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To: Jim Robinson
I'd like to offer an RLC forum here on FR.

Jim, with all due respect, you have an uphill struggle ahead if you expect to find many other activist Republicans who are as devoted to liberty as you are. Kind of like finding black conservatives, only a little tougher.

It's not that all the folks deeply committed to seeing a rollback of government in our lives are in the Libertarian Party. Obviously, they're not or we're in deep doo-doo.

But the very few Republicans -- who remain Republicans after years of disenfranchisement and obscurity -- that truly believe in personal liberty are just not likely to join up in a political organization that goes so counter to the prevailing orthodoxy. It puts them at risk if they ever plan to go somewhere in the party.

Or, putting it another way, the party activists who plan to ascend to the State Central Committee or the RNC won't touch the RLC, even if they agree with its positions (which few of them do) because they're looking for support from the "broad middle."

The RLC may have decent ideas, and they do, but as far as gaining a foothold in the Republican Party is concerned, it just ain't gonna happen. The numbers are too much against us.

I gave up on the Republicans in '96 and haven't looked back. Friends of like persuasion who stayed with the party are now ostracized for not falling in line with the Bushies. "We're at war, don't ya know? We can't get all wrapped up in ideological battles now!"

I hate to say it, but chances of reforming the GOP are about the same as reforming the government schools.

16 posted on 07/20/2002 7:20:39 PM PDT by logician2u
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To: logician2u
The RLC may have decent ideas, and they do, but as far as gaining a foothold in the Republican Party is concerned, it just ain't gonna happen. The numbers are too much against us. ...I gave up on the Republicans in '96 and haven't looked back.

Good thing you haven't looked back, because socialism is gainin' on ya, and big-L Libertarianism has gone nowhere. Meanwhile, the RLC is making a difference. "Our guy" offed the Establishment's nominee for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in California; "Our guy" Ron Paul is liberty's only dependable voice in Congress; "Our guys" in Kentucky nabbed eight statewide posts in the last election...

See, the "numbers" you reference don't include the vast body of disaffected potential voters such as yourself. The RLC is a seed, and as it grows it will do so not by converting the Riordanites already in the party but by attracting fresh blood: folks like you, and the "silent majority".

Join up! You can make a difference.
25 posted on 07/20/2002 9:47:45 PM PDT by RightOnTheLeftCoast
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