Posted on 02/22/2010 6:28:24 PM PST by presidio9
Over the weekend, Ron Paul won the CPAC straw poll for president. Many pundits immediately dismissed the win, for a lot of reasons. (The Atlantic did a roundup of all the "he's irrelevant" comments.) My take on Ron Paul is this: He says a lot of off-the-wall stuff, but his bottom line is that he's a limited-government libertarian. And he's not Mitt Romney, the establishment GOP choice. I think that's why he won.
Joe Scarborough likes to say that if you look at where Ross Perot did well in 1992, those are the same places that tea party candidates are doing well. That may be, but I think there's some overlap between Ron Paul supporters and the tea partiers, at least some of the younger ones. Ross Perot has a website, PerotCharts, that illustrates the government's fiscal responsibility; but Ron Paul supporters have an interactive site for those who want to meet up at campaign rallies (with over 100,000 people either already members or interested), and according to the timeline posted, it looks like many of them have joined in the last two years.
I came across a bit of a tea party manifesto, if you want to call it that, in Politics Daily on Sunday: "A Grassroots View of the Tea Party," written by Roy Nix, a golf pro in Florida. Here's how he describes the average tea partier:
"They don't dream of power, and they don't dream of telling their neighbors how to worship, how to spend their money, what kind of car to buy, what kind of food to eat and how to save the environment. They expect their neighbors to decide all of those things for their own families.
"They don't want big government, they don't want socialistic policies and they don't want to spend more money for things they don't need. They don't see Washington as Robin Hood, robbing the rich to help the poor, but as the Sheriff of Nottingham--taking their tax money and giving it to big business while we starve.
"They don't want to have to march in the streets, and they don't want to be 'activists' in politics because they have lives to live.
"They don't hate immigrants, but they don't like lawbreakers who come here illegally. They don't mind helping people, but they are out of money and want to help those closest to home first until their bills are paid off ...
"These lawmakers have forgotten what 'representative' means, and they end up in Washington doing what their party tells them to do, rather than what their constituents tell them to do ... And that's what's motivating so many who've joined the Tea Party movement."
Nix hits the nail on the head, in terms of the anti-Nanny State, limited government message of the tea partiers, and how all incumbents, not just Democrats, are at risk: "The Tea Party is sending a genuine grass-roots message to both Democrats and Republicans. And they'd better listen up and learn fast," he concludes. A New York Times/CBS poll from earlier this month supports this: Only 8 percent of respondents think that most incumbent members of Congress deserve to be re-elected; a whopping 81 percent said it's time to "give new people a chance." That's putting it nicely--I think if the election were held today, it would be a tidal wave against incumbents.
Yes 73 million dollars in earmarks and this lefty from this David Gergen run left wing rag calls him a tea party leader. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,508604,00.html
agreed - this means nothing
How about people who want to banish the IRS, banish the Fed Reserve (the dems favorite tool to pay for social programs), get us out of the U.N. (and the U.N. out of America), eliminate most or all firearms laws, eliminate all federal agencies/admins and cut the depts to the bone, eliminate the native born citizenship clause for illegals, defend our SOUTHERN border, draw down and eliminate all social welfare programs, eliminate welfare for illegals, etc. etc.
That’s Ron Paul and most of his supporters feel the same way. I guess those aren’t conservative ideas though, according to your line of logic.
Ron Paul said it at a debate. Rudy Gulliani put him in his place so yes Ron Paul is a truther.
Correction: Bathtub Boy is freaking out. Matthews is freaking out. Maddow is freaking out. A couple of dozen columinsts that nobody ever heard of are freaking out. Ron Paul supporters are probably freaking out. I don't think any real conservatives gave it a second thought. The ones I heard from (who don't care) include Rush, Levin, Ingraham, Hannity, Bennett, Medved, Prager, Gibson, Hewitt, etc.
There’s the earmark distortion again. The money is already taken from you by the feds! If it doesn’t get spent in your district, it goes into the “fund” and then you’ll never see it. (Though I’m guessing it goes into some pols pockets). Any pol that says they “never voted for an earmark” is just lying.
Agreed. So does the libertarian party. My point is that the libertarian philosophy is not limited to USA and if you go to its roots, you will see that anyone for liberty must necessarily oppose baby murder. On drug legalization, I was merely agreeing with the earlier post that the libertarians and conservatives differ on the issue.
I am with you on having scant respect for people who claim that they know babies have life and then do nothing about protecting such life.
I am all for smashing Islamofascists, but I find it hard to believe that those who support various Islamofascist dictators andonce hooked up with the bin Ladens actually oppose radical Islam. This doublespeak is a neocon game and not a paleoconservative idea.
I’m sorry that you are legally blind (I’m also disabled), but the guy’s point was that Libertarains WHERE HE LIVED seemed to think Bush was behind 9/11, and you said “no we don’t.” He does not indicate where he’s posting from on his home page. He could be posting from Berkeley for all we know. So unless you happen to know him personally, and happen to live in the same place, your opinion is completely invalid.
BTW, I don’t give a crap about typos. Faulty logic is a different matter. Liberaltarianism is faulty logic come to life as a political philosophy.
Seriously? You have one of the best “about” pages on FR! Good job, Buddy!
The man is fraud .
Ron has always loved his earmarks for HIS BUDDIES and this Lefty has the nerve to associates this scam artists with the TEA Party movement which is based on stopping reckless spending!
Indeed. Actually, I would say the libs you listed are attempting to freak out conservatives/republicans who are not Ron Paul supporters into thinking their movement is falling into the hands of the Ron Paul movement. This is the problem conservatives have now, because we are 2 years out from the next presidential election, and w/o any real idea of who can possibly beat Obama, liberals will attempt (not necessarily succeed at) to fill that vacuum for us.
Thank you once again. Yes, it’s true.
It’s not an excuse. The budget takes your money BEFORE it’s earmarked. They don’t vote for the earmarks before the budget. If your local rep doesn’t bring it back to your district, then your money goes to the “fund”. Would you rather your money be spent by pubbies on at least something that might be of use or doled out to dems for “social programs” (i.e. ACORN)?
Multiple votes are allowed and the students manned the voting table(s).
Isn’t that normal for an election?.... LOL
Vote early, vote often or as many times as you can get paid to do so....
I saw Ron Paul events in SF and Sacramento and both were a pack of radical leftists uses this fool as a way to
get entry into the GOP events.
Read all about their strategy here.
http://original.antiwar.com/doug-bandow/2007/05/04/invasion-of-the-party-snatchers/
The point is my kids will be paying off the debt racked up by Ron Paul for his budddies and the other crooks in Congress.
He is crook so stop following this fraud.
I’m sorry, what? did you say something? I was looking at your...eyes. yeah.
Even tho I personally am not a "truther", whatever happened to the important phrase made by Glenn Beck: "QUESTION WITH BOLDNESS"? Are there certain subjects that we are not supposed to talk about?
Listen, I think libertarianism is for idiots, so it annoys me to have to explain it to you. But in the hopes of ending this conversation, I will.
The core libertarian philosophy has to be that it's only "baby murder" if you accept the fact that its a baby. If you think you have an inconvenient "blob of flesh" inside of you, its medical proceedure. If everybody but you believes its a baby, the government is still imposing on your life when it denies you an abortion. How can anybody else or the government impose their morality on you? Can they PROVE life begins at conception? Some forms of libertarianism claim to support life, but they are really paying lip service, or are too powerless within their own party to do anything worthwhile about it.
And, BTW, I could care less about the views of libertarian parties outside the US. They are even less meaningless than the ones Ron Paul confronts me with every four years.
I am all for smashing Islamofascists, but I find it hard to believe that those who support various Islamofascist dictators andonce hooked up with the bin Ladens actually oppose radical Islam.
You're dangerously close to tinfoil hat territory here. Most of the relationships you're talking about were pre-9/11. The dictators we're "supporting" now are a product of the fact that we can't sustain wars all over the globe at the same time.
LOL. Heretofore, I thought vote early and often was reserved for democrats, but I guess it applies to Paultards as well.
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