Saturday, May 28, 2011

Presidential Handicapping - Libertarian Republicans

I have been reviewing the potential Republican candidate for President of late. An angry and anonymous commenter took me to task for ignoring Ron Paul. Further, fellow SLOB, Dueling Barstools, has been supporting Gary Johnon, former governor of New Mexico. I am not enamored of either candidate, but I agree with their positions more closely than any of the other candidates. My reasons are partly due to style and partly due to some heartfelt differences over policy.

Ron Paul is on his third run for President. It is not widely remembered that he was the Libertarian Party nominee in 1988. (On a local note, it is interesting that long time San Diego taxpayer hero, Richard Rider is leaving the LP to register as a Republican.) It is important for the political health of the country that there be a strong libertarian wing in the Republican party, and Ron Paul is certainly the acknowledge leader of that wing. Looking over his positions there is little with which I disagree. A small sample:
  • Taxes: [Paul] supports the elimination of the income tax and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). He asserts that Congress had no power to impose a direct income tax and has introduced legislation to repeal of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution, which was ratified on February 3, 1913.
  • Free Trade: [Paul] is a proponent of free trade and rejects protectionism, advocating “conducting open trade, travel, communication, and diplomacy with other nations.”
  • Border Security: A nation without borders is no nation at all. . . . We must do whatever it takes to control entry into our country before we undertake complicated immigration reform proposals.
  • Health Care: There is only one solution that will lead to true health and true freedom: making health care more affordable. Ron Paul believes that only true free market competition will put pressure on the providers and force them to lower their costs to remain in business. Additionally, Ron Paul wants to change the tax code to allow individual Americans to fully deduct all health care costs from their taxes.
However, I am troubled by two issues. First, with respect to the recent killing of Osama bin Laden, Ron Paul said that he wouldn't have given the order to do so. This is a big deal to most Americans. They expect the President to take seriously the fight against Islamist terrorists. Does this mean that our commitment in Afghanistan should be unending? Of course not, but we have the right to wage war on those who have waged war against our country.

Second, Ron Paul comes off like a crank. He is on the right side of the argument on the Federal Reserve, for example, but he always does a bad job making the case. He is so reflexively anti-war that he never acknowledges our need to defend our own interests. He often sees conspiracies all around, which is a frightening mindset in a President. Even in the discussion about health care, he makes the following accusation.
These natural and inexpensive ways of regaining one’s health are being suppressed by the FDA and the medical establishment not because of safety concerns (they’ve been around for hundreds of years), but because they cannot be patented and would therefore cut into the pharmaceutical industry’s profits.
This sort of thing goes to temperament and ability to lead. At the end of the day I am looking for someone who seems more ready to lead than Ron Paul. Would I vote for him over Obama? Of course. In fact, I would be excited that libertarian ideas had taken such a firm foothold. But I would fear that a Ron Paul presidency would be the disaster for libertarianism that Obama's has been for leftism.

Time precludes me from diving into Gary Johnson's candidacy, however, the prominence of the drug issue is a distraction. I need more research to properly evaluate his candidacy.

Back to Ron Paul, I urge fellow Tea Party members and others to explain your concerns with Mr. Paul, as I have heard many of you discuss your misgivings.

10 comments:

  1. I think you state the Paul case perfectly. Great guy to have on your team...just not as Captain. Only, his position on immigration has recently veered into open border territory and the border security crowd are furious with him these days. I. e....he's lost even more of his potential base.

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  2. Democracy sucks! You people drag humanity through the gutter because you will not read history. Why don't you lead yourself? Maybe it is beacuse you are all losers!

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  3. also, Bdaddy's comments about the drug war issue being a distraction demonstrates a lack of careful analysis. I spent 10 years researching why America had a "drug war" and in 2002 I found the answer. To explain my path; After sifting through history of 8000+ year history of cannabis only to findout it was made illegal by lobbying from dupont over the advantages of hemp paper over tree pulp paper when dupont had tooled for tree pulp paper. I then moved onto investigating all illegal drugs by submersing myself directly into the drug trade itself including government and mafia drug running after nearly being killed and seeing the extensive corruption, I moved onto the books where I read the works of Alfred McCoy and Peter Dale Scott where they explained perfectly how the Mujhadeen was funded by CIA built and operated Heroin factories set up in Afghanistan and then then in 1997 turned my attention to Iran Contra and read the entire transcripts (over 20,000 pages) where I found that the named master mind was VP at the time George H.W. Bush. After realizing that Bush was named as mastermind by MANY involved I asked myself how it could be that he was not called to testify in the hearings, so I then began to look into every single one of the individuals involved and tracked their family and business connections back over 200 years to find out how they all fit together. Low and behold finally in 1999 I found the answer as to why Bush was not called to testify; the iran contra senate subcommittee hearings where headed by John Kerry, it was called the Kerry Commission. Kerry did not call Bush to testify because John Kerry is Skull and Bones as well as Bush. During my research I found out that the Skull and Bones was founded in the 1840's by William Huntington Russell who was owner with his brither in Russell and Co the world's largest Opium Trading Company. Russell started a trust with his drug profits to fund the Skull and Bones Society at Yale. The Skull and Bones are the Drug King pins of the world and the founders of the CIA. In fact nearly every director of the CIA has been Skull and Bones and ALL of the recruitment officers are Skull and Bones. So in Iran Contra you a Skull and Bones member Kerry in charge of investigating illegal drug running by the CIA allegedly coordinated by Skull and Bones member GHW Bush. This research lead directly to banking because I could not understand how all of the Billions of Dollars could be laundered into the banks unnoticed??? After I found out that the IRS rules for reporting has a limit for transactions of OVER $50 million (over that amount reporting is not required). I then turned to the structure of banking to see how this could not be easily found which leads to the answer I found in 2002. After learning about Fractional Reserve Banking and the Money multiplier I took the UN estimated worldwide drug trade dollar amount of ~$450 billion and plugged that number into a federal reserve money multiplier calculation and found that $450billion in cash turns into $88TRILLION IN LOANS!! Do you realize what this means for the security of the US? That means these terrorist could establish entire Nuclear weapons development programs in secret. You want to talk about REAL leadership and Real strategy. END the DRUG WAR and deprofitize illegal drugs and you will see all the drug banks collapse in a matter of months. This is how we can find the real terrorist and this shows the wisdom in ending the drug war in order to deprofitizing drugs and cutoff their monetary resources. Got that. This is only one small summary of ten years of through research. I have met DEA agents who have found CIA run heroin factories in multiple countries but even though he is true leader his voice is not being heard. That is because they kill people like him. But I guess you people just think drugs are bad and we need fight them for the children. I guess thats true leadership for you idiots.

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  4. http://www.infowars.com/on-memorial-day-remember/

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  5. All that research obviously didn't include a writing class. What a shame.

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  6. And another thing... I've done a lot of research on the fluoridation of our drinking water which I'm sure you lemmings are all in favor of.

    Clean teeth? How about rotted-out, goverment controlled minds, instead?

    Get back to me in 10-15 years and let me know how all that is working out for you, you losers.


    "I don't fear women, Mandrake. I just deny them my essence."
    - General Jack D. Ripper (Dr. Strangelove)

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  7. Anon still needs a waterboarding. I check in after a few days and find this guy is still a wart on the ass of one of my favorite blogs?

    But back to Paul, he may be a crank and he may not have the foreign policy agenda I like, but he is kind of like Sarah Palin in that I want them both in the debate to hear/ share about the issues for which they have passion. It helps form the debate.

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  8. How long did it take this dude to put that drivel together?

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  9. Dude, I'm 51 and dont have a filling in my teeth. I go to the dentist about every 3-4 years. But I will probably die from falling off a crazy Texas roof not from fluoridation.

    I have always questioned the Libertarian position on open borders. It seems at odds with national security as presented.

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