Posted on 02/09/2013 2:39:36 PM PST by JohnPDuncan
RON PAUL, Republican of Texas, has retired from the House, after winning more than two million presidential primary votes in 2012. He took the party’s libertarian wing from ignorable fringe to significant faction. His son, Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, is angling to lead that faction, very possibly as a presidential candidate himself.
The libertarian wing’s dissatisfaction with Mitt Romney led the Libertarian Party to earn 1.2 million votes in the presidential election for its candidate, the former New Mexico governor (and former Republican) Gary Johnson. That was its largest vote total ever. In at least seven national House and Senate races a Libertarian beat the spread between a winning Democrat and a losing Republican. From the Republican point of view, losing the libertarians can mean losing elections.
“There’s a whole swath of people not getting adequate attention from Republicans or Democrats,” Senator Paul told me recently. These are independent voters who want to seriously cut government spending the way the Tea Party faction does but who also want a “foreign policy more of defense and less offense,” as Senator Paul put it, and a “more socially tolerant attitude.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
No one is saying leave abortion to the states. How about congress defines life beginning at conception? something your candidate Bush and his GOP House/Senate between 2002-2007 failed to do.
a libertarian
I am not guilty by association because a candidate fails to live up to the party platform and his promises, any more than you will be if, in some alternate universe, a libertarian ever wins and does the same. I can only vote for them based on what they say and their records, not foresee their future. If they lie or dissimulate, I am fully prepared to denounce them, not defend them. Wouldn’t you do the same if your candidate betrayed his principles?
I really can’t think of a Republican I’d vote for right now for president, but I won’t vote for a libertarian either.
Actual conservatives. You know the people who are tired of the GOPe but do not want to replace them with another breed of RINO.
Ha! It is to laugh. Actual conservatives don't exist in the Republican Party or anywhere in government.
And your solution to that is electing libertarians?
Jeffersonian and Madisonian liberals. The people who thought through the rules.
And how do they differ from conservatives?
“Sorry Charlie, once your kids are adults, they make their own decisions. You often do not agree. It remains their decision.”
Unless you have to interact with a high adult on any level.
Then their decision rapidly, and often very negatively, affects me.
Because they have made themselves nuts.
“Because they have made themselves nuts.”
As is their right.
We had almost a decade of Washington controlled by "conservatives", and there is absolutely nothing to show for it other than possibly Sam Alito. Libertarians didn't wreck the country, spend us into debt, and fight a bunch of wars that the public got so tired of that they voted for a Marxist over a veteran POW.
I saw Rand Paul's speech at Heritage, and thought it was great. The people bitching about the lack of details are the ones who completely missed the general philosophy in the first place.
There are Freepers who still support archaic big government schemes like marijuana prohibition and endless war foreign wars, which just proves how meaningless the term "conservative" has become.
I have to deal with drunk people occasionally, but that doesn't give me the right to demand that the federal government ban alcohol.
Fake church? Fake representation I presume as well?
Where’s the detractors, those ‘fighting the good fight’? That would be a much easier list to compile, if you wish. Rino or not, when the GOP leadership and party head are out there blowing smoke up your ass, and nobody else from the party is willing to lift their voice(s) against the tide....THAT becomes the party line.
Now, as to your misconception that someone ‘paid’ into SS and the like, you and I know they are simply taxes. As usual, if Congress had to abide by the same laws they pass upon us, those vote-buying schemes would be illegal and they’d be hauled off to jail. No, no one is owed penny one from the Treasury, your point is moot. You are a fool to believe any promises coming from D.C. when they either debase the $$ in your wallet or pay you back using your own $$, many times both.
My point still stands. Your party is lead by quislings, and have nobody that has stood up and fought against; why jeopardize their ‘job’, perks and ‘prestige’. No, conservatives lost it with the constant re-voting of the ‘go along to get along’ crowds.
One only need to look now how Rubio, even one from FL such as I, is being pushed into the ‘next in line’...and actively arguing against the Rule of Law to grant amnesty.
The conservative/GOP brand it dead, it has not, nor has it cared, to voice for Liberty and Freedom. Let it die the way of the Whigs and might their ashes bring about a new discovery of our Founders as the (L), and even Constitution Party, have argued. This is not the time to prop up the dead, ala Weekend at Bernies, in some wishful hope those at the top see the errors of their ways.
So, you’re going to cut off your nose to spite your face yet again?
Why the question mark after ‘fake church’? A church that carries out a homosexual marriage, is not a Christian church, because it is promoting an act the Bible SPECIFICALLY labels an abomination. Does this make sense to you?
Let me put it another way. A clothing store that does not sell clothing is not a clothing store, even if they call themselves one. Get it?
The conservative movement has people in leadership positions who are not conservatives... so what? We know that. We vote against them whenever we can, and we have toppled a lot of them in recent years.
You think if the libertarian party became a major party, all of its members would be pure, flawless libertarians? You simply fail to grasp the concept of a ‘politician’.
I would vote for Ted Cruz. So far, I like what I see.
Your comment presumes the alternative was the better choice, when we know Mitt was (just barely) Dem-lite. The father of O’Care, 2nd A infringement, gay acceptance, installed Dems in positions of gov’t instead of GOP....the list goes on.
Next you’ll be telling me a GOP controlled Congress and one in the W.H. didn’t run up the debt and expand gov’t when they had 100% control? I suspect I’d get the ‘they followed the rules’ BS, instead of running roughshod over the opposition like the Dems have done EVERY SINCE TIME they can.
I guess to they deserved, nay DEMANDED, I vote for them just because they had an (R) after their name instead of EARNING the same.
We will have to agree to disagree. No third party can make it thanks to the two party cabal ensuring the victory of one or the other after Perot got 15% of the vote. There is simply no way a third party can overcome those obstacles to get on the ballot in all states. Notice that the two party cabal exempted themselves from those very restrictions.
The only way is to take back the Republican party. Even Ron Paul and his son understand this. The TEA party is making consistant gains. Yes there are loses, but there are also overwhelming victories. It will take time but we will win.
This is probably why there are so few libertarian politicians; it is a true ideology with core principles, whereas "conservative" is really nothing more than a buzzword.
When "conservative" politicians can get away with voting for non-stop foreign wars, SOPA, the NDAA, raising the debt limit, the Patriot Act, and continuing the Drug War, you don't really even have an ideology any longer.
I think we should bury the word conservative along with the GOP. It's a truly meaningless term, and even if you take it at its basic etymological definition, there's very little in American politics I'd like to "conserve".
The utter audacity with which you lie!
Sorry, I've been out for a few hours, but I'm here again checking in on your whine fest and I see this? That's the basis of libertarianism. EVERYTHING is a 10th amendment issue with you Paultards. Especially abortion.
And as we know - you libs hide behind the Constitution as you argue for abortion, legalized drugs, queer marriages and more.
And I said it before, and I'll say it again. Stop trying to label Rand Paul as a libertarian. He's not perfect, but at least he is not his father.
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