Author Jeremy Waldron — and those like him who reject libertarianism — would be unlikely to take notice of Rothbardian criticism of hate-speech laws. But another line of inquiry might be of more interest to them. We can ask how good Waldron's arguments are if we judge them on their own merits.
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As everyone knows, the Republican Party is in serious trouble with Latinos. If Mitt Romney gets any less popular with Hispanics, he'll disappear from their consciousness altogether.
The reasons for Latinos' antipathy toward the GOP include the endless insults that Republicans have lobbed at Hispanics, along with the fact that Latinos are not as socially conservative as people think.
Still, one would think more Hispanics would embrace that offshoot of conservative thought known as libertarianism. This philosophy, which holds that the individual is the basic unit of society and must be subject to as little governmental influence as possible, should really resonate with people who have roots in lands where the government crushes all free thought. It should also appeal to people who often have to pull themselves up from their bootstraps (to use a favorite conservative clich) and start over in a new country.
But that hasn't happened. Currently, libertarians "are largely white, well-educated, and affluent." One could even say that "libertarians are mostly rich young white guys who, compared to most other Americans, live comfortable and financially secure lives."
Of course, there are Latino libertarians out there. But in general, talking Hispanics into espousing the Ron Paul agenda is only slightly easier than getting the pope to show up at the Stonewall Inn for a drink.
Libertarianism is still overwhelmingly the privilege of white men, who have a cultural advantage over other groups, regardless of what economic class they were born into. As such, they may believe they have achieved success solely through their own initiative. They may be blind to all the help they received, especially if their consciences are clear and they never discriminate against other ethnicities. They are certain they can do anything they set their minds to, because quite frankly, they often have done so (with society's help, of course).
However, this mindset blinds them to the fact that certain things -- and this is un-American to say -- are beyond their individual control. These can range from sudden health issues to global economic upheavals. They can also include the fact that the game is rigged to benefit the rich and that people's freewill decisions can be manipulated more easily than you think.
Perhaps Latinos, with our cultural baggage of Catholic fatalism and dictatorial governments, are more likely to know that a single person does not have unlimited power. Or maybe our emphasis on family provokes us to think beyond our individual needs. Or perhaps we realize that, despite a work ethic second to none, ceaseless labor and ambition are not always sufficient to get a person ahead in life.
Or maybe it comes down to the possibility that it's very easy to demand a libertarian system when one has gotten a good start in life and reaps the benefits of being on top of the socioeconomic pyramid. It's less common to advocate for that when you're still trying to claw your way upward.
In any case, I'm sure that if she had it to do all over again, Ayn Rand would have included at least one plucky Chicano objectivist named Hernandez in Atlas Shrugged.
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A worker builds a Ford Focus at the Ford Motor Co.'s Michigan Assembly Plant December 14, 2011 in Wayne, Michigan.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Editor's note: Jeffrey Miron is senior lecturer and director of undergraduate studies in the economics department at Harvard University and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. Miron is the author of "Libertarianism, from A to Z."
Cambridge, Massachusetts (CNN) -- In a recent discussion of what his administration might accomplish, Mitt Romney claimed that "by virtue of the policies that we put in place, we'd get the unemployment rate down to 6%, and perhaps a little lower," over a period of four years.
Is this goal attainable?
It is. Indeed, it is not that tough a task. If the United States avoids new growth-retarding policies, such as the tax hikes scheduled for January 1, the economy's natural adjustments will lower unemployment substantially. These include downward adjustments in wages, reallocation of job-seekers from slower to faster growing sectors and regions, reduced in-migration plus increased out-migration, and withdrawals from the labor force.
Jeffrey Miron
These adjustments do not always work quickly or for everyone (not every former construction worker can become a computer technician). But history suggests the adjustments do occur, as they have since the recession began. Over the next four years, they will continue to lower the unemployment rate, if not to 6%, at least near that territory.
The more important task for either presidential candidate is restoring the economy to its prerecession growth path. Real GDP has historically grown about 3% per year, and major downturns have been followed by strong recoveries. Within two to three years, therefore, output is typically "back where it would have been."
In this recession, the rapid recovery phase has so far been absent; real GDP is still well below where one would have predicted pre-2008, and with average growth under 3% since the recession ended, the gap grows larger every quarter.
Go here to read the rest:
If you thought the debates over the debt ceiling last year one of the most striking examples of political dysfunction and gridlock in recent memory were over, think again. Although Republicans agreed to a small raise and to put off discussion of the issue until after the upcoming 2012 elections, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told Fox, Well be doing it all over in 2013. Clearly, the partisan rupture thats dividing Washington is not going to heal any time soon, but how did things get so dire to begin with?
When congressional scholars Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein say Its Even Worse Than It Looks the title of their book theyre being serious (subtitle: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism). Mann, the W. Averell Harriman chair and senior fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, and Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, began the Congress Project in the midst of the 1978 midterm campaign to track the institution as it evolved. What theyve found since hasnt been encouraging.
In their book, Mann and Ornstein trace political dysfunction to the present, illuminating the basic incompatibility they see between the U.S. constitutional system and two highly partisan, parliamentary-like parties. Mann and Ornstein argue that the adversarial, winner-take-all climate we find ourselves in today makes it extremely hard for a majority to act in our two-party governing system. Though both parties engage in corruption, they believe the current Republican Party which they argue is unpersuaded by fact and science, and has little in common with Reagans GOP tilts the political system into asymmetric polarization with its refusal to support anything that might help Democrats, no matter the cost to collective interest.
Meanwhile, changes in mass media, a populist distrust of non-military leaders deemed suspiciously elite, and the insidious connection between money and politics join to create the terrible recipe for a truly dysfunctional political system. At a time when were facing serious national and global problems, they write, The country is squandering its economic future and putting itself at risk because of an inability to govern effectively.But theres hope. Mann and Ornstein dedicate the second half of the book to outlining what specific institutional restructuring wont work and what will, as well as what the public and media can do to be part of positive change.
Salon spoke with Thomas E. Mann about how the media plays into the partisan warfare, the role of the Citizens United decision in the upcoming election, and what we can do to make American politics less dysfunctional.
Im wondering how you chose the books title.
It is a rather unusual title, isnt it? We were thinking through titles and somehow we got in our minds Mark Twains quip about Wagners music, which is Its better than it sounds. And so we were thinking relative to how our dysfunctional political system looks and we said, Well, weve gotta say its worse than it looks, but that would make no sense to people who think it looks horrible already. So we put the even in it Its even worse than it looks.
We are two long-time students of American politics and Congress. Weve really become exceedingly discouraged about developments in our politics and in thought. And weve become frustrated by what we think is a commentary about it that ends up not being especially accurate and, frankly, reinforces the destructive dynamics of the system by leading the public to think its all hopeless: Theyre all the same, its a corrupt system, its an utterly incompetent system, and therefore removing, in many respects, any basis on which a public could actually change that system. Instead you get a kind of visceral reaction: Throw the bums out! And that usually has the effect of reinforcing whatever you have now or making it worse.
How is partisan confrontation more serious today than it has been since you began studying American politics?
Its the worst weve seen in our 40 years of observing up-close Congress and the presidency and the American political system more broadly. Weve gone through very difficult periods in our politics: polarized times in the post-Reconstruction period; turn of the 2oth century; weve, of course, just had exceptionally traumatic times before the Civil War; and difficulties in the early 1800s as well. So we make no claim that this is the worst ever, but if were comparing ourselves now to the pre-Civil War period, thats not such good news, is it? What we can say is that the parties are more polarized than they have been in over a century. We can say that the Republican Party is more conservative than its been in over a century. We can get that evidence from looking at behavior within the Congress and patterns of voting, but we can also see how, in many respects, that public aligns with those polarized parties.
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A worker builds a Ford Focus at the Ford Motor Co.'s Michigan Assembly Plant December 14, 2011 in Wayne, Michigan.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Editor's note: Jeffrey Miron is senior lecturer and director of undergraduate studies in the economics department at Harvard University and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. Miron is the author of "Libertarianism, from A to Z."
Cambridge, Massachusetts (CNN) -- In a recent discussion of what his administration might accomplish, Mitt Romney claimed that "by virtue of the policies that we put in place, we'd get the unemployment rate down to 6%, and perhaps a little lower," over a period of four years.
Is this goal attainable?
It is. Indeed, it is not that tough a task. If the United States avoids new growth-retarding policies, such as the tax hikes scheduled for January 1, the economy's natural adjustments will lower unemployment substantially. These include downward adjustments in wages, reallocation of job-seekers from slower to faster growing sectors and regions, reduced in-migration plus increased out-migration, and withdrawals from the labor force.
Jeffrey Miron
These adjustments do not always work quickly or for everyone (not every former construction worker can become a computer technician). But history suggests the adjustments do occur, as they have since the recession began. Over the next four years, they will continue to lower the unemployment rate, if not to 6%, at least near that territory.
The more important task for either presidential candidate is restoring the economy to its prerecession growth path. Real GDP has historically grown about 3% per year, and major downturns have been followed by strong recoveries. Within two to three years, therefore, output is typically "back where it would have been."
In this recession, the rapid recovery phase has so far been absent; real GDP is still well below where one would have predicted pre-2008, and with average growth under 3% since the recession ended, the gap grows larger every quarter.
Read the original post:
A worker builds a Ford Focus at the Ford Motor Co.'s Michigan Assembly Plant December 14, 2011 in Wayne, Michigan.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Editor's note: Jeffrey Miron is senior lecturer and director of undergraduate studies in the economics department at Harvard University and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. Miron is the author of "Libertarianism, from A to Z."
Cambridge, Massachusetts (CNN) -- In a recent discussion of what his administration might accomplish, Mitt Romney claimed that "by virtue of the policies that we put in place, we'd get the unemployment rate down to 6%, and perhaps a little lower," over a period of four years.
Is this goal attainable?
It is. Indeed, it is not that tough a task. If the United States avoids new growth-retarding policies, such as the tax hikes scheduled for January 1, the economy's natural adjustments will lower unemployment substantially. These include downward adjustments in wages, reallocation of job-seekers from slower to faster growing sectors and regions, reduced in-migration plus increased out-migration, and withdrawals from the labor force.
Jeffrey Miron
These adjustments do not always work quickly or for everyone (not every former construction worker can become a computer technician). But history suggests the adjustments do occur, as they have since the recession began. Over the next four years, they will continue to lower the unemployment rate, if not to 6%, at least near that territory.
The more important task for either presidential candidate is restoring the economy to its prerecession growth path. Real GDP has historically grown about 3% per year, and major downturns have been followed by strong recoveries. Within two to three years, therefore, output is typically "back where it would have been."
In this recession, the rapid recovery phase has so far been absent; real GDP is still well below where one would have predicted pre-2008, and with average growth under 3% since the recession ended, the gap grows larger every quarter.
Excerpt from:
video
Penn Jillette visited Hannity today to expand on comments he made earlier this week on his podcast about President Obama comments that got Sean Hannitys attention as Jillette made the point that, had President Obama been prosecuted under his own drug policies, he never could have been President.
RELATED: Its Not A God Damn Joke!: Penn Jillette Destroys Beyond Hypocritical Obama Over Marijuana Laws
Hannity began the interview asking out of curiosity why Jillette paints one of his fingernails red (an homage to his mother), but quickly turned to the Presidential election, in which Jillette has admitted to be leaning towards voting for Gary Johnson. I think Gary Johnson is pretty good, he confirmed, adding that their personal beliefs dont matter if they have a really strong theory of government, meaning that they know their opinions cant be imposed on others through the power of the state. He refused to vote for someone he disliked less than President Obama, however, based only on that: I think voting for the lesser of two evils in game theory always leads to more evil, he told Hannity. He added that he thought that those who supported Romney on his own merits should vote for him, but that he was on in that party. To me, they are much more similar than they are to you, he said of the two major candidates to Hannity.
Hannity noted he supported Romney but that he would be disappointed if he governed as a moderate: its not a time for half-measures. The conversation, as always, returned to libertarianism in theory, which Jillette described as as far right as you can go on money, as far left as you can go on sex, and which he attributed in part for him to the believe that the vast majority of people are good. Hannity disagreed on that latter point.
The segment via Fox News below:
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David Gordon will teach Political Thought through the Ages , a 6-week online course at the Mises Academy, starting June 7, 2012.
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The logic of liberty and a deeper meditation on scripture had both led Anne Hutchinson to the ultimate bounds of libertarian thought.
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When my wife was a liberal, she complained that libertarian reasoning is coldhearted. Since markets produce winners and losers and many losers did nothing wrong market competition is cruel. It must seem so. President Obama used the word fair in his last State of the Union address nine times.
We are imprinted to prefer a world that is fair. Our close relatives the chimpanzees freak out when one chimp gets more than his fair share, so zookeepers are careful about food portions. Chimps are hardwired to get angry when they think they've been cheated and so are we.
Filmmaker Michael Moore took this notion about fairness to its intuitive conclusion during an interview with Laura Flanders of GRITtv, saying of rich people's fortunes: That's not theirs! That's a national resource! That's ours! As is typical, Moore was confused or disingenuous. In our corporatist economy, some fortunes are indeed made illegitimately though political means. The privileges that produce those fortunes should be abolished. But contrary to Moore, incomes are not national resources. If he's concerned with illegitimate fortunes, he should favor freeing markets.
Fairness is related to justice, the recognition of people's rights to their own lives.
A free market will create big differences in wealth. That wealth disparity is simply a byproduct of freedom vastly diverse individuals competing to serve consumers will arrive at vastly diverse outcomes.
That disparity is not unfair if it results from free exchange.
The free market (which, sadly, America doesn't have) is fair. It also produces better outcomes. Even losers do pretty well.
A more astute observer than Moore might show how unfair government intervention is. Licenses, taxes, regulations and corporate subsidies make it harder for the average worker to start his own business, to go from being a little guy to being an independent owner of means of production. Most new businesses fail, but running your own business is the best route to prosperity and surveys suggest happiness, too.
I once opened a dinky business called The Stossel Store in Delaware, hawking hats, books and other goodies on the street. It was hard to open this store. I chose Delaware because it's supposedly the state that makes that easiest but easiest didn't mean easy. I still required help from Fox's lawyers to get the permits, and the process took more than a week. In my hometown, New York City, it would have taken much longer.
By contrast, in Hong Kong, I started a business in one day. Hong Kong's limited government makes it easy for people to try things, and that has allowed poor people to prosper. Regular people benefit most from economic freedom.
The rest is here:
(MENAFN - Jordan Times) On my desk right now are reporter Timothy Noah's new book "The Great Divergence: America's Growing Inequality Crisis and What We Can Do about It" and Milton and Rose Director Friedman's classic "Free to Choose: A Personal Statement".
Considering them together, my overwhelming thought is that the Friedmans would find their task of justifying and advocating small-government libertarianism much harder today than they did in 1979.
Back then, the Friedmans made three powerful factual claims about how the world works - claims that seemed true or maybe true or at least arguably true at the time, but that now seem to be pretty clearly false. Their case for small-government libertarianism rested largely on those claims, and has now largely crumbled because the world, it turned out, disagreed with them about how it works.
The first claim was that macroeconomic distress is caused by the government, not by the unstable private market or, rather, that the form of macroeconomic regulation required to produce economic stability is straightforward and easily achieved.
The Friedmans almost always made the claim in its first form: they said that the government had "caused" the Great Depression. But when you dug into their argument, it turned out that what they really meant was the second: whenever private-market instability threatened to cause a depression, the government could avert it or produce a rapid recovery simply by purchasing enough bonds for cash to flood the economy with liquidity.
In other words, the strategic government intervention needed to ensure macroeconomic stability was not only straightforward, but also minimal: the authorities need only manage a steady rate of money-supply growth. The aggressive and comprehensive intervention that Keynesians claimed was needed to manage aggregate demand, and that Minskyites claimed was needed to manage financial risk, was entirely unwarranted.
Real libertarians never bought the Friedmans' claim that they were as advocating a free-market, "neutral" monetary regime: Ludwig von Mises famously called Milton Friedman and his monetarist followers a bunch of socialists. But whatever its packaging, the belief that macroeconomic stability requires only minimal government intervention is simply wrong.
In the United States, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has executed the Friedmanite playbook flawlessly in the current downturn, and it has not been enough to preserve or rapidly restore full employment.
The second claim was that externalities were relatively small, or at least that they were better dealt with via contract and tort law than through government regulation, because the disadvantages of government regulation outweighed the harm done by those externalities that the legal system could not properly address. Here, too, reality does not seem to have endorsed "Free to Choose". In the US, this is most apparent in changing attitudes towards medical-malpractice lawsuits, with libertarians no longer viewing the court system as the preferred arena to deal with medical risk and error.
The third, and most important, claim is the subject of Noah's "The Great Divergence". In 1979, the Friedmans could confidently claim that in the absence of government-mandated discrimination (for example, the South's segregationist Jim Crow laws), the market economy would produce a sufficiently egalitarian distribution of income. After all, it had appeared to do so - at least for those who did not suffer from legal discrimination or its legacies - for the entire post-World War II era.
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So Ron Paul says he is going to stop actively campaigning, but his supporters will continue to rack up delegates by storming state conventions. What will he do with these delegates? That is still unclear. (Barter them for gold?) What is the point of this strategy, exactly? Also unclear, but the Daily Beasts Ben Jacobs today says its part of a sneaky maneuver to help his son Rand out. Ron will continue to consolidate power but will not appear to be actively sabotaging the partys nominee. Dave Weigel says the maneuver is less sneaky and barely a maneuver: He doesnt want it to be a huge embarrassment when he loses Kentucky, the state his son represents in the Senate.
Interestingly, though perhaps not surprisingly, Paul declined to endorse Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson, the former New Mexico governor who endorsed Paul in 2008. Johnson was, formerly, the Republican presidential candidate all those young liberal college stoner Ron Paul supporters should have gone with if theyd wanted to support a candidate who believed strongly in liberty but who wasnt a racist Alex Jonesian conspiracy-mongering goldbug loon. But Johnson had extensive executive experience instead of a blimp and a sweet logo, so he did not win over many Paul fanatics.
Ron Pauls strategy seems to be a gradual takeover of the Republican Party itself, instead of attempting to build a Libertarian alternative to the GOP. I think hell find that he can get the party to happily sign on, at least rhetorically, to his fiscal message, as they continue to ignore his popular and populist isolationism and his eminently agreeable but politically untenable positions on criminal justice and civil liberties, forever. The party, in other words, will continue to co-opt whatever they find electorally useful about the Paul phenomenon, as the Tea Party movement stole his iconography and messaging wholesale while attaching it to the same religious-right/nativist sentiment that has driven the partys activist base for decades.
But Paul thinks the future lies with his son Rand, who shares many of his fathers enthusiasms and beliefs while also appearing to be more acceptable to the mainstream. Various Paul allies and a few other Republicans strongly suggest that Rand is gearing up for a 2016 run; which would mean, of course, that they expect Romney to lose, but that they need to not appear to be rooting for Romney to lose.
The problem is that what makes Rand Paul more acceptable to the mainstream of the Republican Party is what makes him more repellent than his father. Take, for example, Rand Pauls funny joke this last weekend about Barack Obama and gay marriage.
The president recently weighed in on marriage. And, you know, he said his views were evolving on marriage. Call me cynical but I wasnt sure that his views on marriage could get any gayer. Now it did kind of bother me, though, that he used the justification for it in a biblical reference. He said the biblical Golden Rule caused him to be for gay marriage
And Im like: What version of the Bible is he reading? Its not the King James version. Its not the New American Standard. Its not the New Revised version. I dont know what version he is getting it from.
Haha Barack Obama is so gay, he should read a Bible for once. Libertarianism!
Nick Gillespie, of the libertarian Reason Magazine, does not get this joke. The crowd, at the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition, did seem to get it, or at least they appreciated it. But Rand sounds very different when he speaks to Iowa conservatives than he does when interviewed by Gillespie and Matt Welch. (His address received a nice notice from Robert Costa of the National Review, who did not mention his funny joke.)
While Rand Paul may be, as Gillespie says, the most libertarian senator, he is also not an actual libertarian, as demonstrated by his support for anti-constitutional anti-immigrant legislation and his very vocal antiabortion position. He is also a dumb lout, and I tend to think that having the Senates most libertarian member be a dumb lout is not actually that good for the Libertarian movement. When he makes explicitly libertarian arguments, he makes them dumbly. When he goes all anti-gay talk-radio bigot culture warrior, which he does increasingly frequently, he does so dumbly. (If he wants to be a mainstream politician and presidential contender, it was certainly dumb to appear more than once on the radio program of Truther/Birther/New World Orderer/every-other-conspiracy promoter Alex Jones, but for some reason he almost entirely escaped mainstream press scrutiny for these appearances.) While I dont feel much affection for Ron Paul, he seems both significantly smarter and leagues more principled than his son the senator.
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Now that he is no longer campaigning actively for the Republican nomination, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul is shifting his focus to influencing Republican policy at the convention in August in Tampa.
The Texas congressman's Monday email to supporters acknowledged what is beyond dispute at this point: Despite having won a sizable number of delegates, Paul lags too far behind frontrunner Mitt Romney to secure the party's nomination. The statement also underlined the prohibitive cost of mounting a national campaign, noting that continuing to compete with Romney "would take many tens of millions of dollars we simply do not have."
But that does not mean Paul's long run -- he has outlasted every other Romney challenger -- will go for naught. Atop Paul strategist sent a memo to supporters outlining how Paul will deploy the delegates he has already won, as well as those who he will accumulate as the primary finishes up, when the Republican Party convenes in Tampa, Fla., to anoint its candidate.
First, strategist Jesse Benton wrote, the Paul campaign would continue to "run strong programs at district and state conventions" in a push to grab more delegates despite having abandoned outright campaigning in the remaining primaries. The email to supporters on Monday made a similar point, emphasizing a grassroots mobilization in which Paul backers sought leadership positions at state conventions.
Paul's Potential Clout At Convention
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That would give Paul a few hundred delegates when he arrives in Tampa in addition to those who "although bound to Governor Romney or other candidates, will be Ron Paul supporters," Benton asserted. Paul supporters could use that clout to help shape the party's nominating rules or platform.
Delegates could vote to change party rules in a way that would be favorable to candidates, like Paul, who run on the Republican ticket but are still outsiders challenging party orthodoxy. They could also help shape the party platform -- a statement of governing principles formulated every four years -- to include issues Paul prizes.
"Our campaign is presently working to get several items up forconsideration, including monetary policy reform, prohibitions on indefinitedetention and Internet freedom," Benton wrote, adding that a substantial Paul delegation would also be a testament to his staying power.
"By sending a large, respectful and professional delegation to Tampa, we will show the party and the country that not only is our movement growing and here tostay, but that the future belongs to us," Benton wrote.
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Just as everyone always assumed, Ron Paul never ended up being a major factor in the GOP primary race. Although his dogged and loyal followers are still busy securing delegates for this summer's convention, Paul semi-suspends his campaign having won a grand total of zero states in terms of actual primary-day voting. In fact, he was one of the only Republican candidates to not even experience one of the race's trademark fleeting bursts of momentum.
But Paul did improve greatly on his 2008 campaign, basically doubling his poll-measured popularity from one race to the other. It's possible that the most enduring legacy of Paul's 2012 campaign will be its role in nudging Paul's brand of hard-core libertarianism further into the Republican mainstream, and consequently, helping to create a friendlier environment for an expected presidential run by his son Rand Paul in 2016.
As one last farewell, let us now relive some of the most memorable moments of Paul's campaign, many of which involve Paul on a debate stage wearing an ill-fitting suit.
Original post:
COMMENTARY | As a young man in my late 20s from the conservative stronghold of Midland, Texas, I liked Ron Paul. He was a fiscal conservative and a social liberal, his libertarian leanings underscored by his 1988 run for the White House as a member of that political denomination.
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With Ron Paul Suspending Campaigning, I Move to Gary Johnson
Republican Presidential hopeful Ron Paul greets supporters during a town hall meeting at the University of Maryland.
Ron Paul is scaling back his Republican presidential campaign but not his bid to inject more libertarianism into the Republican party, encouraging his supporters to take over the GOP in the long term.
Paul's announcement that he won't spend the "tens of millions" of dollars needed to compete in the upcoming Republican presidential primaries has disappointed some of his followers. Many of them can't accept the notion that front-runner Mitt Romney will actually be the Republican nominee even though Romney is on the verge of gaining a majority of national delegates. But Paul strategists point out that he didn't actually end his campaign or even suspend it. He is urging his followers to continue pushing at the state and local levels to amass enough delegates to make a difference at the Republican National Convention this August. That was his main goal before the announcement, and it remains his main goal now.
[See Photos of Ron Paul]
He still wants to build the libertarian movement by moving the Republican party in his direction. "Ron Paul has not called off the liberty movement and the transformation of the Republican party," senior Paul adviser Doug Wead told me Tuesday morning. Nor does he want the "educational" aspect of his candidacy to end, especially his desire to inform Americans about what he considers the excessive power of the Federal Reserve and the government's botching of monetary policy.
But Paul advisers say that in recent weeks he became concerned about the level of confrontation shown by and toward some of his followers. He felt that the stridency of some of his die-hard supporters was alienating too many conservatives in the GOP and others outside of the party. He remains concerned that his followers might show up en masse in Tampa and stage angry protests outside the convention hall that could be an embarrassment.
Another reason for his scale-back is that Paul's campaign lacks the money to compete effectively in the upcoming primary states. And Paul, at 76, is said to be weary after many months of cross-country campaigning.
Paul, a U.S. representative from Texas, has inspired some the most intense loyalty of any presidential candidate this year with his support for severe cuts in federal power and spending, and his call for the United States to pull back from its many military commitments overseas, including the war in Afghanistan. He doesn't want to disappoint or jeopardize these supporters by giving up completely.
But, at the same time, he doesn't want to jeopardize the nominee's chances of defeating President Obama by encouraging a raucus and unruly insurgency in Tampa. That would set back Paul's objective of advancing the libertarian philosophy in the GOP, of moving his supporters into powerful positions within the party, and promoting his son Rand, a GOP senator from Kentucky, as a future libertarian leader.
[Ron Paul:My Appeal Goes Beyond the GOP]
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Tomorrow is "Super Tuesday" in what has to rank as one of the most unpredictable Republican nomination battles. Over the course of the campaign, the lead (at least in polls) has been held by Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney. While the race may or may not be decided tomorrow, one thing is certain: A lot more votes will have been cast.
The 10 states due to vote are Alaska, Georgia, Idaho, Massachusetts, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia.
Alaska (27 delegates) will have a caucus. Alaska does not appear to have been polled. In the past, Paul has done well in caucus states. Georgia (76 delegates) will have a primary. A recent poll by Public Policy Polling shows Gingrich with 47 percent, Romney 24, Santorum 19 and Paul 8. This is Gingrich's home state, and he should win here.
Idaho (32 delegates) will have caucuses. It has not been polled recently. While the fact that it is a highly conservative state might seem to favor Santorum, the fact that it has large Mormon population might favor Romney. Further, Paul's brand of libertarianism might also appeal here.
Massachusetts (41 delegates) has a primary. This is Romney's home state and a poll from February shows him winning easily with 64 percent.
North Dakota (28 delegates) has a caucus. There are no recent polls. Paul may do well here.
Ohio (66 delegates) has a primary. The race here is very close. The latest poll shows Romney with 37 percent to Santorum's 36, Gingrich 15 and Paul 11.
Oklahoma (43 delegates) has a primary. In the latest poll, Santorum is far ahead, with 37 percent to 26 for Romney, 22 for Gingrich and 9 for Paul.
Tennessee (58 delegates) has a primary. Recent polling shows Santorum leadaing with 34 percent to Romney's 29 percent, Gingrich's 27 and Paul's 8
Vermont (17 delegates) has a primary; there appear to be no polls, but Romney should win easily, as he is from neighboring Massachusetts.
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Sen. Richard Lugar did not merely lose his primary contest last night. He got thumped. Richard Mourdock took 60.6% of the vote in the Hoosier state to Lugars 39.4%. In all of his previous contests, Lugar has taken more than two-thirds of the vote. Six years ago, the Democrats did not even field a candidate against him. This is not your grandfathers Republican Party.
Lugar joins former Senator Robert Bennett from Utah and former Congressman (and odds-on favorite to become a Senator) Mike Castle of Delaware in the list of those mainstream Republican candidates who were retired by their own party which has swung hard to the right. Some have given up trying, like Maines Senator Olympia Snowe, recognizing that even if you manage to win, your Republican caucus in the Senate is going to be sufficiently filled with fire-breathers, enabled by those whose Machiavellian instinct to worry most about obstructing ones political opponents no matter what the cost, that what was once a rewarding job, reaching consensus in ways that benefit the nation, is no longer worth the effort.
Ronald Reagan used to tell the joke that in his administration, sometimes the signals got crossed because the right hand doesnt know what the far-right hand is doing. Unfortunately, what was once a joke is now a reality and the far-right hand is not shy about letting the whole world know what it is doing. It is enforcing a narrow orthodoxy from within, castigating and casting out those who are deemed RINOs Republicans In Name Only. Mind you, by most standards, Dick Lugar was no moderate. His voting record was quite consistently conservative. But, his fault his most grievous fault was to believe that, say, the Senate should not obstruct a presidents nominees to the Supreme Court or the Cabinet unless, in its exercise of its constitutional authority to confirm nominees, the Senate uncovers something professionally disqualifying in a nominee. Lugar had voted to confirm both Sonya Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, neither of whom strike most court observers as extreme or unfit, even if you may disagree with their views. These votes were held against Lugar. And, Lugar also was one of the Senates strongest advocates for a bipartisan foreign policy, consistently working across the aisle to make sure that U.S. political divisions ended at the waters edge. It goes without saying that this inclination to craft a bipartisan foreign policy has served the nation very well for very many years.
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Republicans on the airwaves last night were saying that the Indiana results do not show a party running off the rails, that Lugar had grown out of touch with his constituents, that the result had more to do with local political considerations than any national trend lines within the contemporary GOP. Lugar was old, after all, although that is an odd charge to lay against someone who is seated in a body called the Senate. But, a twenty point margin within ones own party is a stunning fact, one not easily explained by such parochial concerns, concerns which have never harmed Lugar in the past. If his case was a one-off, if it had not been preceded by Christine ODonnells victory over Castle and Mike Lee and Tim Bridgewaters besting of Bennett at the Utah Republican Convention. (Lee went on to win the primary and the general election and is now Utahs junior senator. ODonnell, mercifully, has faded into political oblivion.)
It is strange to reflect that the founding fathers did not foresee the role that political parties would play in our nations political life. Indeed, they were very anxious to avoid such an outcome. Yet, from the very start, parties emerged, first within the Cabinet of our first president and subsequently at the polls. For most of the intervening years, the competition between the parties has served as a check on the power of any one part of the government to exercise too much power over the whole of government, and, consequently, to keep the governed safe from their own governors. There have been times when the parties were sharply divided over ideology, indeed, the Republican Party was founded on very ideological, and very correct, grounds regarding the extension of slavery. We forget how fierce the ideological arguments of the 1930s were, but they were fierce and the issues then engaged continue to mark our political divides. There is always in politics, and in other spheres of life, a pendulum effect, and we can only hope that todays GOP is reaching the end of its swing to the right and will soon start to swing back to the center. But, is that hope sustainable? 13 Republican senators are up for re-election in 2014. You can easily conclude how last nights results will affect their votes in the future. If they must spend the next two years looking over the right shoulder, they will not be able to look ahead. Certainly, people like Sen. Lindsay Graham took note of last nights results.
America needs our political parties to be robust, intellectually serious, balancing their commitment to their worldview with the pragmatism our system of divided powers requires. We do not have the kind of parliamentary system that could adjust itself to changing tides and, in the face of urgent national tasks, form a government in the center, as Israels parliament just did, isolating the extreme parties from the actual decision-making. Instead, the extremes of both parties can hold the whole of their party hostage. Among the Democrats, it is the libertarian lifestylists NARAL, NOW, the Human Rights Campaign Fund all of which have deep pockets, that can hold the Democrats hostage. Among the Republicans, it is the libertarian economic folks, with their hatred of government, that can run their party of the rails. In both instances, it is the libertarian sensibility that is at fault and, frankly, I am not sure how to confront it.
But, I am sure, that the third person most affected by last nights results in Indiana is the kind of person who can confront it. Congressman Joe Donnelly, who was not opposed in the Democratic Senate primary and will face Mourdock in November, is a pro-life Democrat. He has already stared down the libertarians of the left. He was one of the few conservative Democrats who voted for the Affordable Care Act and yet was able to hold on to his seat during the 2010 GOP tsunami. (This contrasts with Mourdock who has run for Congress three times and lost every time.) Indiana will not be an easy win for a Democrat in 2012. No one expects President Obama to repeat his 2008 win in the state. But, there is a chance and, in the event, those 39.4% of the GOP electorate who voted for Lugar, to the extent that they warmed to Lugars repeated emphasis on the need for senators willingly to work across the aisle, might be people more inclined to tilt towards Donnelly than Mourdock come November. Certainly, had Lugar won, Democrats would have heavily discounted their chances for a pick-up in the Hoosier state. Now, they see the possibility of a win.
In the 1980s, it was the Democrats who were careening out of control. Now, it is the Republicans. The careening, then and now, was never complete. After all, Mike Dukakis was hardly a liberal firebrand and Mitt Romney did win the GOP presidential nomination, not Rick Santorum. The danger is that in smaller, low turnout races, a determined corps of ideologues, backed with the now untraceable monies of the SuperPACs, can tilt the playing field their way and snatch a victory even though the majority of voters do not favor extremism. Whoever wins the presidency in November is going to face a Congress filled with men and women too worried about their base to move to the center. A national calamity, God forbid, could reshuffle the political dynamics, or some unforeseen new idea could alter the political landscape in ways that permit compromise, the way that rising productivity and new business opportunities spawned in the 1990s allowed Democrats and Republicans to work together distributing the new cash to programs the Democrats cherished while paying down the federal debt as Republicans desired. But, until both parties are willing to confront the cancer of libertarianism that afflicts them, it is not easy to muster hope for the future.
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Over the course of the past few years, I have come to believe that today's young Americans are more conservative than their elders. I think this applies to younger people who don't even identify with conservatism, the Republican Party, or even politics in general.
Renowned pollster John Zogby has confirmed what I have long suspected. In an article in Forbes about what he calls First Globals (18-29 year olds), Zogby writes: "On some key issues, majorities of First Globals are not doctrinaire liberals. The poll found less than majorities agree with liberals on some of their most cherished beliefs. For example: 44 percent agree health insurance is a right government should provide for those who can't afford it, 43 percent agree with the same statement about food and shelter, 37 percent agree government should spend more to reduce poverty, 20 percent agree government spending is an effective way to economic growth."
It's no secret that many young voters who turned out for Obama in 2008 have since soured on his presidency. But these numbers show they might be souring on the overall big-government agenda that has long characterized the Democratic Party. Interestingly, young Americans also reject the big-government aspects of today's Republican Party. Zogby writes: "Lest Republicans get too giddy at those findings, they should also know less than majorities agree with these conservative and neo-con ideals: 22 percent agree it's sometimes necessary to attack potentially hostile countries rather than waiting until we are attacked, 23 percent are willing to give up some personal freedoms for the sake of national security, 39 percent agree cutting taxes is an effective route to economic growth." He adds, "21 percent agree religious values should play an important role in government, and 25 percent agree homosexuality is morally wrong."
Today, there are many factions and coalitions that make up the contemporary conservative movement. But few would disagree that the Barry Goldwater-Ronald Reagan notion of small government and constitutional fidelity has long been the primary core of American conservatism. Goldwater has always been a hero to libertarians, a figure that Fox News' Judge Andrew Napolitano even calls the father of the American libertarianism. Even the Gipper himself once famously proclaimed his devotion to the libertarian movement, saying, "If you analyze it, I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism."
As you know, I'm a traditional conservative who often gets labeled a libertarian because I defend and promote libertarian heroes and ideals. This is in part because I agree with libertarians on most issues, but also because the conservative movement has been effectively neutered for decades because of the complete absence of a libertarian influence within the Republican Party.
Social conservatives and neoconservatives, the latter being primarily concerned with maintaining a hawkish foreign policy above all else, dominated the party during the George W. Bush years. Reagan believed conservatism was a three-legged stool consisting of religious, economic-libertarian, and national security factions. Under Bush, there was no economic-libertarian conservatism. It was non-existent. As long as Republicans were pro-life, anti-gay marriage, and enthusiastic about every war our government waged, this was enough to be a "conservative" for most of the last decade. Today's conservative youth are not conventional Republicans, but they are aligned with traditional conservatism.
Religious conservatives and neoconservatives have been important and influential factions on the American Right. The GOP is just as responsible for this nation's massive federal growth as the Democrats because of the Republican Party's lack of libertarian principles. In 2008, the youth turned out in record numbers for Obama because, in large part, they rejected Bush and contemporary conservatism. Today, many of them now reject Obama, as well as both political parties.
So where do they turn? There is no easy answer. Noting trends similar to those Zogby cites, CNN's Timothy Stanley writes: "The GOP can no longer ignore its libertarian 'fringe.' On the contrary, it will have to reach out to a new generation of activists who don't regard religious piety or continual warfare as sacred tenets of conservatism," Stanley adds. "Whatever happens in 2012, we are living through a significant moment in the history of conservatism."
We might also be living through conservatism's rebirth. It is a clich to look at young people and say you fear for the future. I, on the other hand, can't wait for it.
Jack Hunter assisted Sen. Jim DeMint with his latest book, Now or Never: Saving America From Economic Collapse. He is also the official campaign blogger for GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul, and he co-wrote Rand Paul's The Tea Party Goes to Washington. You can hear Southern Avenger commentaries on The Morning Buzz on 1250 WTMA.
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STATE HOUSE BUREAU
By Steve Mistler smistler@pressherald.com Staff Writer
AUGUSTA -- Supporters of Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul commandeered the Maine Republican Party convention Saturday, as part of a multi-state strategy designed to give him a voice at the national GOP convention in Tampa, Fla.
click image to enlarge
ANNOUNCEMENT: GOP chairman Charles Webster addresses the GOP State Convention Saturday at the Augusta Civic Center.
Maine Sunday Telegram photo by John Patriquin
Despite pre-emptive efforts by state party Chairman Charlie Webster, Paul's highly organized volunteers and supporters took over the proceedings at the Augusta Civic Center.
Using pre-printed ballots and floor generals who flashed large signs reminding backers which candidates to support, the Paul campaign bested supporters of Mitt Romney, the GOP's presumptive presidential nominee.
Paul's backers took control of key parliamentary positions and the convention agenda. The effort was part of the Paul campaign's national effort to overtake Republican state conventions and win enough state delegates to send to the national convention.
National pundits believe Paul, a proselytizer of free-market economics and libertarianism who hasn't won a single state primary, has a slim chance of forcing a brokered convention in Tampa to challenge Romney. However, Paul's supporters in Maine said sending enough delegates to the event will force the Republican National Committee to give him a prominent speaking role to amplify his message.
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