Libertarianism

The Conservative Political Action Conference: A Bunch Of Retreads And Future Losers!

Ronald 10 Comments

Conservatives are in the third of four days of their annual Conservative Political Action Conference, and it is quite an event, a circus of retreads and future losers, who fail to see that the nation has rejected their ideology when it is presented to them in Senate races, and only holding on to power in the House of Representatives because of gerrymandered districts created by the Tea Party uprising of 2010, which led to a large number of Republican governors and state legislatures at the precisely correct time to affect the shaping of House districts for the ten year cycle following the census figures.

The Tea Party movement has had its heyday, and there are already signs of its future demise, although they will persist in some rural districts in the House, and have their Senators, including Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Rand Paul, all ambitious to be President of the United States, but none of them should be delusional that they will actually be the next President, while they are all fighting to outdo each other three years ahead of 2016!

Attention at this conference is given to such retreads as Sarah Palin, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann, Donald Trump, Paul Ryan, and Newt Gingrich.

Also, such losers as Wayne La Pierre, Grover Norquist and the usual right wing talk show hosts, including Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, are part of the “distinguished” speakers spewing forth their divisiveness.

And the conservatives are making clear that they will not budge in any form on the issue of gay rights, immigration reform,their “traditional” view of women being submissive to men, and refusal to separate science from the influence of religion!

There are differences on foreign policy between the libertarians and the neoconservatives, however, and any suggestion of moderation on ANY issue has led to Chris Christie and Bob McDonnell being denied an invitation to speak.

The ultimate reality is that it does not matter what happens at the CPAC, as it is like Don Quixote battling the windmill! The American people are NOT going to elect any of these “clowns”, even those who seem more “moderate”, such as Christie, to the White House in 2016. The Republicans are fighting a civil war, primarily over who shall represent them in 2016, but it is all for naught!

The next President will, assuredly, be a Democrat—whether Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Martin O’Malley, Andrew Cuomo, Elizabeth Warren, Mark Warner, Amy Klobuchar or someone else not yet known!

“Don’t Drone Me, Bro”—The Self Destruction Of Rand Paul AND Ted Cruz!

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When Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky spoke yesterday at the first day of the Conservative Political Action Conference, a supporter yelled: “Don’t drone me, Bro”, referring to Paul’s 13 hour filibuster demanding an answer from President Obama that he would never use a drone on an American citizen on American soil, a stunt which gave Senator Paul a lot of attention, and led to his promoting the idea of the likelihood of his Presidential candidacy in 2016.

Meanwhile, Texas Senator Ted Cruz showed just what a bully, and an arrogant, overbearing person he is, making himself very unpopular even among fellow Republican Senators with his loony absolute interpretation of the Second Amendment, and showing lack of respect for Senator Diane Feinstein, who lived through the carnage of the murder of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone in 1978. The fact that even Justice Antonin Scalia has stated that there are limits to the Second Amendment does not phase Senator Cruz, as he fancies himself to be a “constitutionalist”!

Both of these Republican Senators fancy that the nation is ready for their looniness—Paul, the libertarian, who wants to bring about a utopian world of little government in people’s lives; and Cruz, using Joseph McCarthy type demagogic techniques to create turmoil and mistrust, and also to throw a “firebomb” as a method to grab for more power and influence!

Both Senators are upstart freshmen, who are showing total ignorance and total disrespect for the institution of the Senate, and their style and methods are designed to promote their own ambition, but will have the effect over time, if not fought bitterly by sane elements, to destroy the Republican Party and its long, much of the time, respectable history and leadership!

The nation is NOT going to accept either Senator Paul or Senator Cruz as their Commander in Chief, as they both, in different and competing ways, are promoting anarchy and chaos in the political arena, and are both VERY dangerous!

Rand Paul Goes Whacko On Senate Floor: Unnecessary Filibuster!

Ronald 10 Comments

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul held up the confirmation of John Brennan for more than 13 hours on the Senate floor yesterday, concerned about the thought that, somehow, Barack Obama intended to use drones against non combat Americans on American soil.

Rand Paul was engaged in pure grandstanding, and it led to Senators John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina condemning their Republican colleague on the Senate floor today!

By his filibuster, Paul only encouraged the conspiracy theorists who see FEMA helicopters about to take over the skies, arrest people who have guns, and intern large numbers of Americans in “concentration camps”, all part of the belief that our President is trying to become a dictator.

This crazy fear and hate mongering has led to more death threats against our first African American President than any other President, and we now know that there are eight times the number of right wing hate groups in 2013, as compared to 2008, over 1,300 in number!

Rand Paul and his libertarian views are dangerous, because libertarians see the federal government as the enemy, and all it does is promote militia group and “Patriot” group activities and threats against the “evil’ federal government. It is paranoia gone mad!

The only good that came out of this was that Attorney General Eric Holder came out with a clear cut statement that the President had declared that, under no circumstances, would the federal government ever use drones against non combat Americans on American soil. As if anyone who has common sense and rational thinking would think otherwise!

Republicans Seem To Be Suicidal In Reluctance To Change Course

Ronald 37 Comments

The Republican Party is in its death throes more and more each week.

The country is no longer interested in their agenda, in their candidates, in their goals, and in their promotion of fear and hate!

The GOP has lost five of the last six popular vote totals for President, despite spending inordinate amounts of money, the most ever in 2012, due to the Citizens United case of the Supreme Court in 2010.

But they have elements that are destroying them from within like a cancer!

These destructive elements include:

The right wing conservative talk show hosts on radio and Fox News Channel, who are making massive amounts of money promoting hate, fear and division, and until the GOP tells Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Mark Levin, Michael Savage, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Laura Ingraham and their ilk to go somewhere, they will be going down the road to destruction!

The power of the National Rifle Association and Wayne La Pierre, and its campaign to defeat any candidate who wants any reasonable gun regulations, is going to cause the defeat of Senators and Congressmen, who are unwilling to sell their souls to this powerful pressure group!

The Tea Party Movement, which wants to wipe out Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and is furious at Republican Governors, including the latest convert on ObamaCare, Florida Governor Rick Scott, making it a total of seven Republican Governors who have decided to accept that program, has plans to run candidates against anyone who does not wish to support their desire to go back to the 19th century and wipe out all aspects of the welfare state, so Maine Senator Susan Collins is on a hit list, as is even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, for not being conservative enough! Do not forget that the Koch Brothers and other wealthy billionaires are the brains behind this movement, which is lower class populism gone wild, but they have the ability to harm the Republican Party establishment! And Rand Paul and Ted Cruz are the lead elements in this Tea Party uprising, who might cause the Republican Party to go down to defeat in many races, because of their loony libertarianism!

The right wing evangelical Christian movement, which will fight any move toward acceptance of gay rights and gay marriage, abortion rights, immigration reform, and gun regulation, as well as their desire to promote religion in the education curriculum, rejecting science and history, and promotion of a theocracy in states that have large numbers of their believers.

The “NeoCons”, Neoconservatives, who want more money spent on defense, advocate overseas military interventions, and glorify wars in the name of American capitalism and profits! They had power under George W. Bush, but are now trying to defeat Chuck Hagel for Defense Secretary.

And finally, the no tax increase crowd, led by Grover Norquist of Americans For Tax Reform, a group which is starting to see some Republicans abandon them, but not enough, and willing to back corporate loopholes and the wealthy, at the expense of the middle class and the poor, these two groups failing to understand that this elite has no concerns, except to back the establishment on Wall Street and in the corporate world, even at a time when corporate profits are soaring, and the stock market has doubled under Barack Obama!

These are the destructive elements in the Republican Party, and will cause its total dissolution very soon if the direction of the party is not changed to appeal to the moderate center, the tradition of the party under Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and YES, even in the time of Ronald Reagan, when moderates were still a major part of the party success, and Reagan a conservative but not an extremist, as these various elements of the party are in 2013!

Rand Paul Revives “Nullification” From The Pre Civil War Years

Ronald 16 Comments

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, obviously planning to run for President in 2016, is throwing down the gauntlet to President Obama, stating that he believes that the President is acting as if he is a King or monarch, and saying that any executive orders that the President issues on guns will be “nullified” by Congress.

There are a number of problems about this assertion by Rand Paul.

By bringing up “nullification”, he is forgetting that the Civil War was fought over precisely that issue, the concept of states rights, that a state could nullify laws or actions of the federal government. And that viewpoint lost the war!

Also, what does Rand Paul think he is going to do, other than “grandstand” to win the support of the extreme right wing in the Republican Party? There is no way that he or the Congress could “nullify” Presidential actions, particularly with a divided Congress and a Democratic controlled Senate.

Of course, Paul or someone else could move to impeach the President, and that could actually happen on totally flimsy grounds in the Republican controlled House of Representatives. But the ability to remove the President is less than zero, as without more than 45 Republicans in the US Senate, and the impossibility of gaining 67 votes for conviction and removal, all that Paul is doing is roaring like a “paper tiger”, making a lot of noise, gaining a lot of publicity, none of it flattering, and only stirring up further polarization and conflict.

Rand Paul, as many realize, is a nightmare, who will plague the Republican race for President in 2016; will never become the nominee of the party; and were he to do so, he would take the party and its future down with him.

Face the facts: Rand Paul is nutty, whacky, loony, and his libertarian and isolationist views will never carry the day in a national election!

A Very Scary Thought: Rise Of The Teavangelicals In The Republican Party!

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The Republican Party has been plagued since the late 1970s by the influence of the evangelical Christian RIght, originally led by Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, as the Moral Majority.

Then along came the Tea Party Movement in 2009 as an opposition to any cooperation with President Barack Obama on the economic crisis facing the nation after the meltdown on Wall Street in 2008.

Now the two right wing movements are combining together to take America back to the past, and has elements of religious extremism, nativism, racism, anti Semitism, joined together with promotion of Grover Norquist and his supporters who want no increase in taxes, tax cuts to the top two percent, no regulation of corporations, and the promotion of a theocracy in America, along with a libertarian bent along the lines of Ron Paul and Rand Paul.

This is modern day Fascism in America, a threat to progress and tolerance in America, as the goal is to restore a past that was far from wonderful, but has been romanticized as glorious!

Progressive forces must resist and fight the right wing, as they are a threat to the changing America which is, inevitably, coming on–a multicultural America, in which the white majority will be a minority by the 2040s!

If Mitt Romney Wins Presidency, A Likely Challenge From Day One By Senator Rand Paul Of Kentucky!

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If Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney somehow wins the Presidency this November, he should be forewarned that he will not automatically be the GOP nominee for re-election in 2016.

There is great discontent within the Republican Party with Mitt Romney, and what is happening now is a “shotgun marriage”, as Republicans realize he is their only hope to dislodge Barack Obama from the White House.

But with Romney’s history of moderation until recently; with his alliance with neoconservatives on foreign policy; with the evangelical Christian right uncomfortable with a Mormon nominee, and distrustful of his social conservatism being real; with his close alliance with Wall Street big banks and corporations; and with his refutation of the libertarianistic views of Texas Congressman Ron Paul, it is certain that a President Romney would have rivals in 2016, most notably the highly ambitious Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, Ron Paul’s heir.

Paul running would set up a new civil war in the GOP, as the Wall Street Republicans would shun him; the foreign policy neoconservatives would look on him with trepidation; and the question would arise if the social conservatives would be able to accept some of his libertarian views.

Let’s just say that Rand Paul is a nightmare to many in the national political scene, including his fellow Kentucky Senator and Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who will not be able to count on Paul’s support to be Minority Leader or Majority Leader of the Senate in the 113th Congress.

Like it or not, the impact of Ron Paul, and his son Rand Paul, will haunt the Republican Party for a long time to come!

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul’s Loony Budget Proposal: A “Clear And Present Danger”!

Ronald 1 Comment

One of the worst results of the midterm Congressional elections of 2010 was the election of Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, the son of Texas Congressman and Presidential candidate Ron Paul.

Rand Paul, an optometrist who is not certified by the national organization in the field of optometry, but instead by his own self created association, and who was ranked as the worst Senator in oral discourse in Congress, with an average of only 8.0, eighth grade language, has been seeking to raise his libertarian image within the Republican Party, and is clearly looking to run for President in the future, based on his father’s reputation, and his own,. even more loony, ideas.

Like his father, Rand Paul is an isolationist and a small government man, and he has no concern about the effects of massive cuts in the federal budget.

So last week, he proposed a budget that would totally destroy the whole direction of the nation in an extremist way. absolutely nuts!

What did Paul propose?

A cut in the Social Security payments of 40 percent to all recipients.
End the Medicare program as we know it in two years.
Reduce defense spending by $100 billion below a level considered “devastating” by the Pentagon.
Eliminate the Education, Energy, Housing and Urban Development, and Commerce Departments.
Dramatically cut the Homeland Security Department.
Cut programs for the poor in a radical fashion.
Give tax cuts to the wealthy, lowering rates to 17 percent, and eliminate all taxes on capital gains and dividends.

The vote in the Senate was 83-16 against this radical, crazy plan of Rand Paul. The fact that fifteen Senators joined Paul in backing this most reckless plan is scary beyond belief.

It is clear that Rand Paul is a “clear and present danger” to our future, and must be resisted in every way possible to prevent any chance of him being a serious factor in future Congressional leadership battles and Presidential ambitions.

Paul makes other right wing Republicans look sane by comparison, which makes any intelligent person totally terrified of what this crazy libertarian stands for, sadly backed by many who have no concept of how dangerous this Kentucky Senator has the potential to be in the future!

Rick Santorum: Another Barry Goldwater, But Far Worse!

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Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum’s victories in Dixie tonight, in Alabama and Mississippi, now sets up the ultimate confrontation between Establishment Republicans and the extreme right wing of the party.

The difference is that Mitt Romney is no Nelson Rockefeller of 1964, and Rick Santorum is no Barry Goldwater of 1964..

Rockefeller worked to fill the centrist position in the party, while Romney has flirted uncomfortably with trying to satisfy the far Right, which sadly cannot be done.

Barry Goldwater was at heart a libertarian, and Rick Santorum is as far from that as anyone can imagine, with his desire to control the social and private lives of Americans.

Nelson Rockefeller would be shocked at the performance of Mitt Romney, and Barry Goldwater would be totally appalled at the social totalitarian mentality of Rick Santorum.

In his time, 1964, Barry Goldwater was considered a “nightmare” by Establishment Republicans, many of whom, including Rockefeller abandoned him, leading to the worst GOP defeat since 1912.

Today, Rick Santorum is considered a “nightmare” by Establishment Republicans, and many will abandon him if he is the nominee of the Republican Party, and Santorum will suffer the greatest defeat since 1964, 48 years ago!

Rick Santorum, if he won the Presidency, would undermine the country with his right wing views, making him the most extremist President EVER in American history! He would make us long for the times of George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Herbert Hoover, Calvin Coolidge, and William Howard Taft, considered the five most conservative Presidents of the 20th century in no special order, but all having some personality traits or views that showed their humanity!

Rick Santorum has NO such visions or leanings!

The Republican Party Establishment In Panic: Jeb Bush, George Will, Haley Barbour

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The Republican Party Establishment is fully aware that the party is doomed if it follows the crazy path being tread by Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and Ron Paul.

These candidates are absolutely a calamity big time.

Mitt Romney spends time talking about the height of the trees in Michigan; the fact that his wife has two Cadillacs; the concept that he likes firing people; jokes about being “unemployed”; suggests a tax plan that would be worse than that under George W. Bush in cutting taxes on the wealthy; and continues to say that the auto industry bailout was a bad idea even though it saved between one and two million jobs.

Rick Santorum talks about Satan taking over America; attacks public education and higher education as promoting secular humanism; advocates the end of contraception availability to women; condemns homosexuality in the most extreme language; advocates religion in government; and calls for war on Iran immediately.

Newt Gingrich says that Barack Obama is dangerous to American security; calls for immediate action on Day One to wipe out everything Barack Obama has promoted; calls for a moon colony despite no funds available for it anytime soon; brags about his own brilliance and intellect and knowledge; has no shame about his moral lapses; and enjoys stirring a “hornet’s nest” and being a “flame thrower”.

Ron Paul calls for the elimination of the Federal Reserve; the immediate withdrawal of our troops from all nations overseas; the ending of five federal government agencies; is for massive immediate cuts in the federal budget;
believes in no regulation of corporations; and is a total advocate of libertarianism.

All four are a true disaster, and we have heard the lament from Establishment figures.

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush deplores the promotion of fear and emotion; while George Will, of ABC’s THIS WEEK and also a Washington Post columnist, states that none of the candidates have made a good case for the nomination; and former Mississippi Governor and Republican National Chairman Haley Barbour also is critical of the performance of the candidates for the Republican nomination.

Whether anything can be done to avoid electoral disaster is very hard to predict at this point, but a sense of foreboding is clearly evident in Republican circles!