Their champion in the Republican Presidential primaries was Ron Paul who consistently drew about 10% of the Republican votes.
So what?
Well, the Republican Party is concerned about the poor showing of the Republican brand name. Too many people blame them for the series of disasters that have characterized the Bush administration. So they decided to write a new Party Platform. But the existing leadership, feeling that they were out of touch with grassroots Republicans, chose to set up a website and ask for suggestions for the platform from grassroots Republicans. That's the current story. From Wired:
Ron Paul supporters have made themselves at home on the the GOP platform site, sounding many of the themes that turned the Texas congressman's doomed run for the Republican presidential nod into an internet cause célèbre.I guess that the RNC spokesman and the platform committee chairman are hearing more than they really wanted to from the Ron Paul Libertarians. They'll take the Libertarian votes and money, but they really don't want the American public to identify those ideas with the Republican Party.
"Get rid of the unconstitutional Federal Reserve, and go back to a sound gold and silver based currency," wrote Cathy, a contributor from Stevensville, Montana, in a post to the "Jobs and Economic Growth" section of the site. [Snip]
Paul's army of online supporters, who've collectively contributed millions of dollars and thousands of hours of volunteering, are still out there, and they're now working to sway the direction of the party. [Snip]
Says Bob in Clemons, North Carolina: "We need to abolish the Federal Reserve and go back to the gold standard. Not just any gold though, I heard about this stuff, pure-strain gold that has been around since God created the universe. That's what we should base our currency around since it is so close to God." [Snip]
"If the Republican party is to remain a relevant part of America's post-boomer political future, then our position on same-sex marriage must change," wrote another. "As a young person and a 'Ron Paul Republican,' I feel that personal liberties, including the right for any adult to marry any other consenting adult, must be protected. At the very least, the issue should be left up to the states."
"As a paleo-conservative I do not support the current direction of the Republican party," writes "PauPer" in yet another entry. "I think Bob Barr and Ron Paul are the true conservative Republicans. The so-called neo-cons have neglected American Republican values. It's no longer left vs. right, it's state worship vs. individual rights. The feral federal government doesn't recognize state or individual rights, and not doing so make them traitors to American values. Peace out."
Will the Republican party respond to the disaffected online Paulites?
An e-mail to an RNC spokesperson wasn't returned by the time of this posting, nor was a phone call to platform committee chairman Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-California).
Can't say I blame them.
2 comments:
Actions speak louder than words. In spite of their “free market” blather, the GOP is worse than the Democrats on spending. Total federal spending under Bush and his GOP Congress has increased a whopping 60%, after adjusting for inflation. Most of this spending wasn’t for national security. It was for the largest new entitlement since the Great Society (prescription drug benefit), the biggest federal intrusion into the classroom in history (No Child Left Behind), and a drunken orgy of pork barrel spending that gives new meaning to the phrase “waste, fraud, and abuse”.
I’m sorry, but anyone who thinks that this is “free market” and “limited government” is just not paying attention.
Note that I placed the term "Free Market" in quotes. The way that conservatives and Libertarians use the term has little connection to what economists mean by a free market.
The Libertarians and conservatives use the term "Free Market" to mean sales in the marketplace which are not in any way regulated by government. The only regulation on such transactions are supposedly competition, and when you are talking about toothpaste and laundry detergent, it may actually work.
But most of the so-called "Free Market" stuff the conservatives and Libertarians actually practice means using government to shift sales to companies that get government preferences. That's power manipulation of the markets, not free markets.
Another problem is that much of what is sold these days is too complicated for the average purchaser to understand what they are buying. Insurance is an excellent example. Insurance companies carefully craft policies that are different from those of their competitors so that purchasers cannot evaluate price vs. value in head to head comparisons.
Market transparency has to be regulated by government because it makes it more difficult for individual companies to sell. They are forced to compete instead of being about to establish small monopolies in niche markets.
So I very much agree that the "Free Market" rhetoric is a sham.
As for "limited government", no tyranny is ever limited government, and the Bush/Cheney government is pushing hard to be the most tyrannical federal government the U.S. has ever endured.
The other point of limited government one where I feel certain you and I will disagree is that no industrial mass market nation can function using the strange limited government ideas of the Libertarians and conservatives. As workers specialize to greater and greater degrees, it is impossible for them to also attend to every function required to create and support a family without more extensive government support.
There are important differences in what government and private businesses are able to do, and private enterprise simply cannot do at all or cannot do at reasonable cost many things that need to be done, such as planning and financing the national health care system and the social security system.
I will say that the current effort to privatize highways by converting them to toll roads is going to show clearly that those roads will almost always provide worse service at higher prices than free government provided highways, just as electrical deregulation in Texas has converted reliable service at very low costs to less reliable service at double the cost in only about six or seven years.
Health care under Medicare is proving that private companies cannot compete cost effectively against the standard Medicare. To maintain the private Medicare providers requires a special subsidy for those companies that simply is not cost effective. It is also totally clear now that the American lack-of-system that provides healthcare (sometimes) provides the worst national healthcare outcomes of any significant industrial nation in the world.
But health care is a subject that takes too much time to discuss. Suffice to say, government has a number of major social functions that private enterprise cannot match. The reverse is also true. So no "limited government" ideology can automatically determine which is better. Each case is different and should be evaluated on it's merits.
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