What now for libertarians after Ron Paul?
While Senator Paul and Mr. Amash alienate some Republicans, libertarian stands against policies like the bailouts and the federal drug war have potential crossover appeal for Democrats and independents. “If we are ever going to win in California again, or Washington, we need someone who is a libertarian Republican,” Senator Paul told me.
The party that nominated Mr. Romney, and that gave only 16 Senate votes in May 2012 to Rand Paul’s five-year path to a balanced budget, might not agree. The consistency of the libertarian philosophy — roughly, that government exists only to protect citizens’ lives and property from assault — leads them to buck party discipline on spending. Senator Paul was among the few Senate Republicans who voted against the fiscal cliff deal. It also leads them to oppose civil liberties encroachments like the Patriot Act and the indefinite detention provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act and to condemn “crony capitalism” as exemplified by the Troubled Asset Relief Program and other government bailouts they see as illegitimately serving Wall Street and banking interests.
Mr. Amash is sure that libertarian consistency helps him, and could help the Republican Party. “It gives you credibility with people who might be mistrustful because you are Republican,” he told me. “It shows you are serious about following the Constitution and defending American people’s liberties.”
Ron Paul understood his mission as educational, not just political. He thought more Americans needed to be taught the economic and ethical benefits of a government that pretty much leaves us alone. His successors optimistically think Americans will embrace their libertarianism; more important, they are sure Americans need to, to avoid a fiscal and debt crisis they fear intensely.
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Luap Nor is not a libertarian; he’s a crackpot Joo-hater. The sooner Rand distances himself from him the better.
Rixon on February 10, 2013 at 9:17 AM
You’re not.
Stoic Patriot on February 10, 2013 at 9:19 AM
The conservative movement’s next hero will not come from the Republican Party. Ron and Rand are both members in good standing of Ye Grande Ole Party, ergo…
gryphon202 on February 10, 2013 at 9:30 AM
What’s left? Moving to Colorado and sparking one up!
ProfShadow on February 10, 2013 at 9:33 AM
Well, that hero damn sure ain’t coming from the Democrats so you must be having some crack pipe dream about a third party.
Odysseus on February 10, 2013 at 9:54 AM
Come to the Dark Side. We have Cookies.
Moe Lane has some wisdom for you Libertarians here.
Jeff Weimer on February 10, 2013 at 10:00 AM
I didn’t say anything about a party, douchebag. I said the next hero of the conservative movement. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love nothing more than to see Ye Grande Ole Party wither on the vine, but it will wither on the vine before some other political organ moves in to take its place. (cf. Whig Party, ca. 1852)
gryphon202 on February 10, 2013 at 10:04 AM
Smoke some dope, talk shit some more, all 1% of them.
APACHEWHOKNOWS on February 10, 2013 at 10:06 AM
Eh, my security settings are too high for cookies…
JohnGalt23 on February 10, 2013 at 10:10 AM
Sit at home spaming polls all day like they have always done.
APACHEWHOKNOWS on February 10, 2013 at 10:30 AM
l/Libertarians will go on nicely, thank you-though I am not one. Paul-bots will seek a new cult-like experience, either in politics or religion. If it were the 1970′s the Paul-bots would gravitate towards the Hare Krishna‘s and you’d R3voLution stickers still on their bummpers. Nowadays I guess they’ll join the Westboro Baptist church or become members of a mosque.
JFKY on February 10, 2013 at 10:32 AM
Or continue our mission to take over state parties…
JohnGalt23 on February 10, 2013 at 10:35 AM
That may work in the deep-blue states, but you’ll get more mixed results in places like my home state.
gryphon202 on February 10, 2013 at 10:41 AM
Worked like a charm in the most purple of states, NV…
JohnGalt23 on February 10, 2013 at 11:12 AM
Oh, so you are smoking crack. I’d like to see it wither away as well. I just don’t think it will ever happen, at least not in my lifetime. They’re too entrenched. The only hope is to transform it from within which is what the TEA party has been trying to do, frustrating as it may be.
Odysseus on February 10, 2013 at 11:19 AM
And what do you have to back up your hypothesis?
antifederalist on February 10, 2013 at 11:22 AM
There won’t be a third party. There will be another party to take the GOP’s place after it implodes. You don’t think the GOP will implode, and on that you and I have a difference of opinion which is fine and dandy. My opinion is based on historical precedence, while the opinions of so many self-professing “conservatives” seem to be based on wishful thinking.
At some point in time, I believe the Tea Partiers will be frustrated enough to give up that fight to reform the GOP from within. When that happens, the Republican Party won’t last long as a viable political organ.
gryphon202 on February 10, 2013 at 11:27 AM
A libertarian with a sane, non-suicidal, realistic foreign policy that recognizes and accounts for the realities of history and human behavior would help.
Problem is, to work the libertarian utopia requires human beings to be or become something other than they are. This is the same problem the socialist/communist utopia has. The Soviet worker’s paradise would have worked if only people had behaved properly, working selflessly for the state and their fellow comrades. Or so the story goes. Comrade Obama’s vision for a United Socialist States of America will never work for the same reason.
I’m sympathetic to libertarianism, but to be politically viable and successful libertarian leadership, and its rank and file, must become more realistic and less idealistic. Assuming that’s possible. About which I have my doubts
farsighted on February 10, 2013 at 11:47 AM
Humans are selfish. Most of us would gladly be tyrants given the opportunity, but relatively few of us wish to be lorded over. The only successful political forms in human history have recognized these simple facts (cf. the constitution of the United States of America)
gryphon202 on February 10, 2013 at 11:50 AM
You mean a realistic foreign policy that drags this country into wars based on lies (e.g. Iraq)?
antifederalist on February 10, 2013 at 11:58 AM
Iraq was the biggest departure from realism that this country has seen since Woodrow Freaking Wilson.
Any plan that, as part of its plan for success, requires a nation to (magically) become a liberal democracy, when that nation has never generated any democratic institutions on its own, is fantastic idealism at its worst.
JohnGalt23 on February 10, 2013 at 12:02 PM
To accuse Bush of lying, one would have to assume that he knew he was not telling the truth. That’s a progressive smear.
I am far more upset about the way the “war on terror” was prosecuted after the fall of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. You defeat your enemy by breaking things and killing people until they are no longer able to wage war on you. That was not the policy of the Bush DoD, and I believe it should have been. Social engineering is for progressives.
gryphon202 on February 10, 2013 at 12:03 PM
I’m quite willing to give GWB the benefit of the doubt on his truthfulness in this matter. What I am not willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on is his capacity for skepticism on a matter of war and peace.
We know intelligence sources were lying to us for years about Iraq, most likely on the bidding of the INC. And it appears that Feith, Wolfowitz and others within the DoD saw their opportunity to combine lying intelligence sources with an Executive with a limited capacity for skepticism on the matter, to lead us to a war that certain elements of the American Right had been itching to fight for years.
So, yeah… that pretty much makes it a war based on lies.
JohnGalt23 on February 10, 2013 at 12:12 PM
Get it through their heads that conservatives are not going to abandon the Special People or their nation, will not stand idly by while you unleash the Pandora’s Box of legalized drugs on their communities, will not be dissuaded from permawar until the fiscal cliff hits. Support Rand Paul and support REALITY, liberaltarians.
And outright historical cluelessness at the worst.
There are valid reasons why the Roman and later British empires brought order to barbaric nations while Uncle Sam is failing. I wonder if we’d even have dared to hang Indian men who threw widows onto funeral pyres.
MelonCollie on February 10, 2013 at 12:19 PM
That’s a pretty bold assertion, considering that Hussein had already used weapons of mass destruction of a chemical nature against his own people. Quite frankly, I don’t think anyone lied. I think the church hearings neutered our ability to effectively analyze intelligence decades before Operation Desert Shield/Storm.
Regardless, none of that changes the fact that we won WWII decisively because of our willingness to do things (like carpet bombing Berlin, summarily shooting saboteurs, and dropping a nuke on Japan) that we consider unthinkable now. Thanks, progressives!
gryphon202 on February 10, 2013 at 12:23 PM