Tag Archives: ron paul

Ron Paul’s 2012 delegate strategy isn’t cheating when Cruz uses it against Trump

Donald Trump lost it on Fox News Monday after learning Ted Cruz has secured 34 of Colorado’s 37 delegates to the Republican National Convention. The Colorado GOP canceled its caucus vote last August, electing to choose its delegates at its state convention. The Centennial State is only the latest in which Cruz has won a larger percentage of the delegates than his percentage of the popular vote.

Trump called the process “a crooked deal,” adding, “That’s not the way democracy is supposed to work.”

Newsflash to Trump: This isn’t a democracy. It’s a republic and this is exactly how a republic is supposed to work. The whole reason Colorado and many other states don’t assign their delegates on a winner-take-all basis after the popular vote is they want their nominating process to be more republican (small “r”) than democratic.

If this sounds like déjà vu, it’s because Ron Paul employed the same strategy in 2012, winning the most delegates in eleven states, despite not winning a single primary or caucus popular vote (although he may have been robbed in Maine). Paul was the anti-establishment candidate that year and many of the same people who are now riding the Trump train were Paul supporters who defended the strategy vehemently.

But while it is widely accepted that Trump picked up a large portion of Paul’s 2012 supporters, he obviously hasn’t captured the contingent that mastered Robert’s Rules of Order and took over state conventions in 2012. That’s not surprising, given the difference between the candidates. Paul’s delegate core were highly principled libertarians who typically understood and believed Paul’s message of limited, constitutional government.

That’s what saw them through the long, tedious process of advancing through local, district, county and state conventions. It’s relatively painless to show up at your local polling place and pull a lever behind a curtain. It doesn’t cost anything in time or money. But when the “beauty contest” is over, the real political work has just begun. The months-long process requires would-be delegates to make their candidate’s arguments hundreds of times and hear their opponents’ arguments just as many. By the time they are elected at a state convention, they are fully informed and vetted.

These aren’t the type of people likely to respond to Trump’s largely emotional pitch. Yes, Paul’s supporters may have been “angry” with the status quo, but it was a much more deliberative anger. Unlike Trump’s supporters, Paul’s were always the victims of any violence that broke out at meetings and conventions. And these followers of Austrian economics would never support Trump’s spurious economic theories, although some of his statements on foreign policy may have caught their attention.

While it is true Trump’s support is much wider than merely white working class voters, as pundits initially described it, it is still largely a protest vote. Doctors, lawyers and other professionals can be just as justifiably fed up with Washington, D.C. and its connected interests. It’s not surprising an independent candidate like Trump, apparently impervious to the influence of the donor class, would appeal to voters over a wide demographic. But while their dissatisfaction with the status quo is legitimate, whether Trump is the solution is another story entirely.

The truth is Trump is the type of candidate the whole republic-not-a-democracy idea is supposed to prevent. The founders’ chief concern with democracy was its susceptibility to the “turbulence” resulting from “common passion,” as James Madison put it. That was the reason for the electoral college. They wanted to give the people a direct say in choosing their government’s leadership, but they also wanted a buffer between the multitude’s passions and the reins of power. They would have been horrified by Trump’s rhetoric, no matter how refreshing his destruction of “political correctness” might be.

Trump can rage all he wants about the nominating process being rigged, but the truth is he’ll have to inspire something besides fist-shaking in his supporters if he wants to be president. In many states, it takes more than a fifteen-minute commitment to pull a lever behind a curtain to get your candidate nominated. That’s not such a bad thing.

Tom Mullen is the author of Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness? Part One and A Return to Common Sense: Reawakening Liberty in the Inhabitants of America.

Trump’s popularity is democracy in action

1 Reply

trump paul In the past two Republican primary elections, we had a candidate who consistently defied the Establishment by articulately and intelligently telling the truth, remaining firm in his principles even when it cost him politically, and had a well thought out plan to change the political course of this country. He struggled to get 2 million votes.

This year, we have a candidate who consistently defies the Establishment by just “making shit up,” contradicting well-documented positions he’d taken just a few years ago, and delivering his message with all the eloquence of a punchy boxer in his twilight years. He’s leading in the polls.

That’s democracy in action, something the Constitution was designed to protect us from. God help us all.

Tom Mullen is the author of A Return to Common Sense: Reawakening Liberty in the Inhabitants of America.

Congress is not authorized to start a war with Syria, either

Leave a reply

TAMPA, August 29, 2013 – The British Parliament is debating the U.K.’s response to an alleged chemical weapons attack by the Syrian government against rebels and civilians. This prompted Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas to tweet a picture juxtaposing the ongoing debate in Parliament with the empty U.S. Congress building.

Cruz and others have expressed the opinion that President Obama cannot take military action against Syria without consulting Congress first.

They’re wrong. Congress doesn’t have the power to start a war with Syria, either, under present circumstances.

Most people misunderstand the declaration of war power as “permission” to start a war. It’s not.

The Constitution grants Congress the power to declare that a state of war already exists. This can only be true if the nation in question has committed overt acts of war against the United States.

This is supported by each and every declaration of war in U.S. history. Each declaration has followed the same format.

1. Congress cites the overt acts of war committed by the nation in question against the United States.

2. It recognizes the existence of the war because of those overt acts.

3. It directs the president to utilize the military to end the war.

The process is somewhat analogous to a criminal trial. The president “makes his case” to Congress that certain actions by a foreign nation amount to acts of war. Congress then deliberates, renders its verdict and passes sentence. The president is directed to execute the sentence.

When James Polk asked Congress to declare war on Mexico in 1846, he said,

“But now, after reiterated menaces, Mexico has passed the boundary of the United States, has invaded our territory and shed American blood upon the American soil. She has proclaimed that hostilities have commenced, and that the two nations are now at war.

As war exists, and, notwithstanding all our efforts to avoid it, exists by the act of Mexico herself, we are called upon by every consideration of duty and patriotism to vindicate with decision the honor, the rights, and the interests of our country.

In further vindication of our rights and defense of our territory, I invoke the prompt action of Congress to recognize the existence of the war, and to place at the disposition of the Executive the means of prosecuting the war with vigor, and thus hastening the restoration of peace.”

After deliberating, Congress issued the following declaration of war,

“Whereas, by the act of the Republic of Mexico, a state of war exists between that Government and the United States: Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of American in Congress assembled, That for the purpose of enabling the government of the United States to prosecute said war to a speedy and successful termination…”

Note the italicized words. The state of war already exists because of the act of the Republic of Mexico.

Most people remember FDR’s Pearl Harbor speech during which he rattled off the acts of war committed by Japan. “Last night, Japanese forces attacked Wake Island. Last night, Japanese forces attacked Midway Island, etc.” Roosevelt concluded,

“I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December seventh, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.”

The framers of the Constitution intended that the president would never initiate planned military action until this process took place. Yes, the president could deploy the military if the British or Spanish were discovered marching through Maryland, a very real possibility at the time.

Otherwise, acts of war had to be committed against the United States before the president directed a military response.

Syria’s government may or may not have used chemical weapons against its own people. It has not committed any acts of war against the United States. Therefore, there is no basis upon which to declare a state of war between Syria and the United States.

The constitution assumes that the only justification to utilize U.S. military resources is to defend U.S. citizens after another nation has initiated a state of war. The only exception is to defend a nation with whom the United States has signed a treaty establishing one of those entangling alliances the founders told us to avoid.

The Syrian conflict meets none of those requirements. Neither Congress nor the president have any constitutional authority to attack.

Tom Mullen is the author of A Return to Common Sense: Reawakening Liberty in the Inhabitants of America.

A skeptic’s case for Gary Johnson

2 Replies

TAMPA, September 26, 2012 – You may be an independent that finds the major party candidates for president particularly weak this year. You may be an “Old Right” conservative that can’t bring yourself to vote for Mitt Romney. You may be a died-in-the-wool liberal who thinks Barack Obama’s presidency has been just a little too similar to Dubya’s.

Or, you may be a libertarian.

If you belong to any of those groups, you might be considering voting for Gary Johnson. Ironically, if you are a libertarian, you may need the most convincing.

Gary Johnson isn’t well-grounded in libertarian theory and it results in him taking some positions that libertarians don’t like. I made the argument myself that Johnson is not really a libertarian at all. In two subsequent interviews (here and here), Johnson didn’t allay those concerns.

Regardless, Gary Johnson is the best choice for president this year for voters from all over the political spectrum.

Continue at Communities@ Washington Times…

What Ron Paul didn’t say

1 Reply

TAMPA, September 6, 2012 — There was no big announcement during Ron Paul’s appearance on Jay Leno Tuesday night. On the contrary, Paul’s appearance was somewhat anticlimactic given Mitt Romney’s nomination at the Republican National Convention last week. Of course, he still said what he has been saying for over thirty years in public life: America must stop spending money it doesn’t have, must liquidate its debts and rethink the role of government as cradle-to-grave caregiver and policeman of the world.

Ron Paul has said many memorable things during his two most recent campaigns for president. A debate moderator tried to put him on the spot regarding his position on leaving Iraq, asking contemptuously, “What is your plan to get U.S. troops out of Iraq?” Paul replied without hesitation, “We marched right in there without a plan, we can march right out.”

When asked about Newt Gingrich’s suggestion that the U.S. government explore colonizing the moon, Paul replied, “No, I don’t want to go to the moon, although I’d like to send some politicians up there.”

A few days ago, I posed a question at the end of my story on the Maine delegation fiasco. What were they really so afraid of?

It wasn’t what Ron Paul said that had them so scared. It was what he didn’t say.

Continue at Communities@ Washington Times…

The real story behind those Ron Paul delegates from Maine

2 Replies

TAMPA, September 2, 2012 – By the time of Marco Rubio’s speech at the Republican National Convention (RNC), rhetoric overload and sore feet had overcome any desire I had to listen. I sat down at a table in the corridor of the Tampa Bay Times Forum. A few minutes later, several young people sat in the other chairs.

One of them was wearing a tee shirt that read, “Texas Remembers the Alamo, and the Maine, and the Oklahoma, and the Louisiana, and the Oregon, and the Massachusetts.”

Those are the other five states in which Ron Paul had majorities one week before the RNC. Together with the three states he actually won (Iowa, Minnesota and Nevada) Ron Paul would have carried eight states had many of those delegates not been unseated at the last minute.

The man wearing the tee shirt was Chris Howe, Ron Paul supporter and alternate delegate from Texas. Rob Hinojosa was a guest and the graphic designer of the tee shirts.

One day before, both had marched out of the RNC along with the Maine delegation and an army Ron Paul’s other delegates chanting “As Maine goes, so goes the nation!”

Howe and Hinojosa went to work on their smart phones and in short order produced Ashley Ryan, 21, the youngest national committeewoman in the history of the Republican Party.

Continue at Communities@ Washington Times…

Ryan confirmed that Ron Paul did indeed still have 20 of the 24 delegates from Maine as of the day before the RNC. They had been ready for a fight since learning of a challenge to the delegation a month earlier.

All that has been reported so far is that the delegation was contested on the grounds that the state convention did not follow “parliamentary procedure.” However, the details tell a very different story.

“The contest was filed by current national committeewoman Jan Staples and Peter Cianchette, who was the Romney state director for Maine. Those are well-known Romney supporters. They filed the contest based on the claims that our state convention lacked credentialing and lacked security. The ironic thing about that is that Jan Staples is on the executive committee for the party, so it was her job to plan the state convention. So if there was lax credentialing or if there was lax security, that would have been her fault,” explained Ryan.

Credentialing and security means that the officers of the convention ensure that all inside are who they say they are and that only duly elected delegates are present to vote.

“When they first presented their case to the contest committee, the contest committee found that there wasn’t enough evidence to invalidate the state convention or to rule against the delegates. So, instead of throwing it out like you would in a regular court of law – in a court of law if you sue someone and you don’t have enough evidence your case gets thrown out – in this situation the RNC kicked it down the line for a few more weeks and said we’ll figure it out in Tampa,” continued Ryan.

So, the convention is chaired by a Romney supporter and the national committeewoman in charge of credentialing and security is a Romney supporter. After Ron Paul supporters win a landslide victory, that same committeewoman joins Romney’s state campaign director in filing a contest based upon her own failure to ensure proper credentialing and security. The matter is put before the RNC, who are working hand in hand with Romney’s campaign.

As Ron Paul himself once wrote of the Federal Reserve System, “If that sounds fishy, then you understand it just fine.”

A call on Friday to Ms. Staples’ home phone was not returned.

Facing similar pressure, four of the five states agreed to have some of their delegates replaced with Romney supporters, but Maine held out.

“We didn’t agree to anything. We decided that we’d fight until the very end. The Committee on Contests made a recommendation to the Committee on Credentials to take 10 of our delegation off, 10 of our alternates off, so that’s 20 people total, and then the RNC hand-picked 10 delegates and 10 alternates to take their place, obviously who are all Mitt Romney supporters, all hand-picked and for the most part, party insiders” said Ryan.

So who were these unelected delegates? Are they even from Maine?

“These people are from Maine, but the people who chose these people are not from Maine. From what I’ve been told, but I haven’t been able to confirm this yet, our state party paid for them to come down, paid for their travel expenses and their hotel expenses, which a lot of people are incredibly angry about because they worked for months and in some cases years to make sure that they could afford to be here. They saved up over the four years to be able to fly down and now the state party is paying to fly down people who were never elected,” said Ryan

These details lend insight into former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele’s comment to Jon Stewart that the RNC’s treatment of Ron Paul and his supporters was “the height of rudeness and stupidity.”

“Why would you alienate them,” continued Steele, “get on the floor and not let them speak? Let his name go up on the board and let them see the numbers of electoral votes that he received.”

Had all of his delegates been seated, Ron Paul would also have been entitled to a 15-minute, unedited speech.

Apologists for the RNC claim that all of this was done to ensure that the convention came off as a show of unity within the party behind its nominee for president.

One has to wonder, though. What were they really so afraid of?

Tom Mullen is the author of A Return to Common Sense: Reawakening Liberty in the Inhabitants of America.

Peter Schiff on The Real Crash, Austrian economics and Ron Paul

Leave a reply

TAMPA, August 30, 2012 – Like Ron Paul, Peter Schiff was predicting the 2008 economic meltdown long before it occurred. Schiff is the president of Euro Pacific Capital, a firm that pursues investment strategies based upon Schiff’s contrarian economic analysis. Clients who took his advice over the past decade did very well, even after the financial crisis.

Both Paul and Schiff are proponents of the Austrian school of economics, which emphasizes free markets, sound money and Carl Menger’s subjective theory of value. Asked to describe what the “Austrian school” is, Schiff quipped,

“It’s kind of like you’re asking me ‘What’s Science? Or what’s astronomy, because you believe in astrology. Austrian economics is economics. Keynesianism is like a witch doctor. It’s all a bunch of nonsense, but politicians love Keynesianism, because it justifies what they want to do to get elected, which is spend more money, promise something for nothing, play Santa Claus.”

Schiff was Ron Paul’s economic advisor during the 2008 campaign.

Schiff became a national sensation when the predictions documented in his 2007 book, Crash Proof: How to Profit from the Coming Economic Collapse, came true. Not only was Schiff the darling of nationally televised financial and investing programs, but he found a whole new audience among Ron Paul supporters, who drove millions of page views to the You Tube video “Peter Schiff was right.”

Continue at Communities@ Washington Times…

Doug Wead not a typical Ron Paul supporter

Leave a reply

TAMPA, August 30, 2012 – Anyone who has followed the Republican Party presidential nominating process knows the typical Ron Paul supporter. He or she is young, passionate about Paul’s platform, and willing to ride buses all night and knock on doors all day to support Ron Paul. Most often, he or she has never participated in the political process before.

Doug Wead couldn’t be less typical in that respect. Wead is a longtime Republican Party insider. He’s worked on seven Republican presidential campaigns, starting with Barry Goldwater’s in 1964. He’s also worked in three administrations, for Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. He has entertained presidents at his house and visited theirs.

Before 2008, he didn’t know who Ron Paul was and wouldn’t have agreed with him on much..

Like so many others, Wead first became acquainted with Ron Paul during Paul’s 2008 bid for the Republican presidential nomination. Wead had concerns based upon his long experience about the Iraq War. That was how Ron Paul first caught his attention.

“When I saw the debate you mention in 2008, I thought I was the only person in the world who knew this or felt this way, and I hear Ron Paul start talking about this stuff, I didn’t know who he was. I said, ‘Who is this guy? How dare he talk about these things in public?”

Continue at Communities@ Washington Times…

How long are Ron Paul’s coat tails?

Leave a reply

TAMPA, August 29, 2012 ― As I walked up to the Gate B entrance of the Tampa Bay Times Forum last night, I was greeted by the sound of a large crowd inside chanting “President Paul!” followed by “End the Fed!” For a moment I thought I was back at Ron Paul’s “We are the Future Rally.” I was not. I was entering the Republican National Convention.

While Paul was not nominated and will not be a speaker at the RNC, he has something usually reserved only for winners in the general election. Ron Paul has coat tails.

After weeks of negotiations culminating in a heated debate at the RNC on Tuesday, Ron Paul finally had a portion of the delegates he’d won at Republican state conventions seated on the RNC floor. Even with his total diminished by agreement, Paul actually won Iowa, Minnesota and Nevada, garnering approximately 200 delegate votes total.

That delegate strength has allowed Paul to achieve his secondary goal of influencing the Republican Party platform. According to senior campaign advisor Doug Wead, the Republican Party platform will contain major planks of Paul’s, including auditing the Federal Reserve System, requiring a congressional declaration of war before engaging in military operations, a commission to examine instituting a gold standard, and keeping the internet free and unregulated.

Continue at Communities@ Washington Times…

Ron Paul’s “We are the Future Rally” unlike any other political event

Leave a reply

TAMPA, August 27, 2012 ― Everyone knows what to expect from a political rally. Speakers recite the party line on various subjects. The audience already agrees with them and knows what they are going to say. The crowd cheers. The opposition is trashed. The crowd cheers again. The keynote speaker is introduced. Standing ovation. More talking points.

Ron Paul’s “We Are the Future Rally” couldn’t have resembled that model less. Rather than politics, the entire program focused on ideas.

His first three speakers were libertarian philosophers Lew Rockwell, Walter Block and Butler Shaffer. There were no talking points. Instead, attendees were treated to intellectual arguments for individual liberty from three of the most powerful libertarian thinkers alive.

Not everyone agreed, either. Block’s controversial argument for a new libertarian stance on abortion actually drew boos. Block argued that a woman has a property right in her body and thus can evict a “trespassing” fetus from her womb, but does not have a right to take the fetus’ life. Block claimed that this was possible now during the third trimester of pregnancy and that as the science advanced, it would be possible earlier and earlier.

Some of the more conservative among Paul’s following weren’t ready to hear it.

There were speeches by politicians Barry Goldwater, Jr. and South Carolina State Senator Tom Davis, but even these were atypical. Goldwater read from and commented on passages from his father’s Conscience of a Conservative, while Davis focused exclusively on attacking the Federal Reserve System.

Paul’s official campaign blogger and rising conservative star Jack Hunter continued with a talk on conservative philosophy, citing Ronald Reagan, Russell Kirk and other noteworthy conservatives. Hunter reminded supporters of Reagan’s “three-legged stool” theory of conservatism: equal parts national security conservatives, religious conservatives and economic/libertarian conservatives. Hunter argued that it was the absence of the libertarian leg that led to the profligacy of the Bush years. He quoted Reagan saying, “libertarianism is the very heart and soul of conservatism.”

None of this is to suggest that the affair was a quiet seminar with attendees nodding their heads and taking notes. Right from senior campaign advisor Doug Wead’s opening remarks, the atmosphere was electric and the applause thunderous. As usual, remarks on the Federal Reserve System and Paul’s non-interventionist foreign policy got the most enthusiastic response.

Continue at Communities@ Washington Times…