Thursday, March 13, 2014
The Republican-Libertarian Coalition Is Strong - Keep It That Way
There are many talking point differences among leaders in the Republican party - degree of budget constraint, definition of personal liberty, foreign policy, military agenda - to name a few. All of these are negotiable and will be decided before the 2016 presidential campaign begins. However, the GOP leaders are facing another and potentially more serious level of difference - the definition of "Republican" vs "Libertarian." These are not just words on paper. They are the lifeblood of the two competing branches of current constitutional republicanism. The differences in the two words' meanings often determine whether a congressional race will pit a Republican against a Democrat or whether race will include a Libertarian on the ballot. The presence of a Libertarian can take away 3-10% of the GOP candidate's vote count and can mean that the Democrat will win. This happens because GOP tea partiers often feel drawn to the Libertarian side of the political spectrum, unless military preparedness and budget size are part of the debate. Senator Ted Cruz addressed this issue at last week's Conservative Political Action Convention (CPAC) and he tried to do some fence-mending, dismissing "divisions" with tea party-approved colleague, and possible 2016 GOP presidential rival, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, declaring he'd proudly "stand with Rand." Cruz said : "Although some would like to play up divisions among Republicans, I have no desire to play their game," the Washington Post reported."Rand Paul is a courageous voice for liberty, and I’m honored to call him my friend,...We do not agree on everything, especially regarding foreign policy, but we have agreed on the vast majority of issues, and I am sure we will continue to do so." It was the foreign policy issue that initially opened the rift between the pair recently, when Cruz told ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulous," that "I think US leadership is critical in the world, and I agree with [Paul] that we should be very reluctant to deploy military force abroad, but I think there is a vital role, just as Ronald Reagan did." On Fox News Sunday, Paul hit back : "I think those who would try to argue that somehow I'm different than the mainstream Republican opinion are people who want to take advantage for their own personal political gain," he said. "I'm a great believer in Ronald Reagan. I'm a great believer in a strong national defense." The following day, Paul expanded on his criticism, writing for Bretibart News that Reagan's legacy was being mangled. "I don’t claim to be the next Ronald Reagan nor do I attempt to disparage fellow Republicans as not being sufficiently Reaganesque," Paul wrote. "I will remind anyone who thinks we will win elections by trashing previous Republican nominees or holding oneself out as some paragon in the mold of Reagan, that splintering the party is not the route to victory." Paul praised Reagan as "a great leader and President," but he wrote : "too often people make him into something he wasn’t in order to serve their own political purposes....Today, we forget that some of the Republican hawks of his time criticized Reagan harshly for this too, again, calling him an appeaser,...Today’s Republicans should concentrate on establishing their own identities and agendas, as opposed to simply latching onto Ronald Reagan’s legacy - or worse, misrepresenting it." Senator Rand never named Cruz. After initially declining comment, Cruz's office offered a statement later the same day : "Substantive policy disagreements are a positive aspect of the political discourse but in the fight for liberty, I am proud to stand with Rand," the Cruz statement said. Rand (31%) and Cruz (11% ) finished first and second at the CPAC straw poll on March 9. ~~~~~While Senators Rand and Cruz were agreeing to disagree, former Arkansas Governor and 2008 presidential cabdidate Mike Huckabee addressed the CPAC issue by saying that "libertarianism is not conservatism,...CPAC is becoming increasingly libertarian over the past few years, and we saw that this year," Huckabee told Dick Morris, J.D. Hayworth and John Bachman on Newsmax TV's America's Forum during the COAC convention : "Libertarians have a very valid point of view, and increasingly we're seeing a libertarian influence for the Republican Party. But pure libertarianism is not Republicanism,...They're welcome in the Republican Party, but don't act as if somehow libertarianism is a purer form of being Republican," The Arkansas Republican said. Huckabee added, however, that he doesn't put all the blame for Republican losses on Libertarian Party candidates taking votes from GOP candidates. "If 10 percent more of the social conservatives had voted in the 2012 election, Mitt Romney would be president today," Huckabee said. "They stayed home, in larger numbers, in part because they didn't feel like there was a message that really connected to them." Huckabee believes that the solution for Republican candidates is not to stay away from social issues, because "by doing so, you almost ensure defeat." He added that "a real conservative embodies the whole spectrum of conservatism, which is not only fiscal conservatism [but also] the idea that we need less government and the government we have ought to be more effective and more local." ~~~~~ Dear readers, Republicans are in an excellent position to come out on top in the 2014 congressional elections. Democrats are already distancing themselves from President Obama and his falling 41% positive rating in the last polls, and trying to say that Obamacare needs a littke "tweaking" instead of being repealed, which the majority of Americans want and which the victory of a "Repeal Obamacare" Republican in last Tuesday's special Florida congressional election emphasized. The last thing the Republican Party should do now is succumb to internal pressures and media baiting that will lead to blowing up out of proportion the political nuances that define conservative Republicans, moderate Republicans and libertarians (both in the GOP and Libertarian Party members). Such infighting will be used by the Democrat Party and the media to portray the GOP as being in disarray. That must not happen. The 2014 elections will save America from Obama's leftist policies and no internal GOP "counting the angels on pinheads" should be allowed to interfere with this critically important goal for America. The only practical difference between Libertarians and Republicans is in the area of foreign policy and military "entanglements." But Barack Obama's disastrously dovish and retreatist "absense-while-on-duty" foreign policy and his frontal attack on the military preparedness that is needed to keep America safe has taught both tbe GOP and libertarians one key lesson -- hiding from the world is not possible and confronting it successfully requires a world-view foreign policy and the military to support it. The Democrats have failed America on these key points. Together, Republicans and Libertarians can master these vitally important goals.
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There is plenty if room inside the Republican party for every conservative and libiterian thinker out there. It is only together that we can defeat this wave if Prigressive Socialism that us defined by the Obama administration and 95% of the entire Democratic Party.
ReplyDeleteBoth conservative republicans and libertarians need to work together for the common good. In politics no one can ever get 100% of their agenda. We both speak the same agendas. Now let's work to that end. Our Constitution u
Is being shredded by Obama and his Progressives.
Libertarians are not a Conservatives enemy ... Not at all. We stand with our Founding Farther 's and support the Constitution. Only together can we quickly place American back on the path. The best gift anyone could give the Democratic Party is a divided Libertarian-Conservative Republican base.
A solid union of our two movements would be the best offense- defense ever put together
All our Founding Farthers we're devote Libertarians. The principals in our Constitution speaks to Libertarian-Conservative principals.
ReplyDeleteIn these dire times when the survival of this nation is at hand we must not, we can not be wasting our time, monies, energies, or good candidates fighting with like thinking friends.
Politics does make strange bedfellows...
ReplyDeleteThe operative within the so-called “conservative” wing of the Republican Party are those who are Conservative republicans, the Libertarians, and the Tea Partiers. The source of the problems exists with the Tea Party group.
ReplyDeleteToday’s Tea Party has ambitions to become an ongoing force—maybe even the major force—in American conservatism. And it strives for a revolution of its own, a return to a more limited, more constitutional form of government. If I had to judge its performance so far, I would say that it has been courageous and right in its diagnosis of the problems facing American politics, but somewhat off in its prescriptions.
What the Tea Party needs now is a strategy—something it has so far conspicuously lacked—to allow it to achieve its worthy ends. Thinking through a strategy will help clarify those ends: What is it, exactly, that the Tea Party means by limited government? Limited to what? And limited by what? Clearly the Tea Party’s form of conservatism points back to the Constitution as the basis for restoring American government. But how practically to move in that direction?
The Tea Party could do itself and the country a great service by working out what a return to constitutional government might really mean, and thus the strategy and tactics appropriate to that. What is needed is less populism and more political thinking on its part, or on the part of its trusted advisors. Political thinking and constitutional thinking are not opposed; of course, any more than putting together a political majority and defending the Constitution are opposed. Indeed, these two great duties, properly understood, are implicit in each other. It’s doubtful that the Republican Party can succeed without doing both.
If all conservative officeholders don’t start to correct the structural deformations in our government, and if the Tea Party doesn’t turn its formidable patriotism and energy to enlightening the American people about how we are losing control of our own destiny, then no matter how many good policies we enact, the body politic will continue to sicken, and self-government will slip through our fingers.
This is a the problem that the Tea Party faces if it wishes to complete the “triangular conservative force” required to propel conservative thinkers into power and have a constructive discussion with the American electors about how to return in today’s world to the believes of the Founding Father’s conservative/libertarian beliefs.
in order to take full advantage of the possibility that is present to increase the margin in the house, take a numeric control in the Senate, and execute the election of a conservative into the White House in 2016 conservative must come together in one coherent group. The name tags can be whatever each want - but the public front and the aim must be one in the same.
ReplyDeleteIf conservative republican, libertarians, and Tea Partiers can look down the road and see the bigger picture that is there we can do this, If any one of is simply looks over the end of their noses and sees no further - we have trouble.
A coalition of conservative republicans and libertarians will speak tons of reality to the Tea Party people. The message would be join us in victory or settle into oblivion by yourselves.
I believe it is that simple.
The Establishment Wing of the GOP may have a "hate" relationship with the Tea Party people, after all the Tea Party went in and did some damage to the GOP early on. It was all over the fact that the Tea Party put all it's eggs in defunding Obamacare basket And when the SCOTUSA stepped all over that in the name of Chief Justice Robert's moment in the sun, it left the Tea Party pretty much without a national cause.
ReplyDeleteNow it is up to the leadership of all the various Tea Party's as to their next move. Become a voice of local politics in specific locals or join something that is bigger than all it's individual parts.
I think the decision has been made for the conservative republicans and libertarians.
The ball is in the Tea Party court.
We should note the paradoxical character of the Tea Party: It is a populist movement to defend the Constitution, but the Constitution is meant, among other things, to limit populism in our politics—to channel, moderate, and refine popular passion through constitutional forms, such as elections, office holding, and the rule of law. The point was to ensure, as The Federalist initially put it, that the reason, not the passion, of the public would control and regulate the government. So it was incumbent on the Tea Party to try to keep its populist means in line with its constitutional ends. And it is in this respect that the Tea Party has sometimes fallen short.
ReplyDeleteBottom line may well be that the cluttered structural makeup and the lack of any depth of political philosophical direction (reason) is the worst enemy that the Tea Party has today. Playing the game in Podunk, Montana (made up name folks) is not the same as playing in Washington, DC.