Rand Paul wins CPAC straw poll

[Kevin_Kennedy]

A Libertarian can never win nationally. They're too nutty.

As opposed to the "electable" John McCains and Mitt Romneys of the world.

John McCain was never electable, and Mitt Romney was handicapped by bad political advice. He should have campaigned as the man he was, and not the man that his handlers thought would endear him to the moderates.

If we can find a real conservative, with the ability to articulate his views, like Reagan did, we can take this country back in a landslide.

Well who in the world is Mitt Romney then? I don't think you can blame his handlers for his propensity to flip flop. That's been well established for years.

 

[Luddly Neddite]

A Libertarian can never win nationally. They're too nutty.

As opposed to the "electable" John McCains and Mitt Romneys of the world.

John McCain was never electable, and Mitt Romney was handicapped by bad political advice. He should have campaigned as the man he was, and not the man that his handlers thought would endear him to the moderates.

If we can find a real conservative, with the ability to articulate his views, like Reagan did, we can take this country back in a landslide.

LOL

Reagan didn't have any views of his own. That's okay though because he had Nancy.

As I said, you'll do much better if you stick to vote theft and gerrymandering. If not for that, they wouldn't have anyone in DC.

 

[Paulie]

Romney stood no chance. As ridiculous as this is, wealthy men like him that have questionably ethical histories are simply not going to get enough support from independents, fence-sitting democrats, etc, in this time of such economic disparity. It's hard for people of the lower and middle class to relate with them, and it means a lot of lost votes.

It might be a dumb reason for voting or not voting for someone, but it's our political landscape nonetheless. We're just not beat for electing aggressive capitalism right now. And even though I don't agree with that, I also don't blame people for feeling that way.

 

[Paulie]

You're a middle class family that's struggling to keep the bills paid...

How likely is it that you're going to vote for the big businessman who has so much money he shelters it offshore? How can you really expect him to relate with you?

It was a stupid move on the GOP's part, which isn't very surprising anymore these days.

 

[Erand7899]

As opposed to the "electable" John McCains and Mitt Romneys of the world.

John McCain was never electable, and Mitt Romney was handicapped by bad political advice. He should have campaigned as the man he was, and not the man that his handlers thought would endear him to the moderates.

If we can find a real conservative, with the ability to articulate his views, like Reagan did, we can take this country back in a landslide.

One, you don't have one. Two, that's not who Reagan was. Three, that's not how Reagan won.

You never know what will pop up before the next presidential election. You don't have a clue as to who Reagan was, or how he won. Try again when you actually have something to say.

 

[hazlnut]

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

Why would libertarians want to join the Republican Party when you don't represent us and actively tell us to stay out?

Whose you? The Republican Party imperfectly represents my political philosophy, but it's the best game changer in town. Let's face it, a vote cast for a Libertarian Party candidate is a wasted vote, one that splits the liberty platform shared by libertarians and conservative constitutionalists. The vast majority of the base of the Republican Party would happily have you so that together we might change the Republican Party and drive the corrupt establishment out.

That's my point.

Instead of splitting the vote, unite it. It's simpler and more effective to do it that way rather than rally around the comparatively paltry apparatus of the Libertarian Party.

That's not a slight against your Party or your ideology. I don't care about party labels in and of themselves. Ideology is what matters. I want to defeat statism.

Tactics!

Can you give us an example of a Republican libertarians ought to support then?

Well, again, what I'm after is creating the sort of candidates that libertarians and conservative constitutionalists can happily support within a reformed Republican Party.

However, though perhaps none of them are perfectly acceptable to you, I like Congressman West, Governor Walker, Senators Cruz, Paul, Lee and Rubin.

Now, none of these men but West and Cruz are perfectly satisfactory to me, but anyone of the above are infinitely better than anyone the unrelentingly statist Democratic Party would offer, vastly better than anyone the establishment of the Republican Party would offer, and these men would have a real chance of winning the presidency in spite of what the lunatic leftists on this board naively believe given the current climate of things, certainly a better chance than any Libertarian Party candidate.

Look, the closest thing we've gotten to our kind of man in any sense at all in many decades is Reagan, and Goldwater got the ball rolling. All I'm saying is that we are stronger when we are united around the liberty platform, not divided. For the sake of the Republic, some comprises in principle will have to be made if we are to incrementally right it. It can't be done all at once.

I think Walker would be the very best candidate overall in terms of principle and the ability to win. He ain't perfect, but he'd right a lot of wrongs. It's a start. The only practical path back to liberty, sans another revolution, would necessarily be traversed one step at a time.

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

Whose you? The Republican Party imperfectly represents my political philosophy, but it's the best game changer in town. Let's face it, a vote cast for a Libertarian Party candidate is a wasted vote, one that splits the liberty platform shared by libertarians and conservative constitutionalists. The vast majority of the base of the Republican Party would happily have you so that together we might change the Republican Party and drive the corrupt establishment out.

That's my point.

Instead of splitting the vote, unite it. It's simpler and more effective to do it that way rather than rally around the comparatively paltry apparatus of the Libertarian Party.

That's not a slight against your Party or your ideology. I don't care about party labels in and of themselves. Ideology is what matters. I want to defeat statism.

Tactics!

Can you give us an example of a Republican libertarians ought to support then?

Well, again, what I'm after is creating the sort of candidates that libertarians and conservative constitutionalists can happily support within a reformed Republican Party.

However, though perhaps none of them are perfectly acceptable to you, I like Congressman West, Governor Walker, Senators Cruz, Paul, Lee and Rubin.

Now, none of these men but West and Cruz are perfectly satisfactory to me, but anyone of the above are infinitely better than anyone the unrelentingly statist Democratic Party would offer, vastly better than anyone the establishment of the Republican Party would offer, and these men would have a real chance of winning the presidency in spite of what the lunatic leftists on this board naively believe given the current climate of things, certainly a better chance than any Libertarian Party candidate.

Look, the closest thing we've gotten to our kind of man in any sense at all in many decades is Reagan, and Goldwater got the ball rolling. All I'm saying is that we are stronger when we are united around the liberty platform, not divided. For the sake of the Republic, some comprises in principle will have to be made if we are to incrementally right it. It can't be done all at once.

I think Walker would be the very best candidate overall in terms of principle and the ability to win. He ain't perfect, but he'd right a lot of wrongs. It's a start. The only practical path back to liberty, sans another revolution, would necessarily be traversed one step at a time.

The best on that list are Paul and Lee, and neither of them are acceptable to me at this point. Also, Reagan was nowhere near my kind of politician.

Though I should say, I suppose, that I am in no way speaking for all libertarians. I recognize that I may be a bit more stringent than others.

 

[Erand7899]

As opposed to the "electable" John McCains and Mitt Romneys of the world.

John McCain was never electable, and Mitt Romney was handicapped by bad political advice. He should have campaigned as the man he was, and not the man that his handlers thought would endear him to the moderates.

If we can find a real conservative, with the ability to articulate his views, like Reagan did, we can take this country back in a landslide.

Well who in the world is Mitt Romney then? I don't think you can blame his handlers for his propensity to flip flop. That's been well established for years.

The only thing that has been extablished is the perception created by the Democrat party and parroted in the lamestream media. Mitt Romney went through a brutal primary battle, that exhausted his campaign funds, and was forced to sit and watch Democrats, use their primary funds to create a false image of him. He needed to fight out of that image during the general campaign, but his handlers wanted him to concentrate on Obama's negatives, instead of his positives. Obama had the lamestream media to mute his negatives, and meanwhile, Romney was stuck with the perceptions that had already been formed.

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

John McCain was never electable, and Mitt Romney was handicapped by bad political advice. He should have campaigned as the man he was, and not the man that his handlers thought would endear him to the moderates.

If we can find a real conservative, with the ability to articulate his views, like Reagan did, we can take this country back in a landslide.

Well who in the world is Mitt Romney then? I don't think you can blame his handlers for his propensity to flip flop. That's been well established for years.

The only thing that has been extablished is the perception created by the Democrat party and parroted in the lamestream media. Mitt Romney went through a brutal primary battle, that exhausted his campaign funds, and was forced to sit and watch Democrats, use their primary funds to create a false image of him. He needed to fight out of that image during the general campaign, but his handlers wanted him to concentrate on Obama's negatives, instead of his positives. Obama had the lamestream media to mute his negatives, and meanwhile, Romney was stuck with the perceptions that had already been formed.

That's a long list of excuses. More likely that Republicans just nominated a loser.

 

[PaintMyHouse]

You're a middle class family that's struggling to keep the bills paid...

How likely is it that you're going to vote for the big businessman who has so much money he shelters it offshore? How can you really expect him to relate with you?

It was a stupid move on the GOP's part, which isn't very surprising anymore these days.

That and 20% of voters wouldn't vote from a guy from a cult.

 

[Steinlight]

We're still running Reaganism- a catastrophe for everyone but the rich......only brainwashing keeps it going.

I think the only bad thing that came out of free trade and outsourcing was the fact that you lost your job at the glue factory, and after years of chronic sniffing, you decided to grace us with your presence on these boards.

You are one of the reasons I hope social security, medicare, and union pensions collapse, I can watch your geriatric ass wander the streets, while I sit back and laugh at your demise.

 

[Steinlight]

PLEASE bring on Rand, Cruz- Top out at 43 per cent and a Golden Dem Age for the country...lol

The rubber room is ------> way

You're right of course that Rand/Cruz belong in a rubber room but there is a small minority of people who would actually vote for them. Neither are pro-America or pro-American and both have lied a LOT.

But, add to the mix the gerrymandering and vote theft the right is so good at - they could make a showing.

Doubt either could get close to the WH though.

I think Rand Paul and Ted Cruz oppose giving homos pieces of paper from the government to play house, therefore you can't vote for him as this is the most important issue facing the United States and Western Civilization.

 

[Paulie]

The rubber room is ------> way

You're right of course that Rand/Cruz belong in a rubber room but there is a small minority of people who would actually vote for them. Neither are pro-America or pro-American and both have lied a LOT.

But, add to the mix the gerrymandering and vote theft the right is so good at - they could make a showing.

Doubt either could get close to the WH though.

I think Rand Paul and Ted Cruz oppose giving homos pieces of paper from the government to play house, therefore you can't vote for him as this is the most important issue facing the United States and Western Civilization.

Cruz disagrees with it because he disagrees with gay marriage. Paul disagrees with it because he doesn't believe the government has any authority on marriage.

Big difference.

 

[Steinlight]

You're right of course that Rand/Cruz belong in a rubber room but there is a small minority of people who would actually vote for them. Neither are pro-America or pro-American and both have lied a LOT.

But, add to the mix the gerrymandering and vote theft the right is so good at - they could make a showing.

Doubt either could get close to the WH though.

I think Rand Paul and Ted Cruz oppose giving homos pieces of paper from the government to play house, therefore you can't vote for him as this is the most important issue facing the United States and Western Civilization.

Cruz disagrees with it because he disagrees with gay marriage. Paul disagrees with it because he doesn't believe the government has any authority on marriage.

Big difference.

I know it's the biggest issue of our day don't you know? Instead of focusing on changing foreign policy, fed reserve/financial policy, fiscal policy, obamacare, government surveillance/privacy issues, we should discuss an issue the executive has no power on, to distract us from the fact that there is no meaningful difference between the democrat and republican candidate. It is a good way to distract the idiot proles.

 

[Katzndogz]

Let the democrat lies begin.

 

[Paulie]

I think Rand Paul and Ted Cruz oppose giving homos pieces of paper from the government to play house, therefore you can't vote for him as this is the most important issue facing the United States and Western Civilization.

Cruz disagrees with it because he disagrees with gay marriage. Paul disagrees with it because he doesn't believe the government has any authority on marriage.

Big difference.

I know it's the biggest issue of our day don't you know? Instead of focusing on changing foreign policy, fed reserve/financial policy, fiscal policy, obamacare, government surveillance/privacy issues, we should discuss an issue the executive has no power on, to distract us from the fact that there is no meaningful difference between the democrat and republican candidate. It is a good way to distract the idiot proles.

Ok I see what you're saying. I'm in your camp, trust me. I haven't really been here for about the last year so I don't know a lot of you.

 

[Steinlight]

Cruz disagrees with it because he disagrees with gay marriage. Paul disagrees with it because he doesn't believe the government has any authority on marriage.

Big difference.

I know it's the biggest issue of our day don't you know? Instead of focusing on changing foreign policy, fed reserve/financial policy, fiscal policy, obamacare, government surveillance/privacy issues, we should discuss an issue the executive has no power on, to distract us from the fact that there is no meaningful difference between the democrat and republican candidate. It is a good way to distract the idiot proles.

Ok I see what you're saying. I'm in your camp, trust me. I haven't really been here for about the last year so I don't know a lot of you.

I have been here for a month, not really a regular either, lol.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

Can you give us an example of a Republican libertarians ought to support then?

Well, again, what I'm after is creating the sort of candidates that libertarians and conservative constitutionalists can happily support within a reformed Republican Party.

However, though perhaps none of them are perfectly acceptable to you, I like Congressman West, Governor Walker, Senators Cruz, Paul, Lee and Rubin.

Now, none of these men but West and Cruz are perfectly satisfactory to me, but anyone of the above are infinitely better than anyone the unrelentingly statist Democratic Party would offer, vastly better than anyone the establishment of the Republican Party would offer, and these men would have a real chance of winning the presidency in spite of what the lunatic leftists on this board naively believe given the current climate of things, certainly a better chance than any Libertarian Party candidate.

Look, the closest thing we've gotten to our kind of man in any sense at all in many decades is Reagan, and Goldwater got the ball rolling. All I'm saying is that we are stronger when we are united around the liberty platform, not divided. For the sake of the Republic, some comprises in principle will have to be made if we are to incrementally right it. It can't be done all at once.

I think Walker would be the very best candidate overall in terms of principle and the ability to win. He ain't perfect, but he'd right a lot of wrongs. It's a start. The only practical path back to liberty, sans another revolution, would necessarily be traversed one step at a time.

The best on that list are Paul and Lee, and neither of them are acceptable to me at this point. Also, Reagan was nowhere near my kind of politician.

Though I should say, I suppose, that I am in no way speaking for all libertarians. I recognize that I may be a bit more stringent than others.

Well, so am I, actually, a raving lunatic, don't ya know? Just ask Comrade Clayton "The Government Can Do No Wrong" Jones. But I'll take what I can practically get in the meantime.

Don't like Cruz or West? I think they're fabulous.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

I don't expect all or nothing, but there are some issues I won't compromise on. I linked to a tweet he sent out earlier that any libertarian worth their salt would find highly objectionable, and here's an interesting bit from an interview he did earlier.

EconomicPolicyJournal.com: Rand Paul: My Foreign Policy Is In Line with George Bush the First

I don't recall ever reading about how H.W.'s foreign policy was in any way libertarian, so I don't see what there is to support there.

Hello, Kevin. May I ask what those issues are relative to your positions?

Thanks.

Well, for starters, he's talking about "containing" Russia. What does that mean, and why should the U.S. government be involved in doing it? I'm a non-interventionist so I don't see that containing Russia is in line with non-interventionism, and H.W. was certainly no non-interventionist so that's no good. He also voted for sanctions against Iran despite the fact that Iran has every right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. At one point he supported keeping Guantanamo Bay Prison open and continuing the policy of indefinite detention. He seems to have backed off that a little bit recently, but his current views on the issue aren't clear.

These are some of my objections.

Well, my understanding is that Paul would that we isolate Russia diplomatically and economically. I don't have a problem with that. It's the principle of free association on an international scale, not an interventionist attitude.

As for Iran, it's intent is not peaceful, and before Obama recently changed our policy that's all we were really doing there.

Obama has got us entangled with the goons of Islamofascism and Middle Eastern political affairs more than ever before, and with all the wrong factions, and America's insufferable insistence that Israel, which is at the center of it all, make nice with its enemies needs to change.

Israel shouldn't have given one square inch of ground back to its enemies. End of story.

Move on. The rest is none of our business.

I say we disengage and pull our military out of virtually every region in the world, including Korea, Japan and Western Europe. I've had enough of Western Europe, especially, burdening the American taxpayer with the costs of its bloated welfare states in lieu of providing for its own defense. All the world needs to know after that about us is that any regime on earth that attacks us or our interests abroad will be hammered.

Nation building? Squandering our resources, an unending expenditure of treasure and blood all over the friggin' world?

No.

We come. We kill. We leave.

Live with it.

Who said we have to fix what we break?

Statist mumbo jumbo of the entangling, wealth-redistribution kind.

If our military actions are limited to the counter attacks of a righteously angry nation and no more, we won't break anything that wasn't already broken and allowed to persist by the people of the respective nation. It's their problem, not ours.

In the meantime, back at home, we get this bloated government off the backs of our natural resources and private property, secure our southern border, and take back the schools. If the leftist bootlicks in this country are too stupid to understand what’s really going on in this country, the complicity of their political elites among others . . . we may have to consider more forceful means. Time is running out.

I have no objection to the idea of detaining foreign combatants at Guantanamo Bay while our troops are deployed and actively engaged in combat against their comrades abroad. What I object to is the failure of Bush I to destroy Hussein's regime the first time around and the notion of nation building thereafter.

As for Afghanistan, surely you would agree that we couldn’t have simply made a speech of protest in the face of 9/11 and the Taliban government's complicity. However, once we toppled that government, killing as many of its politicians and soldiers as possible in the process without mercy, we should have concentrated on nothing else but hunting down and killing Osama bin Laden and his cohorts. Thereafter, we release those we can, try and imprison the rest of the combatants at Guantanamo Bay and put those who are guilty of especially heinous crimes against the Republic up against a wall. No. Wait. That's a soldier’s death, not a criminal's. We hang them.

Twenty-some years of the is crap! The Patriot Act? The creation of yet another police organization, the DHS? Billions of rounds bought up by the same? Interior immigration check points? Show me your papers. National Defense Authorization Act? Martial law executive orders? The militarization of our local police? Grope and grab at the airports? The repeal of Posse Comitatus?

Regarding the history of recent threats in Iraq and Afghanistan, what are we talking about here, really?

Answer: What should have been no more than two military actions abroad entailing no more than two years of action, if that, though I imagine you objected to our liberation of Kuwait given your stringent libertarian leanings.