Third libertarian Republican elected to U.S. House

Libertarian Republicans excelled in the midterm elections - Jack Hunter, Washington Examiner:

November 7, 2018 - "On Tuesday night, Democrats took the House and Republicans kept the Senate. Expect to hear opinions and analysis of what this might mean for President Trump and the 2020 election in the weeks and months to come. But how did the small but enduring libertarian faction within the Republican Party do?...

"The most high-profile libertarian Republican in Congress, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, was not up for re-election. The next-most high-profile libertarian Republicans in Congress, Reps. Justin Amash of Michigan and Thomas Massie of Kentucky, both won re-election by double-digits.

"Amash, who represents a purple district, has been openly critical of Trump, and his independent streak appeared to pay off for him Tuesday. Massie represents a deep-red district, hasn’t hesitated to criticize the president, yet simultaneously has been more sympathetic. Massie predictably defeated his Democratic opponent in a blowout.

"Republican novice Denver Riggleman won his race for Virginia’s 5th Congressional District. 'Riggleman, a newcomer to politics, ran a positive campaign based on libertarian ideas,' reported National Review's Jibran Khan. But Khan also noted what the libertarian-leaning Riggleman was not: 'His victory, which came on the heels of Corey Stewart’s failed run for the Senate, should be a message for the Virginia GOP'....

"The soundly defeated Corey Stewart represented not only some of the worst aspects of today’s Right in his racist appeal, however intentional or unintentional those appeals were, but his competitive GOP primary opponent Virginia House member Nick Freitas was a libertarian Republican....  Even if he wouldn’t have beaten Democrat Tim Kaine, it is easy to see the libertarian Freitas having significantly more appeal to a larger swath of voters than Stewart. Hopefully this is a lesson Virginia Republicans remember.

"A similar message was sent in South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District, where Republican Katie Arrington was defeated by Democrat Joe Cunningham. Arrington defeated incumbent Rep. Mark Sanford in the Republican primary by touting her pro-Trump credentials.... [A] Democrat hadn’t won [there] in 40 years.... Arrington’s defeat shows that there are limits to merely hanging your hat on Trump, even in red South Carolina. It goes without saying that the libertarian Sanford would have had far more appeal.

"Another libertarian victory of sorts actually came from the Democratic side, where Colorado’s Jared Polis became the first openly gay governor. Polis is the sole Democratic member of the House Liberty Caucus founded by Justin Amash.... This is not to say that the new Democratic governor will always act along liberty lines, but the one Democrat arguably most sympathetic to libertarian ideas and issues got a big win Tuesday.

"The biggest losses for libertarian Republicans were the defeat of Rep. Dave Brat in Virginia’s 7th District, and Eric Brakey, with a failed Senate challenge to Maine’s incumbent Angus King, an independent who overwhelming votes with Democrats. Brat, also a member of the House Liberty Caucus, made waves when he defeated House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in 2014 — and his loss Tuesday was razor-thin. Brakey, a popular two-term Maine state senator, is only 30 years old, a thorough libertarian Republican in the mold of Rand Paul, and hopefully this won’t be the last we hear from him.

"Overall, Tuesday showed ... that libertarian Republicanism not only endures, but prevails, and could be the brand best positioned for future GOP victories."

Read more: https://gdspoliticalanimal.blogspot.com/2018/11/third-libertarian-republican-elected-to.html
'via Blog this'

Glenn 'Kane' Jacobs wins GOP mayoral primary

WWE's Glenn 'Kane' Jacobs is the newest Republican libertarian to (likely) win office - Jack Hunter, Washington Examiner:

May 2, 2018 - "On Tuesday, Glenn Jacobs — aka World Wrestling Entertainment star “Kane” — won a Republican primary by a razor-thin margin in his bid to become mayor of Knox County, Tennessee.

"Jacobs ... beat his closest Republican challenger by only 17 votes. There are still 43 provisional ballots to count before the victor is finalized, which might come as early as Thursday, and reports seem to strongly favor Jacobs’ chances....

"In deep-red Knox County, it is highly likely the Republican will best the Democrat mayoral candidate in the general election.... Tuesday’s primary all but decided who would become the next mayor, and it will likely be a nearly 7-foot tall professional wrestling 'demon,' who also is a well-established dedicated libertarian.....

"Jacobs operated a different kind of campaign, running on a pro-free market limited government platform, while also using his pro wrestling celebrity and libertarian-conservative brand to attract support from both inside and outside his county.

"A slew of famous pro wrestlers — The 'Nature Boy' Ric Flair, The Undertaker, Mick Foley, Chris Jericho, Daniel Bryan, the “Big Show,”Arn Anderson, Ricky Morton — all traveled to Knox County to hold fundraisers for their longtime colleague and friend, and doubled down on their support on election day, enabling the WWE legend-turned politician to draw more popular attention than most conventional Republicans.

"Before he became a mayoral candidate, Jacobs helped found the limited government Tennessee Liberty Alliance, was a regular on the libertarian program 'Kennedy' on Fox Business, a speaker for libertarian youth activist group Young Americans for Liberty, and ... spoke at the Foundation for Economic Education’s national conference in August. Jacobs was also endorsed by Rand Paul in May 2017....

"A mayor will obviously not have the same sort of national profile or impact as a U.S. senator or a congressman, but a figure with Jacobs’ celebrity who so openly embraces liberty ideas and policies is still another great representative for the libertarian faction within the Republican Party....

"There are other promising Liberty Republicans running this year — Maine’s '28-year-old wunderkind' state Sen. Eric Brakey who is challenging Sen. Angus King; former Libertarian Party presidential candidate Austin Petersen’s current GOP bid for U.S. Senate in Missouri; and Pensacola’s Rebekah Bydlak, whose 2016 attention-grabbing congressional run has positioned her well for a Florida statehouse victory in 2018 (not to mention Young Americans for Liberty’s current nationwide effort to elect a slew of libertarian Republicans at the state level)."

Read more: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/wwes-glenn-kane-jacobs-is-the-newest-republican-libertarian-to-likely-win-office
'via Blog this'

Don't blame the alt.right on Ron Paul

Stop trying to blame the alt-right on Ron Paul | Rare - Jack Hunter:

August 25, 2017 - "Did Ron Paul’s popular presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2012 kick-start the racist alt-right? No, they didn’t. But some are trying to say they did.

"This conversation began with Matt Lewis’ thought provoking 'The Insidious Libertarian-to-Alt-Right Pipeline' on The Daily Beast Wednesday, in which Lewis ponders if the explosion in popularity of libertarianism over the last decade also served as a breeding ground for today’s new generation of young white nationalists. My answer to Lewis is that ... the overwhelming majority of libertarians did not veer in that direction and explicitly reject white nationalism....

"Then Lewis got around to Ron Paul... '"The paleo-libertarian seed that Ron Paul, Murray Rothbard, and Lew Rockwell planted in the 1990s has come to bear some really ugly fruit in the last couple of years as elements of the alt-right have made appearances in various libertarian organizations and venues,” writes Steve Horwitz, an economist who writes at Bleeding Heart Libertarians.... “In a way, Ron Paul is the guy who lit the fuse,” Nick Gillespie says. “And he embodies some of those contradictions" [between libertarianism and the alt-right]'....

"Horwitz, a left libertarian cited by Lewis, has posted negative things about the Pauls for many years, both Ron and Rand, despite the fact that far less people would even know who Horwitz is and other prominent libertarians if not for the Paul family. That said, Horwitz is not wrong about Rothbard and Rockwell’s dalliances with paleoconservatives in the 1990s, how that racially troubling movement (I identified as paleoconservative back then and know the history well) was a precursor to the alt-right....

"[But] whatever questionable actions Ron Paul’s friends were taking in the 90s, the Ron Paul “rEVOLution” a decade later was the exact opposite regarding the current discussion about the alt-right.... I explained my journey from paleoconservative to libertarian in a lengthy Politico story in 2013. Central to that path was how Paul’s influence pushed me away from the kind of hateful ugliness we see even more extremely with the alt-right today:....

"I cannot count the number of liberty movement members I have met over the course of ten years, traveling across the country during both of Paul’s presidential runs and in the years in between, who had a similar journey: Conservatives who once had little reservation about demonizing immigrants, or blacks or Muslims, who due to Ron Paul’s influence had become libertarians and thus embarrassed by their former views. Not to mention the throngs of people younger than me who came to Ron Paul from not only the right, but left, or even many who had been politically apathetic prior. They weren’t right-wingers looking for redder meat. They were attracted to Paul in part because he was the opposite of that kind of politics, which so many had soured on.....

"I could just as easily make the argument that the Paul’s liberty movement is the exact opposite of the alt-right, something Paul touched on himself commenting on the chaos in Charlottesville."

Read more: http://rare.us/rare-politics/rare-liberty/stop-trying-to-blame-the-alt-right-on-ron-paul/
'via Blog this'

Jack Hunter: 'I was wrong about Confederate flag'

The ‘Southern Avenger’ Repents: I Was Wrong About the Confederate Flag - The Daily Beast - Jack Hunter:

June 23, 2015 - "As a Charleston, South Carolina-based conservative radio personality known as the “Southern Avenger,” I spent a decade defending the Confederate flag that is yet again the center of so much controversy.

"I said the flag was about states’ rights. I said it stood for self-determination. I said it honored heritage.

"I argued the Confederate flag wasn’t about race. I believed it. Millions of well-meaning Southerners believe it too.

"I was wrong. That flag is always about race. Whatever political or historical points the flag’s defenders make, there will never be a time—and never has been a time—in which millions of Americans have looked at that symbol and not seen hatred...."

"I thought a big part of being conservative meant picking a “side” and attacking the other. I thought not caring what others thought or felt was part of it. Some of my Confederate flag debates certainly reflected that mentality.

"This is something ideologues do and is by no means exclusive to the right, as evidenced by the way some liberals cartoonishly portray conservatives, Christians, and, yes, Southerners.

"Ideologues ridicule and dehumanize people at the expense of their personhood. Ideologues believe some groups must be attacked, and although the groups are comprised of flesh-and-blood human beings, it’s better not to think of them as people too much — it could get you off message.

"It’s crude collectivist thinking. It’s an intentional lack of sympathy. It’s dehumanization. It’s at the heart of everything that’s wrong with our politics and culture....

"My attraction to libertarianism a number of years ago began a journey of rejecting groupthink and placing primacy on the individual. Once you start down the path of putting individual human beings above whatever group they belong to, it puts politics — and everything else — in a new light. Putting people before an agenda or broad prejudices puts us all in a much better place."

Read more: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/22/the-southern-avenger-repents-i-was-wrong-about-the-confederate-flag.html
'via Blog this'

Paul draws libertarian flak over Tom Cotton letter

Why Real Libertarians Hate Rand Paul - The Daily Beast - Olivia Nuzzi:

March 20, 2015 -  "Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) penned an open letter to 'the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran.' The letter stated, rather condescendingly, that Iranian leaders 'do not fully understand our constitutional system.' Soon a new president would be in office, Cotton wrote, and that president could (if Republican, would) 'revoke' any executive agreement President Obama signs.

"Cotton, a neoconservative ... opposes U.S. engagement with Iran, and he has previously expressed a desire to halt any dialogue between the two countries over Iran’s nuclear program. 'The end of these negotiations isn’t an unintended consequence of congressional action,' Cotton told the Heritage Foundation in January. 'It is very much an intended consequence. A feature, not a bug, so to speak.'

"Paul has historically favored the negotiations Cotton seeks to stop. In 2012, he objected to new sanctions on Iran. In January, as his likely Republican primary competitors Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio warned of the threat of a nuclear Iran, Paul appeared skeptical.... Paul’s position on Iran has always been closer to Obama’s than to that of his fellow Senate Republicans — until March 9, when he joined 47 of his fellow Senate Republicans in signing the letter.

"'This is more than a flip-flop. This is a backflip,' Justin Raimondo, the editorial director of Antiwar.com, told me on Wednesday. 'This was the last straw. I’ve put up with a lot from that guy! I’ve had to defend him like a Jesuit. I’m done. Let somebody else do it'....

"Raimondo acknowledges that he was much like many of the other Paul supporters I’ve spoken to: not entirely satisfied with the senator but willing to tolerate him if it meant hearing some of what Raimondo believed expressed on the national stage. 'I thought he was going to start a real debate about foreign policy in this country, and I thought he was a reasonably principled yet pragmatic politician,' Raimondo said. 'And now, apparently he’s just a panderer who would do anything to please people who hate him anyway and will continue to hate him no matter what he does — even if he changes his last name'....

"'He is taking his base for granted,' Raimondo complained.... 'I think he’s counting on the organizational muscle of the Ron Paul groups like the Campaign for Liberty [and] Young Americans for Liberty — but these are libertarians! They don’t take orders from the central committee!'....

"'It’s curious,' Christopher Preble, the vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, said of Paul’s decision. 'There’s a certain level of disappointment and surprise,' he said, but 'it’s not unique to libertarians'...  Overall, Preblo said, the Iran letter is 'just sort of embarrassing'....

"Jack Hunter, a reliable Paul defender and co-author of his first book, told me: 'I don’t necessarily agree with him signing the letter. I guess he has his reasons.' He acknowledged the letter was 'perhaps' a departure from the senator’s pro-negotiation position."

Read more: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/20/why-libertarians-hate-rand-paul.html
'via Blog this'

Ron Paul, conservatives, and the war on drugs

New PAULITICAL TICKER WITH JACK HUNTER - Ron Paul, Conservatives and the War on Drugs:

July 19, 2012 - "Ron Paul is right when he says that the federal War on Drugs has been an abysmal failure. William F. Buckley and National Review were right when they said the same thing in 1996. Milton Friedman was right when he said the same thing in 1972 when President Nixon created the federal War on Drugs....

"Reports The Hill today: A bipartisan group of House members has proposed legislation that would make it easier for people to defend themselves in federal cases for possessing marijuana, if they can show that they are using marijuana for medical purposes in line with relevant state laws. The Hill headline emphasizes that this legislation was co-sponsored by Ron Paul and Barney Frank....

"Other Republicans on the bill are Reps. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) and Justin Amash (R-Mich.). "Amash and Rohrabacher are not moderate Republicans, but strong conservatives....

"Recent polls have shown that more Americans than ever are fed up with the failed War on Drugs, with 18-29 years olds comprising the most irritated portion of the populace. These are the same young people who now flock to Ron Paul and his message."

Read more: http://politicalnews.me/?id=15769&keys=DRUGS-WAR-CONSERVATIVE-BLOWBACK
'via Blog this'

Ron Paul 2012 Kicks Off Campaign Blog

Ron Paul 2012 press release

August 01, 2011 05:30 PM Eastern Daylight Time 

Ron Paul 2012 Kicks Off Official Campaign Blog

‘Paulitical Ticker’ blog begins today

LAKE JACKSON, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Ron Paul 2012 presidential campaign committee has announced the kick-off of the official campaign blog. The blog, provided by columnist Jack Hunter, will serve as a direct link to voters.

“It is a genuine privilege to be a part of the Ron Paul 2012 presidential campaign, and I am excited to get this blog going”

“It is a genuine privilege to be a part of the Ron Paul 2012 presidential campaign, and I am excited to get this blog going,” said Hunter.

Hunter, a long-time radio host and The American Conservative Magazine columnist, is a prominent figure on the conservative political scene. He has worked for WTMA 1250 AM talk radio in Charleston, South Carolina, and writes a column for the Charleston City Paper. Jack also produces widely popular weekly video podcasts.

Authorized and paid for by Ron Paul 2012 PCC. www.RonPaul2012.com

Contacts

Ron Paul 2012 Presidential Campaign Committee
Gary Howard, 1-855-886-9779