Posted on 05/11/2010 12:38:50 PM PDT by fight_truth_decay
The under-the-radar takeover of local GOP organizations by tea partyers has not been limited to Utah. The Republican Party of Maine, home to the GOP's two most moderate senators, has adopted a new platform with planks and rhetoric ripped from the tea party movement and the Ron Paul revolution. Among the planks are:
- Return to the principles of Austrian Economics, and redirect the economy back to one of incentives to save and invest.
- Discard political correctness, make public the declaration of war (Jihad), made against the U.S. on 23 Feb 1998, and fight the war against the United States by radical Islam to win.
- Defeat Cap and Trade, investigate collusion between government and industry in the global-warming myth, and prosecute any illegal collusion
See Maine Gop Platform, Pgs. 1-4
(Excerpt) Read more at voices.washingtonpost.com ...
“wack job pablum” & “nutcase stuff”
Sounds good to me.
Me too. In Maine of all places? There may be hope yet.
Well that there’s just plain crazy talk
anyone could see that
Saving money -— pshaw!
Spend spend spend like crazy
till Guam tips over ...
My rule of thumb for assessing political gatherings when I wasn’t there in person, is that the more shrill and disparaging the media analysis, the more I instinctively support whatever it was that went on.
Maine is one of two states that legally allows prison inmates to vote. That needs to end and I say that as a former felon myself.
Unfortunately the Tea Party movement in Maine, like the GOP in Maine will have little chance of success. Maine has long been a society based on hand outs and government support on everything. Olympia Snowe & Susan Collins are about as far right as they’ll ever get in Maine and to me these two are far left of center on most issues.
They are really a very good “contrary indicator”.
Woo-hoo!
Austrian Economics?
Click the link in the article and it will take you to the Ludwig von Mises webpage that explains it. Basically, he's not a big fan of Socialism.
>Click the link in the article and it will take you to the Ludwig von Mises webpage that explains it. Basically, he’s not a big fan of Socialism.
You must have been shooting for understatement of the year.
Jailbreak?
If these guys win Maine will do a total 360.
THAT was definitely NOT ripped off from the Ron Paul Revolution...
Next thing you know the WA Compost is going to tell me that CA has done the same thing!
Correct. The Jihad part is not Ron Paul stuff. But there is a whole lot there that is Ron Paul stuff.
I suspect that when you get Ron Paul people together with Tea Party people in a room and they come up with a platform, you’ll find that a lot of the specifics will sound like Ron Paul stuff. The Tea Party people don’t seem to have a long list of policy ideas and the Ron Paul people do. Most, but not all, of Ron Paul’s ideas do appeal to Tea Party people.
Ron Paul’s vision of Middle East policy is not shared by most Republicans.
I’m very happy with that outcome. Ron Paul + Tea Party on most domestic, role of government, etc issues. Tea Party + everyone else minus Ron Paul on Middle East issues.
The next thing the Ron Paul people could win on the foreign policy front would be the recognition that war is very expensive. A platform plank like “Although war is expensive, and we’re tired of the government taking our money and spending it however they feel like, we still want to kick ass over there in the Middle East” could work (of course, better written).
I am not convinced that Ron Paul's group really has as much to do with this as they, and their cheerleaders in certain circles, would like to think.
After all, most of what Ron Paul believes is already mainstream conservatism. He merely gets a lot of attention for the areas, like foreign policy and the Wars, where he strays from the conservative reservation.
But after all, what are the issues?
Fiscal conservatism, paying down debt, ending budget deficits, returning to a saving and investment economy? That's pretty standard conservative fare, nothing particularly Ronpaulian about it.
Sovereignty, opposition to the LOST treaty, etc.? Again, that's conservative stock.
Auditing the Fed? Again, I've heard of calls for that in conservative, non-Ron Paul circles for years.
Austrian economics? Again, the major ideas have largely already been supported by conservatives, even if they didn't really know what to call it.
It's like I've been saying for a year now - the Tea Parties are nothing new. They're didn't just appear out of nowhere. Nor did they originate with either Ron Paul or Rick Santelli. They are merely the reinvigouration of the same conservative grassroots activism that drove us in 1980 and 1994. Indeed, it's almost cyclical, the way this happens. We may well be doing this all over again in 2024 or 2028. Different name, same grassroots activism.
Other threads on the new Maine GOP Platform
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2509775/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2510048/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2510021/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2510886/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2510911/posts
Way to go Maine!
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