one more reason why Republicans are a mess...
Gary North with this observation (among many) from his column on LewRockwell.com....
Ron Paul faces this tactic [opposition to principled candidates who happen to get elected] this year. He has not had a challenger inside the Republican Party for years. He always defeats the Democrat. This year, there is a challenger for the Party's nomination. Paul has had to pull back from the national campaign until the Texas primary on March 4.
This is not random. The same phenomenon forced Kucinich out of the Presidential race last August: a challenger inside the Democrat Party.
The Republican Party supporting a primary opponent's bid against one of its own presidential candidates! Before this, North notes that the parties have quite a bit of control over who runs. (See also: Andrew Horne's short Senate "bid".)
Amazingly, the Republicans ran primary opponents against Ron Paul the first few times he had been elected. This rarely happens. For example, remember when Bush campaigned for RINO Specter when conservative Toomey was his primary opponent a few years back? The party supports party guys-- especially those who are incumbents. But they continue to fight Ron Paul.
For those of you holding out hope that the Republicans will govern conservatively anytime soon, your faith is misplaced.
posted by Eric Schansberg @ 12:34 PM
2 Comments
2 Comments:
I visited Paul's website and I really agree with his thoughts on the issues. I have looked at his issues section and agree with his opinions and plans.
His mistakes during this election were his anti-war stance without some humility, and his inability to verbally communicate his plans for our foreign policy. He engaged in a tactic of differentiating himself from the other guys on stage via the war, when instead he should have been specific in his plans for our nations defense.
First when he took the anti-war stance people looked at him as a liberal. I agree with a lot of his thoughts in retrospect. Unfortunately it's always easier to take a revisionistic approach, or to play monday morning quarterback if you will. When he says that there are no Al Queda in Iraq- it's not something I can believe. To believe that the terrorists are local to Afghanistan and are not fighting us in Iraq is absurd to me. However, I agree with Ron Paul that we should pull back our nation building and border defending around the globe. I am not opposed to seeing his full plan for withdrawel from Iraq and his targeting of Afghanistan instead. All of these matters are laid out eloquently on his website. When I read them I see a very reasonable man. I see someone with great insights and brilliant ideas. I tend to agree with him in unison.
In my humble opinion one big drawback that Libertarians have is an absence of modesty in their message and a sense of disgust and sarcasm for the mainstream. I myself am disgusted with the mainstream, I'm sarcastic about the republican parties conservatism, and I can see why one wouldn't speak humbly in these matters. In order to win the hearts of republicans the Libertarians have to reason with them. They have to acknowledge the good and the bad. They have to willing to say- I'll give you the fact that our country has been spared an attack since 2001, and that is comforting to the masses. They have to say a life lost in Iraq and one lost in Afghanistan is essentially the same. To lay the blame on the US for our foreign policy is maybe true in some regards but to not balance this with our charity and defense of the world in WWII, will make republicans and patriots blow you off.
If Ron Paul would have said. Look today we live in a different world. We face a threat from Islamic terrorism, and we face threats from nuclear nations. I think we must protect and defend our country, and we must increase the strength of our military at home without new spending. It would be best that our country not go around the world nation building and that we only go into Wars when we are provoked. It may be neccessary with an enemy such as the one we face today to take premptive action- I don't know. These are complicated times. I think we would all agree that we have been safe in this country over the last 7 years because the fight has been fought over seas. I believe our policies in Iraq are costing us greatly though and I believe we have to take a serious look at diverting our troops from Iraq to Afghanistan, but doing it in a way that causes the least ramifications.
You see this is a dialogue than can convince a republican to support Ron Paul. Simply standing on a platform and calling everything we've done in foreign policy that last 8 years a miserable failure won't get a Liberarian serious consideration for some time.
I think you have to examine whether you want to be right or you want to elected. To get elected you have to reason with voters. I believe Americans can still be reasoned with- well maybe not those supporting Obama, but everyone else.
Thanks Bryce.
I haven't watched Paul closely enough to know how thoroughly he tried to lay out a "positive" vision-- i.e., what national defense should look like (vs. not look like).
In the snippets I saw, it looked like he was trying to do that-- at least to some extent.
To your broader point, yes-- style and substance matter. And one must be persuasive. In fact, ironically, this is a key tenet in Libertarian circles-- that we must work to persuade each other instead of relying on the point of the government's large guns!
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