Posted on 09/30/2013 9:24:47 AM PDT by shego
During his Ironman 21-hour speech, Sen. Ted Cruz read excerpts from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, name-dropped "libertarians" at least six times, and yielded to Sen. Rand Paul, who invoked Frederic Bastiat's "What is Seen and Unseen," a favorite among libertarians.
Ted Cruz, who retained remarkable composure over the long night, seems in all things deliberate. Political leaders seem to have become more comfortable talking about libertarians, even identifying themselves as such. Libertarians may have reached a tipping point within the Republican Party.
Last week, a FreedomWorks study on public opinion found that libertarian views within the Republican Party are at the highest point in a decade, today representing 41 percent of Republican voters....
We define libertarians as those who favor "smaller government" and think government should not promote "traditional values." Using this method, FreedomWorks data show that 41 percent of Republicans and Republican leaning independents are libertarian today.
Two separate data sources, Gallup and ANES, show the same trend: that libertarian views are at the highest point in a decade....
Of course, as I've have noted previously, not all these libertarians self-identify as such and many don't know the word. But even that seems to be changing, and it's not just Ted Cruz.
Sen. Rand Paul calls himself a "libertarian-leaning Republican." Glenn Beck now considers himself libertarian, saying "I'm a lot closer to Penn Jillette than I am to Chuck Hagel." Matt Drudge recently tweeted his frustration with Republicans on Syria, saying it's now "authoritarian vs. libertarian." According to FreedomWorks' poll, only 10 percent of Republicans "don't know" the word libertarian, compared to 27 percent nationally.
The data confirm that libertarian views may well have reached a tipping point in the Republican Party.
(Excerpt) Read more at cato.org ...
VERY well said Freedom462.
Brevity is the soul of wit.
FR comes in all shapes and sizes. We all don't have to agree on Everything (show me one thread where every single Freeper engaged in collective nodding of heads) We hardly ever agree on anything here. That is what makes us great.
On FR we have Conservatives, Big and Small L Libertarians, even Democrats who yearn to be on the right.
You want expand the Base? Maybe we all need to learn that rushing to government to solve a problem often creates even more, the sooner we all stand against that, the sooner we will have a untied front.
What a typical bowl of mush, and totally avoiding the actual issue, libertarians trying to move the GOP left on social issues and destroy conservatism.
You are exactly right. And Ted Cruz is a pro-life, pro real marriage conservative, not a libertarian, except on fiscal policies. Rand Paul on the other hand............
In other words, conservative on economics.
These are gut wrenching times for arch-conservatives, and this IS that web site, so pooping where we eat is not going to happen.
Yes, I want cohesion around our pick and want it EARLY, and not to not go wobbly on him. I want all the help we can get from the Libertarians to do just that.
Our pick is going to be Cruz, but grant it, disillusioned Democrats and moderate Republicans will tend toward Christie first and Rand Paul, second. That is, if dems are inclined to switch at all. Paul reportedly gets points with young adults generally and that means energy, and a good ground game always follows energy.
I don’t expect to see America restored to her glory days of pre George HW Bush, or to ever see the Christian nation I grew up in, again. Americans swamped into the workforce, pleasure and entertainment and failed utterly at vigilance. Irretrievable, probably.
It’s a question of how far do I, as a voter, want to fall in this last chance election, before all choices in the future equally ascend from hell and I can’t vote for anyone.
Then, along came Cruz, and there is hope.
no surprise to me.
libertarians, ruling class republicans, leftists all their views converge in the limit to godlessness.
Yes. I like Cruz. Here’s a comparision of him and Obozo.
Obozo has no liking for Cruz, the least reason of which is because Cruz is Republican. Here are a few other factors: Cruz is academically superior. Cruz graduated cum laude from Princeton. Not the case for Obozo. Cruz graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. Not so for Obozo. Cruz’s mental prowess has been recognized by Allan Dershowitz (who by all accounts is as liberal than Obozo) who said that Cruz is one of the most brilliant legal minds that he has ever seen. His actual quote was that “Cruz was off-the-charts brilliant.” Not so Obozo, who has to look at a teleprompter to put together a coherent sentence. Cruz clerked for the Chief Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court, Justice William Renquist, one of the most coveted positions for any young lawyer right out of law school. Not so Obozo. The liberal tin horns in Washington along with the liberal media try to tout Cruz as some kind of nut. The reason? They are scared to death of him.
Perhaps Obozo and the other libs don’t like him because he worked on the Florida lawsuit for George W. Bush against Gore. Perhaps it is because Cruz is a practicing Christian. Perhaps it’s because Cruz ran his Senate campaign as a Republican and still garnered 40% of the Hispanic vote in Texas. Perhaps its because Cruz is against same-sex “marriage.” For whatever reason, Obozo seems jealous of Cruz’s legal successes. What has the teleprompter in chief done in the legal profession? Obozo was not a professor at the University of Chicago as many of his supporters dishonestly tout, but was a “guest lecturer”, an enormous difference.
Geeeze ansell, Libertarian, Pro Abortion, Against Conservatism, all in one sentence, about ME!.. But, after what I said, and I meant what I said, I can see how one would see it that way..
Here’s my take, and I hope to mitigate my discomfort, I have been in my own business for more than 50 years, and during those years I have had to reevaluate my positions on many occasions, sometimes to my everlasting regret, but never without a higher, and honorable purpose..
I won’t bore you with my humble beginnings, but lets just say I am the luckiest man alive, but in my background is a few victories that came after my biggest defeats..
Survival, ranks among the leading causes for my acquiescence, and it was always with a plan to resume my efforts to return to my original goals, and I always did..
Many of my most devastating, and demoralizing, setbacks where preludes to my most grand successes, but it was no accident.. I consider myself a practical survivalist.. If I take a step backward, I have a plan to leap 3 steps forward on my next opportunity..
So, I don’t know what anyone else thinks about me or what you or anyone else has to say about it, but, don’t dismiss it out of hand.. I was deeply involved, money and time, in the CONTRACT WITH AMERICA strategy, that brought us back from oblivion in the mid 90’s, working in Newt’s Kitchen Kabinet, around the clock until we took back the Congress..
I am suggesting a strategy to do it again, if we think ahead and stop the infighting, temporally setting our strongly held differences aside to WIN the end game..
Paul gives me the Heebiegeebies, and Christie is a major disappointment, so I’m in the Cruz camp, at least for now.. We still have time to build a team around this great guy, but as you say what happens when he tries to expand his base.. GULP
Currently he is singing to the choir, What will our own faithful, do to him in the primaries when he speaks to a wider audience, as he must do to win by enough to overcome the dependable fraud.. That is the RUB.. :)
I'll take a libertarian FedGov over what we have currently; there's something wrong when people cannot answer the question "name one thing the [federal] government should not be involved in?"
He means that if the finances aren't taken care of the US will collapse. Period.
Why do you consider abortion irrelevant? Do you think it is irrelevant for the people being aborted?
Because if the US collapses there will be no law, or enforcement will be spotty and spread thin, and likely there will be both internal and external strife/war.
Thus, in a state of civil war and/or invasion, abortion questions will be decided at a VERY local level, and state and federal laws won’t make a difference
.
Wow, another honest libertarian, you are in for the full libertarian hard left social agenda.
You just got homosexuals and the recognition of gay marriage in the military, the libertarian dream of truly open borders is getting closer to a reality, and you have partial birth full term abortion, you must be in hog heaven seeing so many gains from the libertarian perspective.
To bad it all leads to even more anti-conservative economics, voters calling for more government, not less.
I don’t know what you expect from a conservative, you tell me that you are pro-abortion and that we need to quit fighting the culture/social war and become rinos.
That is just an old description of a liberal/libertarian, anti-conservative rino/libertarian.
You even do it calling it “a higher, and honorable purpose..”.
Romney must have been like a hero to you.
Short and sweet.
Throw in other libertarian positions like liberal immigration policies, legalizing of drugs, letting Iran get a nuke, same-sex marriage...and I think you drop way below 41%.
Every single law that exists is based on a moral viewpoint. Morality is utterly and totally inseparable from the act of making laws and running a government. We make drunk driving illegal because we consider it immoral. Iran makes a woman showing her hair illegal because they consider it immoral. Saying “social issues” shouldn’t matter in law is a meaningless statement because everyone defines that term differently. You have to tell us which issues you want enforced one way or another under the law and which you want the law to ignore.
You are something, now I’m a Liberal, etc, and I think you are a troll, that is here to disrupt our efforts to win.. I think you are a commie, paid troll, that wants us to fight.. This board knows me and you can’t slander my name, but now you have outed yourself.. TROLL ALERT!
No; reread the post — I'm for [FedGov] people who believe that the government's role is limited, extremely limited.
You just got homosexuals and the recognition of gay marriage in the military, the libertarian dream of truly open borders is getting closer to a reality, and you have partial birth full term abortion, you must be in hog heaven seeing so many gains from the libertarian perspective.
And how is any of that different from the status quo? — I can work with someone trying to convince them some legitimate government function is, well, legitimate… but have you tried convincing someone that illegitimate government function is illegitimate?
You yourself are an excellent example of the later: I can show you how Constitutionally the War on Drugs is illegitimate, and it won't matter. I can show you how it fails even by *spit* precedence, citing the 18th Amendment, and it won't matter. I can tell you about how the War on Drugs has eroded most of the Bill of Rights, and it won't matter.
Why?
Because you've already decided that the Federal Government is utterly correct in its righteous War on Drugs and, since I don't perfectly align with your view, I am an evil heretic that must be absolutely wrong!
To bad it all leads to even more anti-conservative economics, voters calling for more government, not less.
And when has the Republican party given us less government? Not in my political lifetime, that's for sure&hallip; and I'll be eligible to run for President in the next go-`round — in all that time, a whole generation, the federal government's size and scope have never been significantly reduced… and certainly not by Republicans despite what they say. (But I explain why that is below.)
Title: DELAY OBAMACARE A YEAR OR WE WILL SHUT IT DOWN - BOEHNER MAKES MOVEQuestion: can we trust Boehner to stand firm?
>> The delay isn't a complete cave. One year expires October 1, 2014, just a little more than a month before the next election.
>
> Wrong. The delay will be the requirement to have insurance by January 1, 2015, after the next election cycle. The October 1st date is the opening of the exchanges. In other words, the democrats won't have to eat this monstrocity until the 2016 elections, when it will be too late to turn back. The majority of companies will have already abandoned provisions for provided health insurance to their employees, and the only "reasonable" fix will be single payer (socialized medicine). Nice going Republicans.Ah, but the problem you have is that you don't understand: the Republicans want the corrupt/illegitimate power and tools that the Democrats are using… this is why there has been no vigorous pursuance of the IRS-scandal, the NSA-scandal, the Benghazi-scandal, or the Fast & Furious state-sponsored terrorism incident. It is why, for virtually all of the Republican-party's platform planks, the party never pursues them: financial accountability would force them to relinquish power, lessened tax-burdens (via simplification/normalization of the tax-code) would be surrendering corporate influence and power, illegalizing abortion would mean that they could not use abortion to feed the moral indignation of its base for votes, repeal of the GCA and/or NFA would mean that they could not use the fear of gun-grabbing quite as easily, and so on and so forth.
No, the Republican party perceives that it is best benefited by saying it is against the Democrats, but allowing most of what the Democrats want to pass: in the end, this grants them power, whereas fighting and failing would reduce them to political nothings which is their greatest fear. Thus it is that every Democrat win is really a Republican win, this is
The Tao of Republican Orthodoxy
[Direct Link]
So you support homosexual equality and marriage in the military and in immigration and abortion and the rest of the libber agenda, what are you doing here among these conservatives?
That was in your pro-drug post as you were trying to persuade us to give up conservatism and become more rino, more libertarian, drop the social issues.
Of course you are rino/libertarian, you sure aren't conservative, like I said Romney must have been like a hero to you.
Scratch that, I just looked at some of your posting history, Romney must have been more like a proabortion God of rinoism to you.
You even blogged on Romney. ""As a staunch Conservative, Romney is MY MAN!"".
You are really out there, no wonder libertarianism is so seductive to you.
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