2010 and 2012, but it seems no state is better poised to nurture these than the state of New Hampshire.
They key to doing this successfully? Allowing New Hampshire's libertarian spirit to infuse the GOP grassroots and allowing that to spread nationally.
(Excerpt) Read more at nashuatelegraph.com ...
That is gibberish there is the Libertarian party period and this is their position on immigration. It is a tiny party of 226,000 registered members.
Immigration
The Issue: We welcome all refugees to our country and condemn the efforts of U.S. officials to create a new “Berlin Wall” which would keep them captive. We condemn the U.S. government’s policy of barring those refugees from our country and preventing Americans from assisting their passage to help them escape tyranny or improve their economic prospects.
The Principle: We hold that human rights should not be denied or abridged on the basis of nationality. Undocumented non-citizens should not be denied the fundamental freedom to labor and to move about unmolested. Furthermore, immigration must not be restricted for reasons of race, religion, political creed, age or sexual preference. We oppose government welfare and resettlement payments to non-citizens just as we oppose government welfare payments to all other persons.
Solutions: We condemn massive roundups of Hispanic Americans and others by the federal government in its hunt for individuals not possessing required government documents. We strongly oppose all measures that punish employers who hire undocumented workers. Such measures repress free enterprise, harass workers, and systematically discourage employers from hiring Hispanics.
Transitional Action: We call for the elimination of all restrictions on immigration, the abolition of the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Border Patrol, and a declaration of full amnesty for all people who have entered the country illegally.
No, it's called not allowing a bubble to develop.
“There are two strains of libertarian thought: free market, anti-tax, economic libertarianism, which is readily compatible with traditional conservatism; and lifestyle libertarianism, which insists on abortion on demand, gay marriage, and relentless secularism.”
IMHO pro-choice libertarians are hypocrites.
Abortion is killing a human being, taking away its right to life. If you believe that Govts job is to protect our rights (read the Declaration of Independence), then you should believe that Govt has a role to protect unborn human life.
And if you dont think its alive, then take Bio101 first and get educated.
As for secularism - forced govt secularism is as wrong as forced sectarianism.
Okay. Like I said, fractional reserve banking distorts economic calculation. It redistributes purchasing power. Tell someone who is on fixed income that inflation is good for the economy.
Investment should be based on savings, not artificially created money. If consumers want to spend more and aren’t saving, why does it make sense for companies to have an abundance of cheap credit with which to invest in higher order goods? Genuine savings shows a shift in consumer preferences. The savings/investment/consumption balance is distorted when you throw artificial credit into the mix.
Using your approach, it would be impossible for banks to loan money whatsoever. Which means they couldn't pay interest for savings.
It is all tied to generating economic growth.
Duh... It was that “Leftward” drift with Bush Sr. that caused me to consider the LP at all. Same with “Brady Bill” Bob Dole.
There are things that both social conservatives and libertarians could agree on re abortion.
Take Ron Paul's bill Taxpayers' Freedom of Conscience Act of 2009 - Prohibits a federal official from expending federal funds for any foreign or domestic population control or population planning program or family planning activity (including any abortion procedure).
libertarian Republicans would support the idea that if you are anti-abortion, you should not be forced to see your tax dollars used for abortions.
And yet bubbles always form. It seems interesting to me that fractional reserve banking allows bubbles, but that somehow we are supposed to just assume the masters in Washington can just manage and regulate the system enough to prevent bubbles from forming. Unless these people know all economic data (which is impossible), I don’t see how they are going to forecast consumer preferences and values. It sounds a lot like central planning to me.
Central planning arguably would have worked if the controllers had access to all economic data. But that is impossible and even if they did, would things really be different than under a free market?
The central planners would have to know the right price of everything; the market does this. Central planners would have to know consumer preferences and thus quickly allocate resources away from a diminishing industry to what consumers desired more; the market responds instantly to consumer preference changes by this same process. Central planners would have to give loans only to those companies that truly are sustainable by market demand in order to prevent bubbles; the free market by and large does this.
The FedGov wrote the playbook the banks were loaning money under. That is the OPPOSITE of "laisse-faire".
Some analysts spotted the bubble coming from a mile away. You don't need full knowledge of everything to spot the indicators, you just need honest regulators immune from political pressure.
Nice going Ace...
Hardly. As I said in another post, the feds did too much of what they shouldn't have been doing, and not enough of what they should have been doing, due to the partisan hacks such as Frank and Dodd for the Dems and Gramm for the GOP. What is needed is regulation of basic reserve requirements for all financial institutions and products.
I understand that it would be easier for you if that were the case, but it's not true.
"I believe that the very heart and soul of Conservatism is libertarianism", Ronald Reagan
Barry Goldwater was a libertarian Conservative and he literally wrote the book on what it means to be a Conservative.
***Using your approach, it would be impossible for banks to loan money whatsoever. Which means they couldn’t pay interest for savings.***
What? They would loan with the consent of their depositors. It isn’t the banks money so they have no right to loan without first acquiring permission. And are we really to assume everyone is just going to sit on their money? People don’t need 100% liquidity. Businesses get money through stock and binds as well. There are many many different ways to channel savings into investment.
The federal government routinely runs deficits well into the hundreds of billions of dollars and now into the trillions. All this has to be financed by loans (people buying government bonds) and no one counterfeits the money they loan to the feds.
That's an absurd position. I realize that the bank that I use, a regional bank, loans out my money as part of its business model. And I keep an eye on its stability and it is doing well.
They spotted it. Now how does one keep it from inflating? How does one keep it from bursting? For that, you need full knowledge which is impossible.
***you just need honest regulators immune from political pressure.***
lol
We tried this during primary season, and we were vilified, denounced, and denigrated by many folks right here on Free Republic.
Our candidate was espousing radical, extremist ideas like sound currency... a non-interventionist foreign policy such as Bush talked about during his own presidential debates... adherence to the Constitution... Article I Section 8 limits on Federal power and spending... confining the Census bureau to its mandate of counting, instead of demographic surveys... and so on.
But when young, energetic supporters of our candidate packed venues that would otherwise have drawn a handful of doddering party regulars, those regulars got pissed off instead of excited. When we shattered one-day online fundraising records, it still wasn’t enough to stem the tide of criticism.
The GOP lost a big chance by failing to tap into this vein of excitement about individual liberty and personal responsibility, and putting up a RINO like McCain.
I agree.
Have the fed contract the money supply, raise interest rates and adjust reserve requirements.
"More government" is never the answer. It's like saying "well Socialism works, you just have to do it right".
Not applicable to the real world.
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