Frank discussion re our loss to Obama/Romney and the future direction of FR and tea party movement

My FRiends, we might as well face the reality that we the combined pro-life conservative movement and tea party coalition have lost this round (the presidential election) in the larger battle to reclaim our constitution and our inalienable rights. Rove, Romney and the GOP-e have successfully destroyed and driven off each and every pro-life conservative tea party candidate from the race and all have surrendered to the Romney camp. It is no secret that Romney is not one of us. There is absolutely no doubt that he has never accomplished a single conservative thing in his entire political career (one term as liberal governor of liberal Massachusetts and six years campaigning for president). In Massachusetts, he undeniably championed abortion, gay rights, global warming, gun control, big government statist mandated/socialized health care programs, liberal judges, TARP, bailouts, stimulus spending, debt limit increases, etc, and even though he's recently claimed a complete reversal in political beliefs and no longer despises pro-life conservatives or the time of Reagan-Bush, I still don't trust him. He still stubbornly holds on to some of his statist beliefs, like global warming, gays in the military, RomneyCare, stimulus spending, etc, so there is no way I can vote for him or join Cain, Perry, Bachmann, Newt or any others who are endorsing him. But I will not act on my prior promises that I would actively campaign against him if he wins the nomination. Our combined movement is already torn and splintered and is going to have to be mended if we're going to have any impact whatsoever against the liberal/progressives and statists after the election. To that end I propose a TRUCE among our conservative forces during the remainder of this election cycle.

We conservatives have already lost the presidency to either the Dems or the GOP-e, and if we tear the tea party apart, if we tear the pro-life movement apart, if we tear FR apart then we lose it all. It's far more important that we re-unite and live to fight another day. Even if we can't vote for a true conservative for the presidency, it's doubly important that we all turn out on election day or sooner and drag our friends, neighbors, relatives, co-workers, etc, to the polls to vote straight conservative for every slot on our ballots. The only way we can win our freedom back is to vote out the liberal progressives and vote in as many liberty loving conservatives as is humanly possible into every elected office at every level of government all across this great land. To prevent a total loss to the dems or GOP-e, we must continue the tea party rebellion into November and beyond. Whatever else you may do, you must turn out and vote straight tea party conservative down ticket!!

We must continue expanding our inroads into the state houses and into every elective office in the land. We must continue building on our majority in the house and we must retake the senate!! We must help the conservative governors and state legislatures to fully restore the ninth and tenth amendments and reclaim the real political power away from the federal usurpers and return it to the states and the people per the constitution!! This way, regardless of who wins the presidency, we can cut his unconstitutional expansionist movements off at the knees. And if any executive, civil officer or judge dares commit impeachable offenses, we must hold the majorities so we can impeach and remove them from office!!

And we must salvage and rebuild and continue strengthening our conservative pro-life, pro-family, pro-gun, pro-borders, pro-constitution, pro-small government, pro-defense, pro-liberty movements and our tea party coalition. And we must stop ripping each other apart!!

As far as FR's finances go, we're in the same boat as the rest of the economy and will have to make do with what we can raise. Fortunately, the big debts we ran up a couple years ago have been paid off. We borrowed approx $20,000 a few years ago from two FReepers to fund our national convention, plus we ran up another $20,000 in legal fees during the last couple of years fighting off Righthaven. But those are now behind us and paid off. We also did quite a bit of traveling each year for the last three years on cross country tea party tours, but I think we can now cut that back and remove it from our budget requirements. If we're fortunate enough to not incur any additional legal costs or equipment costs (other than what we've already planned), and cut the travel and a few other areas, we should be able to tighten our belts enough to weather the storm even if we fail to reach our short term fundraising goals.

Whatever the outcome of the elections, we are prepared to roar into 2013 with the tea party chewing up liberal/progressives and RINOs and raising hell in our never ending fight for liberty!!

Sounds great at first glance, but detail by detail review reveals that this is simply Dr. Paul trying to garner the military vote.

* Make securing our borders the top national security priority.

This is a general statement that any candidate can say; notice that no specific proposals are made that will rid the nation of muslims and traffickers of humans and drugs. Also, there are enormous and growing financial ties between mideast terror/caliphate states and the narco-states of Central and South America, which offer easy access to the U.S. If we can't shut down the dollars flowing to Venezuela in exchange for oil (Citgo gas stations continue to enjoy legal U.S. business status (Hugo and Iran say "thanks for supporting us")), there is no way that the narco-terror-connection would not be enriched under a Dr. Paul administration. Are the Central and South American nations with us or against us ? Quite a complex picture. Think NAFTA, tractor trailers bringing tons of Mexican produce to U.S. markets, U.S. manufacturers building facilities in Mexico, etc. Illegal drugs continue to find their way to America - billions of dollars worth every year - despite the U.S. government's herculean efforts to stop them. Exactly how can a U.S. President, at this point, stop the out-of-control drug cartels that now are running rampant in Mexico ? Legalizing drugs would simply give them more power and money. Mr. Paul has this sort of zen-opposites-kind-of plan; somehow closing the border with Mexico, but legalizing drugs in the U.S. Basically, U.S. big business-big-government, through making practically every rogue-regime, tryannical, narco-state, terrorist-state and communist state a trading partner, has made modern technology available to them - and quite cheaply, without them having to invent or produce a single thing themselves. They can figure out how to put a bomb in their underwear to kill innocent people and sneak on an airplane, but they can't figure out how to be friendly and productive enough to feed themselves.

* Avoid long and expensive land wars that bankrupt our country by using constitutional means to capture or kill terrorist leaders who helped attack the U.S. and continue to plot further attacks.

Sounds great, but killing terrorist leaders is only a temporary setback for the overall war between islam and non-islamic civilization; it does not do anything to stop the creation of new terrorist leaders. They are created by the public speech and teachings of immams the world over, who continue to press home the ideas of hating Jews, Christians, atheists, etc. The hatred of Judeo-Christian civilization, America, Western Civilization and any sort of atheist can be heard every week at over 2,000 mosques inside the U.S.

* Guarantee our intelligence community’s efforts are directed toward legitimate threats and not spying on innocent Americans through unconstitutional power grabs like the Patriot Act.

I don't want the government to spy on innocent Americans, but I do want them to spy on the mosque a few miles from my house. I know that they are working towards a day when my State - and every other one - will be overrun with muslim politicians who plan on (and already are) instituting sharia law. islam should be banned in the U.S. as the treasonous operation that it is. Trouble is, without such banning, and without the ability to spy on them, those "nice people" continue to plot future attacks and send money to terror operations/nations. At the end of the day, law enforcement has always had the ability to gather information which indicts someone and then bring them up on charges if they see fit, and ultimately they must decide whether they will bring charges against innocent people who are simply political enemies (abusing their office) or whether they will only use the information they gain to bring charges against those who truly are breaking the law as far as they can tell. The enemy is now making use of our secure and mobile communications system, i.e., the cell phone - even disposable pre-paid phone cards. Terror plans can be securely transmitted via throway phone numbers. The ideal path, as I've said, would be to actually engage islam; we would not have to have the clandestine spying then. But since that's not politically going to happen very soon, again, we can't sit back and limit our own spying efforts. When spying starts targeting anything other than islam, or any other American-existential threat, then those targets need to be left alone. As it stands now, I am more concerned with foreign powers that try to break into my computer on a daily basis than American spying on me, then again, I am not plotting a terror attack and the spying would reveal material that would bore the spy to tears. Of great concern to me, as well, is Eric Holder's Justice department which is politicized to the point of criminality. Notice the issue is not the laws, but the fact that the Justice Department is ignoring them.

* End the nation-building that is draining troop morale, increasing our debt, and sacrificing lives with no end in sight.

Yes, I agree that military nation-building is not a good avenue, it's based on immediate-post-WWII thinking and most people are too young to remember WWII and today is a much different situation than that time. IMHO, the first thing to work on with so-called "backward" nations is morals and therefore missionaries should be the first ones in. The House hearing by Rep. Smith today on C-Span demonstrates that the call for improvements in the Chinese government's treatment of it's citizens is largely driven by Christians. We should not trade with a nation until it's morals are on solid ground, IMHO.

* Follow the Constitution by asking Congress to declare war before one is waged.

This would make the U.S. hang back far too long to be effective and history has demonstrated that this causes wars to be very long and costly in every way. Congress does not act quickly on complex political issues. And today, Congress is far more "bought off" by lobbyists than they were 200 years ago, so their focus is not on making stands on geo-political issues, but passing legislation desired by their key support groups. Consequently, all sorts of regional tyrant actions around the world would be happening with the U.S. on the sidelines. The present system - if the President actually follows it - gives the U.S. the flexibility to stomp on problems quickly if necessary without them becoming a domestic political football. Of course, if the President drags out the war for nation-building, and then defies Congress in keeping the war going, then the present system does not work well. We simply need to limit our Presidential frontrunner nominations to those who have the right mindset of just nipping things in the bud and not being weak, but balancing that with knowing when the military targets are destroyed, it's time to bring the military home. They're not a construction company, they're a destruction company.

* Only send our military into conflict with a clear mission and all the tools they need to complete the job – and then bring them home.

Yes, I agree. However, getting Congress to buy in to any cause of war other than a large-scale attack where thousands of Americans are killed in that one attack - simply does not happen. So this claim really means that only when there is a catastrophic attack would the Dr. Paul administration do anything. Little attacks, we'd just have to grin and bear them. We have allies that we're close with to varying degrees: Japan, Australia, some Europe, Western Europe, etc. If one of them gets hit with an all-out invasion from a large foe where we only have a few months warning of trouble, we would never get ourselves over there in time to be of any help. South Korea; they'd just be overrun. No more LG electronics, sorry, they're "owned" by the Chinese now. Ooops, I meant to say North Koreans.

* Ensure our veterans receive the care, benefits, and honors they have earned when they return.

Yes, every decent American wants that; I have not heard any candidate say they are against that.

* Revitalize the military for the 21st century by eliminating waste in a trillion-dollar military budget.

Yes, every decent American wants that; I have not heard any candidate say they are against that.

* Prevent the TSA from forcing Americans to either be groped or ogled just to travel on an airplane and ultimately abolish the unconstitutional agency.

Personally, I refuse to use commericial aviation because of this. However, what is his plan to keep alibaba off the plane ? If he does not say "profiling" then his plan will fail.

* Stop taking money from the middle class and the poor to give to rich dictators through foreign aid.

Sounds a bit progressive in terms of only speaking of middle class and poor - is that a nice little code for young people that he will continue to "tax the rich". Tax all at the same rate. As far as no foreign aid, I agree 100%. Other candidates who were reasonably conservative agreed with stopping so-called foreign aid. One has to realize that some of those dollars are sent back to the U.S. in the form of sales for U.S. companies that export, so there would be political lobbying pressure to overcome. This is why conservatives seek "pure" conservative candidates because they know political pressure must be overcome by a President with principles.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.