Admittedly, I’m conflicted on this particular election eve. I’m excited at the potential for actual change if many of these so-called “tea party” candidates get elected. That potential is based upon hope more than expectation. If I decide to vote, I’ll vote for the Libertarian candidate in my district. I’m glad I have that choice since I can’t stand the GOP candidate (30 year incumbent Frank Wolf) nor can I stand the Democrat (Obamacare supporter).
That being said I have some questions. Most won’t be answered in the near term, but will be answered within the next 2 years.
Will Rand Paul win in another “Randslide”?
If Sharon Angle defeats Harry Reid will Chuck Schumer become the leader of the Senate?
Should Rand Paul win, will he lose the support of the Tea Party during his term as Senator?
Will Ron Paul’s supporters be happy with the way Rand Paul votes on foreign policy?
If the GOP takes control of the House will Ron Paul become the Chairman of the Financial Services Committee?
Will the Republicans be able to repeal Obamacare?
Are the Republicans going to to water down the Tea Party message by playing the same old political game?
Will Sarah Palin become the GOP nominee in 2012 due to her perceived influence on the Tea Party candidates winning in 2010?
When will Ron Paul announce he is running for President in 2012 (My guess is sometime in January of 2011)?
When Republicans gain control of the House and nothing changes will a Third Party option become truly viable in 2012?
Those are the main questions I have. Do you have any to add?
Just about now you, as an American voter, are reaching critical political mass. Pummeled by incessant TV, radio, and newspaper ads, and deluged by dinnertime taped phone calls you want to kill the next person who brings up the election.
Then, again, you may have crossed over into that Zombieland of voting in which you can’t seem to get enough of the heady stuff. While the former state is normal, here’s how to tell if you’ve really had too much politics for the season and are badly in need of a vacation or at least electroshock therapy:
1) You know Sarah Palin’s dog’s favorite color.
2) You can recite the Hatch Act from memory.
3) You call polling companies and beg to be polled.
4) You can’t wait for TV shows to end so you can start enjoying the campaign commercials.
5) You’ve come to believe that Rand Paul is a type of gold coin.
6) You can spell Ben Bernanke’s name forward AND backwards.
7) Your shirt has color-coded campaign buttons with Republicans on the right side, Democrats on the left, and Libertarians down the middle. You agree with every political view no matter who holds it yet become irritated when someone refuses to have an opinion.
9) Your Favorites menu on your computer browser is full of campaign websites.
10) You can’t be reached on the Internet because your e-mail account is glutted with campaign spam.
11) You’ve got a space reserved in front of the early voting place so that you can get there before midnight.
12) You’ve got a tattoo of your favorite candidate on your shoulder and you were the tattoo artist.
13) You’ve painted half your car red and the other half blue.
14) You invite campaign flyer distributors into your house for coffee and cookies and to have a heart-to-heart.
15) You’ve removed the heads from your bobblehead collection and replaced them with leading candidates.
16) You straighten up campaign signs at intersections.
17) Your alarm clock has campaign ads to awaken you.
18) You call radio talk shows just to hear them breathe.
19) Instead of Fantasy Football, you play Fantasy Politics.
20) Your friends avoid you because all you want to talk about is the latest polling numbers.
21) When you dream, it’s of filling out your ballot.
22) Your iPod is full of recorded campaign speeches.
23) You’re disappointed when, after the phone rings, it’s only your mother calling and not a pre-recorded message from a local candidate.
24) You burned out your TIVO recording late-night political shows.
25) Your car has so many campaign stickers on it, it makes two miles less per gallon.
Most of them are, more or less, accusing the Judge of selling out by having guests such as Sarah Palin and Dick Armey on his debut show. I thought the show was excellent and just illustrated the point I was trying to make in my recent article, “Rand Paul is the purple pill“.
The Judge used his debut show to bring together various factions to find some common ground on the issues. How fitting it was to see Rand Paul sitting between Ron Paul and Sarah Palin on the show. I’m not sure if this seating arrangement was purpose-driven, but it certainly seemed like it could have been deliberate. Rand Paul represents the “coming together” of these factions into a more effective liberty-driven whole.
No, Sarah Palin is certainly not as close to perfect on liberty as Ron Paul, and Rand Paul is somewhere in-between. That in-between is the pathway Judge Napolitano attempted to cultivate in the show. I thought he was quite successful in that endeavor.
However, I’m miffed by one aspect of the show. The Judge chose not to end the show with his usual tag line, “Stay Free… America!”
Instead, he ended with, “So long… America!”
Hmm.. do you think he’s trying to tell us something?
It was just announced that Mitt Romney has won the SRLC Straw Poll by a single vote over Ron Paul. Romney had 439 votes to Paul’s 438. Sarah Palin came in 3rd. Newt Gingrich came in 4th.
Bear with me. This is going to be a long and random deluge of my thoughts on the state of politics in the USA as we begin the year 2010.
In 1773 it was Britain’s tea tax on the colonies that moved the American revolutionaries to protest by dumping tea into the Boston harbor. In late 2007 a tribute to that protest occurred on it’s 234th anniversary when $6.04 million was raised in a single day for Ron Paul’s Presidential campaign. In 2009 the Tea Party tribute reached some kind of critical mass with various protests all over America.
Did this happen because the U.S. citizens suddenly realized that their government no longer represented them? Or did this happen because they were just pissed that Barack Obama was elected President instead of Johnny “Maverick” McCain?
It’s important to look at the origins of this “movement”. It all goes back to Ron Paul, or rather, Ron Paul’s grassroots supporters. They were the nuts that commissioned a freakin’ blimp to fly up and down the east coast “advertising” their candidate. They were the nuts that littered America with signs (homemade and otherwise) in every city, town, and suburb. They were the nuts that organized following each debate to vote for their candidate in the post-debate text polls.
They were in your face and you either hated it, tolerated it, or loved it. No matter what your reaction, you can’t deny their dedication. I’m not sure I see that kind of dedication from the Tea Party movement yet. Even though they try to portray that they are angered at the growth of government, many seem to be dedicated to their dislike of Barack Obama and not much else. Bad-mouthing Bush now, comes off as merely lip-service or useless 20/20 hindsight.
Ron Paulers have been doing it since 2007 and are still doing it. The evidence is all around us. Ron Paul’s books are consistent best sellers. His Federal Reserve audit bill has 317 sponsors, including every House Republican and over 100 Democrats. That bill, in the form of an amendment, is contained within Barney Frank’s financial regulatory bill that passed the House and is now waiting for Senate action. Paul is omnipresent on main stream media outlets like CNN, FOX, and MSNBC. He’s a political celebrity that draws huge crowds for conferences and speaking engagements. Politicians seek endorsements from him. In a word, he is “hot” right now, politically speaking.
The best thing to conservatives was for Barack Obama to be elected President. It has galvanized and united many Republicans, libertarians, free market economists, and many independents disillusioned with America’s power elite. However, below the surface runs a very deep divide when it comes to foreign policy. This divide is between those like Ron Paul who support non-intervention and those that support our current policy, the Bush doctrine of preventive war.
Interestingly, this divide cannot be found between Democrats and Republicans. Fundamentally, both parties support the Bush doctrine of preventive war. They may disagree on the specifics of tertiary issues like which country to invade, but there is no difference on policy. This “invade or die” policy is the poison pill that will ultimately bring about our demise because we simply cannot afford it any longer. Perhaps it should be rephrased, “Invade and die… eventually.”
Judge Andrew Napolitano on his radio show this morning pulled no punches when discussing the viability of Sarah Palin as the next President of the United States. I couldn’t agree with his blunt assessment more. He said:
“I just don’t think she possesses the mental capacity to be the President of the United States. She’s a goofball!”
So everyone’s favorite host of Freedom Watch has weighed in on Sarah Palin. To me, she’s a completely divisive figure. People seem to either idolize her or loathe her. I don’t think she has much chance of being the next POTUS. In fact, I’d be surprised if she did better than Giuliani did in the GOP primaries of 2008.
For more about what lead up to the Judge’s “straight talk” listen to the audio:
I saw a bumper sticker today that said, “I Love Sarah”. I assumed it meant Sarah Palin and not Sarah Jessica Parker, but I can’t be sure. Last month Palin was echoing Ron Paul on the role of the Federal Reserve in America’s economic crisis. I encouraged her (not that she gives one moose about what I think) to echo Ron Paul on foreign policy as well.
Yesterday it became quite clear that she was never in danger of becoming a foreign policy non-interventionist like Paul.
Palin published a note on her Facebook page Tuesday that encourages President Barack Obama to grant a request for the tens of thousands of additional troops reportedly requested by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in the country.
“Now is not the time for cold feet, second thoughts, or indecision,” Palin wrote on the site. “It is the time to act as commander-in-chief and approve the troops so clearly needed in Afghanistan.”
Noting the possible consequences of not helping to build up Afghanistan’s institutions, the former Alaska governor also wholeheartedly endorsed McChrystal’s counterinsurgency approach to continued U.S. military presence in the country.
“We can win in Afghanistan by helping the Afghans build a stable representative state able to defend itself. And we must do what it takes to prevail. The stakes are very high. The 9/11 attacks were planned in Afghanistan, and if we are not successful there, al Qaeda will once again find a safe haven, the Taliban will impose its cruelty on the Afghan people, and Pakistan will be less stable.”
She is just confirming that she never was and never will be a libertarian, especially when it comes to foreign policy. Don’t let the new designation (or Eric Dondero) fool you. The Palin-Cons are the same old Neo-Cons.
Ron Paul chose to enter politics in 1971, the year I was born. The reason he entered politics was due to then President Nixon driving the last nail into the gold standard coffin. Nixon severed all ties of gold to the U.S. dollar. This event implicitly granted the Federal Reserve to print money without bound. For Ron Paul being anti-Fed is not just another political position, it is the political position. It is in his blood.
In those early years and up until the economic crisis of last year Ron Paul was brushed off as crazy whenever he brought up the unchecked powers of the Federal Reserve. Once the bailouts began and continued it became politically expedient to be more like Ron Paul. That is, as long as you are talking about economics. On foreign policy Ron Paul is still apparently crazy for firmly believing in non-intervention.
I am not alone among the Ron Paul faithful when I say that I’m very tired of reading articles with any of the following labels attributed to Ron Paul:
Radical
Quixotic
Fringe
Extreme
Crazy
In a recent article he had a few labels of his own for Sarah Palin supporters. He called them “establishment” and “country club” Republicans. Palin-ites reacted with fervor in dismissing Paul as just being envious.
“Slowly, inexorably, Ron Paul’s message is beginning to take. Members of his own party and liberal media personalities, some who would have been the least expected, have begun to sense the danger. Conservatives are coming home, some ashamed, acknowledging that it was they, not Ron Paul, who had drifted away. Some Governors and senators and televisions pundits are now mimicking Ron Paul’s message, even paraphrasing his exact words. There are Ron Paul look-alikes, such as Governor Mark Sanford. “He’s just like Ron Paul,” his supporters assure us, “only better.” Who would have thunk it? It is now popular to be like Ron Paul.”
For all of Wead’s articles on Ron Paul, I think I enjoyed this one the most thus far. He outlines the history and reasons for Ron Paul’s popularity and then explains why we should look to him for solving our economic crisis.
After Wead’s series of articles on Sarah Palin being the GOP front runner and listing Ron Paul’s chances of the GOP nomination at 25-1 he goes back again to trumpeting his candidacy.
Ron Paul has an uncanny and effortless way of making neo-conservative Republicans’ heads explode. He merely tells the truth. The modern day Republicans are desperate for an answer to “The Obama Effect” but they dare not climb up Ron Paul’s liberty tree to get there. Instead they dream the impossible dream.
They dream that they can somehow keep one hand in the neo-con cookie jar while the other hand waves over the Constitution. When Dr. Ron Paul comes along and tells them its time to amputate the gangrene neo-conservatism they dart out of the office crying like babies. One would think they would get the hint with their string of losses the past few years. Their latest and ultimate loss came this week when Al “Dog-gone it! People like me!” Franken was declared the winner over Norm Coleman in the hotly contested Minnesota Senate race.
Liberty Maven
You agree with every political view no matter who holds it yet become irritated when someone refuses to have an opinion.
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