I No Longer Support Ron Paul

I just sent this e-mail to the Campaign for Liberty:

I’m not a Republican because, as a libertarian, I consider the Republican Party to be the worse of two evils.  I have decided not to continue to support Ron Paul because of his cheap, opportunistic refusal to support Gary Johnson.  I appreciate all he has done for the libertarian movement, but in the end he’s just another Republican. I have removed my name from your mailing list, and I do not support you.

Gary Johnson on Ron Paul

Dave Nalle on the RNC's Proposed Rules 12 and 15

Dave Nalle, head of the Republican Liberty Caucus, released this memo claiming that the Republican establishment is attempting to refashion the party's procedures to exclude the influence of Tea Party elements from the GOP. 

Fellow Texas Republican:

You may have thought that the story out of Tampa this week was going to be a celebration of the Romney-Ryan nomination, maybe spiced up with a bit of contention from the liberty wing of the party, but ultimately a celebration of party unity moving forward to defeat Obama in November.  That's what we all expected and that should have been the story.

But for grassroots Republicans the story out of Tampa is becoming something very, very different.  The presidential nomination, which was supposed to be the focus, is taking a backseat to a growing controversy over an attempt by a small group of elite party insiders and the Romney campaign to fundamentally change the rules and structure of the party to disenfranchise grassroots Republicans activists and turn the GOP from a party of the people into a party of top-down governance from a select class of professional political organizers.

One of the cornerstones of the Grand Old Party is a belief in republicanism and the idea that power is distributed and limited by checks and balances.  Those values are embodied in our Constitution and they were the basis of the Republican Party when it was founded and for most of its history.  Historically this has meant that most of the power in the Republican Party has rested with the party members in the states, working as delegates through their local and state caucuses and conventions to generate policy for the party in a unique collaborative process where the voice of the people could be heard strongly.

Now there are those in Tampa who seek to overturn this traditional structure of the party, set restrictions on the free choice of party members and introduce a new and alien process which would minimize the input of the party's rank and file and put power in the hands of party leaders and wealthy special interests who can buy the loyalty of the mob.  They have borrowed the organizing structure of the Democrats and authored rules which would cause our delegates to be bound by the votes of primary voters who may not be Republicans or share our values, and they have further proposed the removal of control over the rule making process from the state parties to a small elite within the national committee of the party who can change the rules under which the party operates at any time.  Without fixed rules arrived at by the consent of the rank and file of the party we become pawns rather than participants in the political process..

These proposals which have come out of the Rules Committee in Tampa are contrary to the basic character of the party and they are opposed by many delegates who were not part of the handpicked group of insiders which dominated the committee.  Delegates from many states are speaking out in opposition and members of the committee who believe in a bottom-up party structure have issued a minority report to challenge what amounts to a powergrab by elite insiders and the Romney campaign.

I hope that the Texas delegation in Tampa will take the lead in opposing this coup within the party.  If you are a delegate, please join other Texans in supporting the minority report and opposing these changes.  If you are here at home, please reach out to any delegates you know and encourage them to stand up for the right of the state parties and the many dedicated Republicans who took part in the grassroots process which makes our party unique and protects the rights of all of its members.
I have attached copies of the proposed rules 12 and 15 which make these changes.  Please read them for yourself and see if they represent the kind of party governance you want to be under.  If you agree with me that they disenfranchise our party members and empower people who do not have the best interests of the party at heart, please join me in taking action to raise opposition before this issue is raised on the convention floor in Tampa on Monday.
Dave Nalle
Travis County Precinct 105 Chairman

Proposed Rules 12 and 15
"12: The Republican National Committee may, by three fourths (3/4) vote of its entire membership, amend Rules 1-11 and 13-24. Any such amendment shall be considered by the Republican National Committee only if it was passed by by a majority vote of the Standing Committee on Rules after having been submitted in writing at least ten (10) days in advance of its consideration by the Republican National Committee and shall take effect thirty (30) days after adoption. No such amendment shall be adopted after September 30, 2014."
"15(a)(1) Any statewide presidential preference vote that permits a choice among candidates for the Republican nomination for president of the United States in a primary, caucus, or state convention must be used to allocate and bind the state's delegation to the National Convention in either a proportional or winner-take-all manner, except for delegates and alternate delegates who appear on a ballot in a statewide election and are elected directly by primary voters."
"15(a)(2) For any manner of binding or allocating delegates permitted by these Rules, no delegate or alternate who is bound or allocated to a particular presidential candidate may be certified under Rule 19 if the presidential candidate to whom the delegate or alternate delegate is bound or allocated has, in consultation with the State Party, disavowed the delegate or alternate delegate."
"15(e)(3) The Republican National Committee may grant a waiver to a state Republican Party from the provisions of 15(a) and (b) where compliance is impossible, and the Republican National Committee determines that granting such a waiver is in the best interests of the Republican Party."

Johnson Threatens Romney's Viability

Gary Johnson may prevent Mitt Romney's election in November. Real Clear Politics says that Johnson aims to utilize increasingly important social media; if the strategy is successful and Johnson wins 15% in three national polls, he will participate in the national debates. This will be an important step to ending the two-party system, which has led to increasing corruption and ever bigger government.  Politico notes that an Arizona survey found that Johnson will receive nine percent. The poll, published by Public Policy Polling on May 23, notes that, in a head-to-head race, Romney leads Obama by 50 to 43 percent in Arizona. Although 80% of Arizona voters say that they are not sure of their opinion of Gary Johnson, question 11 indicates this:

11. If the candidates for President this year were Democrat Barack Obama, Republican Mitt Romney, and Libertarian Gary Johnson, who would you vote for?
Barack Obama................................................ 41%
Mitt Romney................................................... 45%
Gary Johnson ................................................. 9%
Undecided....................................................... 6%

According to The New Mexico Watchdog, also based on a Public Policy Polling poll, Johnson was polling at seven percent in a three-way race among himself, Obama, and Romney. Obama wins against Romney in a two-way race, but wins by a 75 percent larger margin (48-44 versus 46-39) if Johnson is included. 

Johnson says that he has an eight percent support level nationally.  Public Policy Polling is a Democratic poll.  Unfortunately, the Republican Rasmussen poll so far has excluded Johnson.  Its results may therefore be distorted in Romney's favor.  If Johnson is polling more than five percent, polling firms should include him. Their margin of error (confidence interval in percentage terms) is smaller than Johnson's support.  In other words, they can't argue that Johnson's effect will be overwhelmed by random noise. It is bigger than random noise, and it will hurt Romney.

It is unfortunate that the GOP has chosen to pursue a big-government strategy.  I would like to see Obama unseated, but the cycle of pitting a corrupt, big-government Republican against a corrupt, socialist Democrat needs to end. Those who oppose the expansive state that Romney advocates will be drawn to Johnson.  His name recognition is still low, so six to eight percent may be significantly less than his ultimate support. The law suits being planned against the Romney campaign by Lawyers for Ron Paul (h/t Mike Marnell) may add to Johnson's support. Lawyers for Ron Paul alleges significant voter fraud and criminality in the Romney campaign.  If these allegations are extended over the next five months, they may raise the support level for Johnson.   The 15 percent target means that anyone who favors less government wastes their vote by supporting Romney.

Lawyers for Ron Paul Alleges Massive Voter Fraud by Romney Campaign

Audio Recording: 'WTPN presents The Liberty Hour - EPISODE19' From 'WTPN presents The Liberty Hour'

About 19 minutes, 50 seconds in: "I am accusing the Romney campaign of organized criminal acts...the Romney campaign moves from state to state like locust committing criminal acts in convention after convention..."

Ron Paul, Not Alexander Hamilton, Can Save Europe

In its May 26, 2012 issue,  The Economist has several excellent lead stories on the European crisis. It argues for democratic reform, political integration, and EU-wide supervision of banking.  It suggests that the costs of an EU break-up would be high, but the European public lacks an appetite for additional integration. Besides a European banking bureaucracy, The Economist argues for a European assumption of debt, which it calls mutualisation. Quoting Professor Vernon Bogdanor of King's College, London, its writers remind us that Alexander Hamilton fashioned American federalism through the federal government's assumption of debts. 

Europe needs Ron Paul, not Alexander Hamilton.

I do not doubt that a breakup of the European Union would be costly.  As well, I do not doubt that most Europeans, especially the innovative and hardworking ones, would have been better off without it.  In a letter to the editor in the same issue, Alexander Singer of Athens points out that the use of the catchword austerity with respect to recently mandated Greek reforms, in effect rejected in the May 6 election and now being re-polled on June 17,  is misguided.  Peloponnese garbage truck drivers are paid monthly pensions that are 50% above the wage of starting schoolteachers, according to Singer.

Regardless of the merits of Greek public pension policies, they are not market driven. A garbage truck driver who has saved and accumulated a fortune of one million dollars is entitled to an $80,000 pension.   One who has spent 15 years' worth of wages on hookers while sleeping in the back of his truck, only to retire at age 50 on a generous public pension, is not.

Nevertheless, the question is not whether a garbage truck driver should be paid a generous pension, but rather whether the driver produced value to justify it. Decisions about the equilibration of supply and demand are best left to markets; unions' political power allows them to divert wealth from poorer and less politically influential workers to themselves. 

The Greek government has made no attempt to equilibrate marginal wages and productivity, nor does the question matter to most Greeks, who are like children harping for an extra candy bar without an inkling as to from whence candy bars spring. It is evident that, to gratify a nation of childish fools,  the Greek government has, in yet another display of failed democratic processes, stolen the wealth used to pay that garbage truck driver from French banks. Now, French workers will be asked, through a ridiculous election outcome in France, to subsidize the French banks through monetary expansion, supposedly a "growth" strategy.

The economic incompetence advocated by the world's economists offers a convenient rationale for bankers to force workers to pay for their frivolous errors. Workers pay through inflationary policies that reduce real wages.  This is done in the supposed name of the workers themselves. Of course, The Economist's readers (bankers, lawyers,  politicians, public employees, executives, and university professors) are the true beneficiaries of stimulus policies and monetary expansion.  Since the ending of the world's reliance on gold in 1971, workers' real wages here in the US have not increased. 

The solution to Greece's and Europe's problems is recognition that more government causes greater harm.  The way out is through stabilization of money and long term stimulation of innovation and hard work through elimination of unnecessary government bureaucrats, starting with pointless institutions like the European Commission, a body whose purpose requires a Kant-sized metaphysics tome to explain.

Although there were inequities in the federal assumption of the Revolutionary War debt in the United States, there was at the time no doubt that every state had to some degree contributed to the war. There were reasons for states like Virginia and Maryland, which had repaid their war debts, to object to paying off less conservative states' debts. Nevertheless, Hamilton asked none of the states to subsidize unearned pensions for 50-year-old buffoons. In fact, many of the valiant soldiers were deprived of their pay, which was in by-then-valueless continentals.

To stabilize Europe's monetary system, the gold standard should replace the euro.  The European Central Bank should be shuttered, and the profligate French and German banks, which respectively lent to Greece and Spain, according to The Economist, should be put into whatever European equivalent to chapter 11 there may be.

One of the great ironies of the 1980s was that just as the USSR had proved itself a failure, Europe adopted a central authority akin to the Soviet Kremlin's. Every step of the way infertile bureaucratic wasters in the EU have advocated increasing government, regulation, and bureaucracy.  These privileged halfwits, who have produced nothing of value and have overseen a massive real estate bubble and debt collapse, have destroyed value.

As a European currency, gold is a better alternative than the euro  because it is not subject to quack economic theories advocated in places like The Economist, The New York Times, and most university economics departments.  Not one important economist in the world, including The Economist's staff, which spends all its time studying Europe, foresaw the current default-and-banking problems. The European bankers who lent to Spain and Greece are almost as dumb as the bankers in the US who have made one failed investment after the next for the past 60 years and who have survived only by means of one public subsidy after the next.   It is time that the global banking cancer was excised. Businesses that do not produce value, and $29 trillion in subsidies from the Fed so far say that the US banking system has not, need to die.

Recall that it was Hamilton, advocate of federalism, who favored central banking and opposed hard money.  Today, Ron Paul and his colleague Gary Johnson offer a set of solutions that can free Europe from the Carolingian dream of its uniting under a central authority.  Let Europe free itself from the medieval ideas of the Council on Foreign Relations, The Economist and The New York Times.  

A gold standard is how Europe should begin to reform itself.

Woodstock versus Ron Paul

My wife and I went for a walk in Woodstock, NY this afternoon.  I asked one of the local psychics whom she supports---Romney or Obama.  She answered that she does not support anyone because the elections are rigged by "men in black suits," and she was talking figuratively about the black suits.  When I returned home I noticed the above on Facebook. Maybe there's hope. Thanks to Sara Reckelhof Leaks, Frank Stephenson and artist Tim Cavanaugh.

Rasmussen Poll Exhibits Anti-Ron Paul Bias

Rasmussen's "Daily Presidential Tracking Poll" exhibits anti-Ron Paul bias today.  This is how the poll describes its survey:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows Mitt Romney earning 47% of the vote while President Obama picks up support from 45%. Four percent (4%) would vote for a third party candidate, while three percent (3%) are undecided.

Much of the results of a survey depend on how you ask the questions.  For example, if you ask car buyers, "Do you prefer a Lexus, a Cadillac, or another car," then the results will not be the same as when you ask them, "Do you prefer a Lexus, a Cadillac, or a Rolls Royce."  Rasmussen asks its sample the first question.  The correct question is this:  "Who would you vote for in a three-way election: Obama, Romney, or Ron Paul."

I know that Rasmussen knows this perfectly well. The bias is not because of incompetence.

Ron Paul as Spiderman

For this week's GOP primary, The Lincoln Eagle, Mike Marnell's edgy, pro-Ron Paul newspaper based in Kingston, NY,  features a cover drawing of Ron Paul as Spiderman.  The drawing is by Joe Sinnott, the 86-year old inker for Marvel Comics whom Stan Lee called Marvel's best. Wikopedia says that Sinnott has worked for Marvel for 60 years, including 16 on Fantastic Four as well as The Avengers, The Defenders and Thor.  Sinnott lives in nearby Saugerties, NY.

Romney Outpolls Obama

The Rasmussen Poll finds that Romney noses out Obama 46%-45%.  I'm trying to figure out whether that's good or bad.  Rasmussen also finds that in a national generic congressional poll the Republicans are leading by 46% to 36%.  The difference is volatile, though; last week it was less than half that.

The numbers may result from Obama's unpopular health care law.  Rasmussen finds that 53% of the public favor its repeal.  If 53% favor repeal and 45% favor Obama, either almost all the 9% undecided presidential voters favor repeal, or some Obama supporters do.  That makes sense because we're talking about American voters. It would be interesting to know whether a few percent both favor Obama and favor repeal of Obamacare.  Also, the public is skeptical of Obama's economic program.  Rasmussen finds that only 49% of Americans say that their home is worth more than when they bought it, and only 27% think that the country is headed in the right direction.

All of this raises the specter of a double-breasted Republican victory: Republican control of congress and the presidency. On the one hand, that may have the effect of repeal of the health care law. Also, it would slow the environmental initiatives of the Obama administration: the attacks on energy development, the local initiatives like Smart Growth and LEED, and the concomitant attacks on home rule and democracy.   Unfortunately, the Republicans have backed erosion of home rule and land rights too, but to a lesser degree.  It is not clear that government will shrink under double-breasted GOP control; rather, the Republicans have previously consolidated Democratic expansions of state power and big government.  If they do, in fact, repeal Obamacare, it will be a first.

At the same time, the Republicans have been good at causing inflation, expanding military spending, and government tyranny.  All of this goes goes back to the Progressive era, with the establishment of the Fed (under Democrat Wilson, who was elected with the aid of Republican Roosevelt), the FBI, and the Palmer Raids.  (Incidentally,  if you haven't seen Clint Eastwood's J. Edgar starring Leonardo DiCaprio, I recommend it.)

The Bush administration accented the problems with Republican government:  crony capitalism, pork barrel waste, and monetary expansion.  In other words, the problems with electing Republicans are about the same as the problems with electing Democrats.  The difference is that the Republicans bloat government to subsidize Republican special interests while the Democrats bloat government to subsidize Democratic special interests.  Both subsidize Wall Street. 

I am in favor of  a third party, either the Libertarian Party or a new party if Ron Paul chooses to establish one.  Governor Gary Johnson would be a first-rate candidate on the Libertarian ticket. He is more moderate and more competent than either Obama or Romney.  Unlike Romney, who is a crony capitalist who has made his living through connections and monetary expansion, Johnson built a real business from scratch.  He did not expand government in New Mexico; he fought a Democratic legislature to restrain government. In America, now, a third party candidate like Johnson is a more moderate choice than either a Democrat or a Republican.

Gingrich, Like Cagney, Is Better than Romney

  Newt Gives It to the Taxpayers



The Economist was ebullient when Romney was winning. Now that Gingrich has trounced Romney in South Carolina, our financial overlords in the City of London and on Wall Street may be may be a bit less, but almost as, content. The difference between Romney and Gingrich is like the difference between Cary Grant and James Cagney. Romney, the debonair aristocrat, an opportunist beneath his manly charm, Gingrich, the thug who twirls around in a ménage à trois before mashing a grapefruit in taxpayers' faces (see Cagney's Gingrich-like performance in The Public Enemy above).  These are two dogs out of the Council on Foreign Relations' kennel.

Of the four standing GOP candidates Romney is the most accomplished, having achieved impressive business success.  In contrast, Gingrich's chief achievement, his appointment to speaker of the house, led to quick failure due to his incompetence.  Romney is a stable and cautious friend of global financial interests while Gingrich is full of big ideas, each one more destructive than the last.  In the last debate, Gingrich's proposal for a government subsidy to build a port in Charleston was an example. Gingrich seems to have planned a massive pork barrel project for each city in which a debate is held.

Romney blows with the winds; Gingrich proves that 180-year-old tax-and-spend Whig socialism is alive and well. Romney is in the centrist, globalist, and corporatist tradition of Richard Nixon;  Gingrich is in the Whig tradition of Henry Clay and Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln practically bankrupted Illinois with frivolous infrastructure projects, and, now that Illinois's credit rating has been reduced, what better expression of the GOP's big government Whig tradition than to nominate Gingrich?

Presidents don't usually win or lose because of ideas. Lyndon Baines Johnson fought Goldwater over the New Deal, but Kennedy had just been shot. Perhaps Ronald Reagan fought a campaign of ideas, but would he have won without his actor's charm?  And did he really believe that government was the problem? He didn't act like it.  Rather than ideas, Nixon's half-day-old whiskers are the kind of issue that America's increasingly impoverished electorate emphasizes. America was once the richest and freest country in the world, but television news has led it to its favoring candidates, like Gingrich, Romney, and Obama, who are bleeding them, diminishing their freedom, and creating a paper money aristocracy at their expense.

That said, Gingrich is better than Romney for one reason: Gingrich can't win. He can't win because his image is tarnished, he is fat, his ideas are ridiculous, and he is an imaginative sexual virtuoso.  That makes him preferable to Romney, who can win. 

The most important thing in this election is a strident protest vote.  The greater and more explicit the vote against the Federal Reserve Bank, the greater a threat to its political security, the sooner the Ron Paul revolution will win.  In the event that Paul loses the primary race (and his 13% showing was better than in '08, but discouraging), a vote for the Libertarian Party in the general election will speak more loudly than one for the GOP candidate. There is more likely to be a stronger protest vote with a Gingrich than with a Romney candidacy.

As well, a Republican Congress coupled with a Democratic presidency is unlikely to achieve much. That is the best we can hope for.  If the Republicans win both branches, we will see plenty of ports and plenty of pork in Charleston and every other hurricane-prone city in the country, if not the world.  

My Letter to the Kingston Freeman Concerning Gary Weiss's Op Ed

The Kingston Freeman published my letter in response to Gary Weiss's Op Ed concerning Ron Paul:

Dear Editor:

Congressman Ron Paul disavows letters which he says he did not write (syndicated columnist Gary Weiss, The Street – Freeman website, Dec. 28, “Ron Paul captures the crackpot vote").

Contrast that Christmas-sized portion of hate doled to Paul to your handling of Barack Obama.

In 2008, there was no criticism of then-Sen. Obama’s associations with anti-Semites and felons, to include Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, and Father Pfleger. In contrast, Weiss convicts Paul without trial.

Paul is the only candidate to question both parties’ refusal to discuss the bipartisan commitment to the Federal Reserve Bank and its creation of income inequality by diverting wealth from the public to Wall Street.

As Nicola Matthews and James Felkerson of the Jerome Levy Institute reveal,  in the past few years the Fed has purchased $29 trillion in assets.  The assets were financed with dollars the Fed printed from thin air.

We have not felt the effects because central banks prop up the dollar.

To the extent that the toxic assets are less than the $29 trillion, there is a loss to the public, likely in the trillions.

The entire American GDP is about $14 trillion.

But that’s the least of it.

 

By tripling the money supply since 2008 (from $800 billion to nearly $3 trillion), the Fed and the two major parties have opened the door to the money center banks increasing the American money supply 30-fold.

The potential instability exceeds that of the 1930s.

So far, only Paul has raised these issues.

Maybe I can see Weiss’ point:

Why discuss the Fed when there are plentiful opportunities in the op-ed market to call Paul, R-Texas, and his supporters names, but few to discuss substantive issues? 

MITCHELL LANGBERT

West Shokan

mlangbert@hvc.rr.com

Jerry Doyle Slams Faux News--Unfair and Unbalanced

"We're going to invalidate the poll because we didn't like the results"

--Bill O'Reilly, unfair and unbalanced

Obama versus Paul

H/t Donald Meinshausen on Facebook

GOP: Don't Count on Our Votes

H/t Wonder Wendy on Facebook

Pathetic Crew of Republican Candidates are Big Government Drones

Unfortunately, CNN excluded one of the few imaginative voices in the Republican Party, Gary Johnson, from Tuesday night's debate.  Of the candidates present, only Ron Paul had anything to say in support of freedom and against socialism.  Cain's 9-9-9 plan, which would impose a sales tax on lower income people, is cruel. Rather than think of new methods of taxation, Republicans should be thinking of new ways to restrain spending.  Ron Paul was the only candidate at the debate who is not a socialist.

Ron Paul has a plan to terminate five cabinet positions:  the Departments of Energy, Housing and Urban Development, Commerce, Interior, and Education. He has also proposed to close a large number of unproductive military bases in places like Spain and Korea that do not protect the United States.  None of the other candidates was willing to discuss these proposals when Paul brought them up.  Instead, they remain loyal to a dishonest Federal Reserve Bank system that has sucked working Americans dry financially.  That Main Street Republicans support any among this bank of candidates is an indictment of the democratic process.

I can see why Comrades Gingrich, Romney, Santorum, Cain, and Bachmann remain silent about the Departments of Energy and Education.  Since they were established, education results have collapsed and energy costs have exploded, and neither agency, which together employ thousands of unproductive bureaucrats, has anything useful to say about either subject.  But this topic was avoided. To socialists like Gingrich and Romney, the Department of Education is a necessity.    

Mr. Cain, a former Federal Reserve official who has participated in the legalized theft involved in the bailout and the central bank-based fractional reserve system, offered a defense of  Wall Street, a socialist cancer on American capitalism.  Mr. Cain has participated in a racketeering organization, and his appeal to Republicans suggest a profound stupidity and incompetence among rank-and-file Republicans and the inept media that they consume, specifically including talk radio.

Except for Ron Paul or Gary Johnson, voting for a Republican in 2012 will be a wasted vote.

Ron Paul Takes Herman Cain to School

From the Daily Paul site, h/t Mike Marnell. While Paul wants to abolish the Fed, Cain and Romney, looking on, are insiders who have benefited directly from the Fed. Alan Greenspan's record is one of having created the tech bubble that led to his real estate bubble. That is who Herman Cain aims to emulate.  If you like to be destroyed financially, keep voting for Cain and Romney, and listen to the New York Times's moronic comments about Paul's eyebrow.  

Future of America at the Wall Street Demonstration

H/t Contrairimairi.  I wonder what percentage of the Wall Street demonstrators are as smart as this guy.
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Ron Paul's Popularity Explodes: But Why Does Wall Street's Media Hide It?

 This video appears on the Daily Paul site. Hat tip Mike Marnell.

Republican Presidential Debate: Where Was Gary Johnson?

I was underwhelmed with the candidates on tonight's GOP presidential debate. The candidates have a high degree of professionalism.  The only legitimate limited government candidate is Ron Paul.  The format of the debate prohibited intelligent discussion about issues, which worked against Paul.

I was disappointed that Gary Johnson was not invited; Paul was the best candidate there. I don't agree with him about Iran and the Middle East,  although a broad reduction in military intervention around the world, say 50%,  is an excellent idea.  I dislike the federal marriage amendment to which only Paul objected.  The Republicans thereby revealed themselves as equal to the Democrats in favoring extension of federal power.  Jon Huntsman, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich are big government guys, and Tim Pawlenty and Michele Bachmann are hardly better than they are.   Gingrich's claim that Reagan fostered sound money is a nonsensical lie. None of the candidates other than Paul will address the country's underlying problems.

I like Herman Cain, but he lacks experience. He should serve in Congress for a few years.   Mitt Romney is also a big government guy, and I don't like him, but he may be the only one capable of defeating Obama. I'm not sure that a Romney presidency would be great, but perhaps his credentials in establishing a health care plan in Massachusetts would enable him to repeal Obamacare and Sarbanes Oxley.  I think I heard him say that he would. I'm still not sure I can vote for him. If the polls are predicting a Republican Congress, I think I will vote for the Libertarian Party rather than Romney.

Several of the candidates claimed that states' rights would lead to polygamy. I don't think it would, but if it did, so what?  Heck, I'll move to Utah and give Freda some competition.  Nothing like a ménage à trois (better make sure Freda doesn't read this).  This pompous junk makes me ill. Polygamy is in the Bible. Who says it requires a constitutional amendment? And why are these big government Republicans looking for ever new ways to bug people who have tastes that are different from theirs?   

I am going to vote for Ron Paul.  Absent his victory I will probably vote for Romney in the election if it's not clear that the GOP is winning Congress.  If it is, I will vote for the Libertarian Party presidential candidate.  If Santorum, Gingrich or Huntsman gain the nomination I will not vote for them.  If Gary Johnson, Ron Paul or another libertarian ran on a third party ticket, they would have my vote regardless of what the GOP is doing at the congressional level.

Ron Paul needs a better platform to discuss the Fed. It's great he's raising the issue on national TV, but most of the knuckleheads watching probably don't know what he's talking about.