Goldwater’s supporters began as early as 1961 to win precincts and win over conservative activists. The Tea Party is following a similar trail. But they work for a stricter conservative establishment, not a singular conservative challenging the moderate establishment. A Republican dark horse will likely only emerge if he or she can become that singular conservative.

It’s important to get involved in the local GOP.  In 2008, constitutionalist Delegate (state representative) Robert G. “Bob” Marshall was in a tight convention battle with former Virginia governor James S. “Jim” Gilmore, III.  There was a battle among the RonPaul supporters as to what to do – work within the party or opt-out.  I recommended that the Paul supporters get involved in the local party and run for delegates to the local and the state convention.  They did sign up to the local (Hanover County) convention where there was a tight local party chair race.  I brought a small county flag as the symbol to rally around the we sat together.  All who prefiled went to the state convention.  But the first ballot for local party leader (where we decided to support one of the candidates) ended in a stunning tie!  Thus there was a second ballot.  Many left the convention thinking it was decided and the liberty contingent became a crucial part of the election of the new local party chair (who is still there and is doing a fabulous job). 

But there’s more:  When the Hanover liberty contingent went to the state convention in Richmond, they were joined by others:  loud and vocal.  Although the Paul delegates were not siginifcant in influencing the national delegate selection or bring about major debate, they did make the Marshall/Gilmore race much closer than expected.  The final vote was about 52-48 percent.  This was a encouraging moral victory where virtually every establishment politician endorsed Gilmore. 

There’s still more:  In 2009, at least one pundit (Soren Dayton at the Next Right) credited the Republican Liberty Caucus and Ron Paul supporters in nominating Ken Cuccinelli for Virginia Attorney General.  Cuccinelli’s election is a powerful tale of what can happen when Paul supporters work within the system. 

Being a precinct captain is not glamorous work but it is how a political party stays true to its grass roots.  When I was elected precinct captain in Ohio, I was a member of the county central committee.  I also served once in Prince William County as a magistrial district chairman (a district that elects a member of the board of county supervisors) and I was again on the county committee but with a more important duty. 

At the Daily Paul is the report of a liberty supporter who was elected his precinct committeeman in Iowa and as a result he will CHAIR his local caucus in 2012.  One of those posting support said this:

Point of Order!
Great job Patriot!
In 2008 I ran for Precinct chair in Texas to support Ron Paul. I won 142 to 141. I am back on the ballot for the March 2 election.  I’ve spent the last 2 years spreading the message of Freedom, Supporting Dr. Paul and now Debra Medina.
Everyone who would be interested,think about running for precinct chair as a lot of the chairs are vancant (sic) and you can run unopposed.

I confess that right now I have so many other irons in the fire (curling, National Day of Prayer, Toastmasters, leadership at church) I am not especially active in my local party committee but I plan to get more active as time goes on.  I also have a boring election (Cantor is my congressman and he will not have a serious opponent) so I can be a bit inactive.  I ran into Donna Holt at my local tea party in Richmond that I was a bad libertarian but I blog for the cause.  She was very encouraging and said keep on blogging that is a real talent and a help.  Donna Holt is a hero of mine as she is our state Campaign for Liberty coordinator and worked hard to get Virginia to pass anti-REAL ID legislation and also some new laws this year.  I would guess that C4L needs many local leaders as well.  Contact C4L for more information.  Also consider joining your state Republican Liberty Caucus.  If on or near a college campus, check out the YAL, Young Americans for Liberty.  Find a local constitutionalist leader to support – a candidate for school board or county commission.  Or BE the candidate.

But I cannot leave without a discussion of monetary policy.  Cong. Paul cannot End The Fed without an act of Congress.  But he would start with these two acts:

There are additional steps a pro-freedom president should pursue in his first term to restore sound monetary policy. He should ask Congress to pass two pieces of legislation I have introduced in the 110th Congress. The first is the Audit the Fed bill, which would allow the American people to learn just how the Federal Reserve has been conducting monetary policy. The other is the Free Competition in Currency Act, which repeals legal tender laws and all taxes on gold and silver. This would introduce competition in currency and put a check on the Federal Reserve by ensuring that people have alternatives to government-produced fiat money.

It will be good for monetary policy to implement many of the prior items.  Spending control, debt repayment, solvent Social Security and Medicare and non-interventionist foreign policy will help make monetary policy more libertarian. 

Education of the American people must continue.  YAL and Campaign for Liberty  are great allies in the struggle.  Get more involved.  Work for liberty candidates for local, state and federal office.  Run for office!  Speed the day when we’ll see a constitutionalist President.

Yet a pro-freedom President and his legislative allies could make tremendous progress simply by changing the terms of the negotiations that go on in Washington regarding the size and scope of government.  Today, negotiations over legislation tend to occur between those who want a 100 percent increase in federal spending and those who want a 50 percent increase.  Their compromise is a 75 percent increase.  With a president serious about following the Constitution, backed by a substantial block of sympathetic representatives in Congress, negotiations on outlays would be between those who want to eliminate them outright – thus a compromise would be a 50 percent decrease in spending.

 The budget would be a manifesto.  Budgets tend to be wish lists anyway.  Let’s make it a liberty budget.  Paul suggests six items in any liberty budget:

1. Reduce overall federal spending

2. Prioritize cuts in oversize expenditures, especially the military

3. Prioritize cuts in corporate welfare

4. Use 50 percent of the savings from cuts in overseas spending to shore up entitlement programs for those who are dependent on them and the other 50 percent to pay down the debt

5. Provide for reduction in federal bureaucracy and lay out a plan to return responsibility for education to the states

6. Begin transitioning entitlement programs from a system where all Americans are forced to participate into one where taxpayers can opt out of the programs and make their own provisions for retirement and medical care

This budget would in all likelihood be declared DOA when it hit Congress by the leaders in Congress (barring a turnover of revolutionary proportions) and the mainstream media.  the forces of liberty must be ready to use its powers:  Our internet savvy, bloggers, local media, persuasion, town halls etc. to sway public opinion toward the liberty budget.  If necessary, President Paul must use his veto pen.  And be ready to shut down the government if need be.  The line should be: 

“I offered a reasonable compromise, which was to gradually reduce spending, and Congress rejected it, instead choosing the extreme path of continuing to jeopardize America’s freedom and prosperity by refusing to tame the welfare-warfare state.  I am the moderate; those who believe that America can afford this bloated government are the extremists.”

I’d also send Vice President Gary Johnson out to speak to the boss, so to speak:  the American people.  Huge “Call DC” rallies would be organized through folks like all those who got Ron Paul the attention in 2008, the Campaign for Liberty, the YAL, as well as Tea Party leaders.  The budget is the showdown.  President Paul may well resign and admit the USA is too far gone if he cannot get a liberty budget passed.  This might be a good idea to suggest exactly that.  President DeGaulle tried it once or twice (although he went to the well too many times and had to quit) and it was initially successful.

In the field of education, it is clear that the system has failed.  We’ll cover that in my next post.

Senator John McCain should have opposed the TARP bailout:

What was McCain’s bold step? He lined up behind President George W. Bush and was perceived as part of the problem on Capitol Hill while he joined his Democratic opponent in the massive spending spree. Is there any wonder why independents and many conservatives concluded that a vote for John McCain was the same as a vote for Barack Obama? If the GOP wishes to regain the majority, it must offer voters more than a distinction without a difference.

and

The GOP must renounce the Bush Doctrine of “…preemptive war and an interventionist foreign policy…” 

Nothing has shaken voters’ trust in the GOP like the lack of justification for the war. While I make the case in my book, “Nothing for the Nation,” that the Senate Democratic leadership in 2002 was just as culpable in authorizing the invasion of Iraq as the House Republican leadership, most Americans see the Iraq war as a Republican creation. If Republicans would renounce the Bush Doctrine by rejecting pre-emptive war and an interventionist foreign policy, they could put the issue of Iraq in the proper current context.

 I quote from his column in Politico of March 24, 2009.  (Hostettler joined Ron Paul and four other GOP representatives in voting against the war in Iraq.)

I think Hostettler is absolutely right.  If McCain had at least offered some opposition to the TARP bailout and stood with the House Republicans (The House voted initially against the TARP bailout) he’d at least given himself a fighting chance.  How many conservatives stayed home (I did not by the way, I proudly voted for the war hero McCain and his running mate Sarah Palin) or voted for a third party due to the TARP bailout. 

I also think that the war in Iraq was at the very least mishandled.  it was turned into an invasion for democracy rather than a coup to overthrow Hussein (if that was necessary) and secure any weapons.  We are still in Iraq several years later and the American people rightly turned against the GOP.

There were other reasons:  Arrogance (read Terri Schiavo – unconstitutional federal legislation to benefit one case), corruption and personal moral failure, and a failure to adequately control spending. 

But Hostettler is right. 

Should libertarians support Hostettler?  I like what I am reading:  A social conservative who is a RP libertarian, too.  I would note that some Campaign for Liberty/Ron Paul supporters are helping him and there is even some evidence Paul himself is supporting him.  The American Spectator reported Hostettler being only three points behind Bayh.  Put me down as leaning toward him.

The NY Daily News confirms this:

One big problem: Security cameras owned by the Port Authority, but operated and maintained by the TSA, were not recording. That forced TSA investigators to chase down other videotape recorded by Continental Airlines, which occupies most of Terminal C.

So, let’s see…  The private company was diligent but not the government agency.  I think I heard this somewhere before…

Let’s turn back to the Second GOP primary debate, in Columbia, South Carolina, hosted by Fox News on May 15, 2007.  The GOP aspirants, including Congressman Ron Paul, were asked a question by Wendell Goler about what three Federal programs you would cut.  After a non-answer from former Governor Tommy Thompson, Goler turned to Cong. Paul.  Here’s what Paul said courtesy of the Council on Foreign Relations website (look, I wasn’t crazy about it either but it was either them or the NY Times!) 

MR. GOLER: Congressman Paul, can you do better than that, sir?

Even Fox News knew this would be a great answer and Cong. Paul did not disappoint:

REP. PAUL: I’d start with the departments — the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, Department of Homeland Security. We’ve started with — we’ve just — the Republicans put in the Department of Homeland — it’s a monstrous type of bureaucracy. It was supposed to be streamlining our security and it’s unmanageable. I mean, just think of the efficiency of FEMA in its efforts to take care of the floods and the hurricanes.

Goler then asked about the wisdom of shutting down DHS during a “war”.  Paul then said these words; it rang like a manifesto throughout the hall:

REP. PAUL: Well, I think we should not go to more bureaucracy. It didn’t work. We were spending $40 billion on security prior to 9/11, and they had all the information they needed there to deal with the threat, and it was inefficiency. So what do we do? We add a gigantic bureaucracy, which they’re still working on trying to put it together, and a tremendous amount of increase in funds.

I was admittedly skeptical about Paul’s assertion in re the DHS.  I totally agree the Department of Education ought to be abolished and probably Energy, too.  No constitutional authority for either one.  Certainly essential parts can be transferred to other departments – the Civil Rights Division can go to Justice.  Most of Energy might be applicable for Commerce.  But DHS?  I was amazed at Cong. Paul’s radicalism (You can find the video at ronpaul2008.com) 

Of course this led to the famous (or infamous depending on your position) exchange between former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Paul about the causes of 9/11.  But that is not where I was going.  I wanted to make the point that now we have had this agency called DHS for eight years or so and now we still cannot connect the dots.  It’s time to recognize that government is not the answer.  There are things government can and must do but usually private concerns (with some appropriate regulation) do best, especially with security.  I won’t hold my breath waiting for the apologies and recognitions to come to for Dr. Paul but he has been instrumental in the cure of a serious national malady:  Apathy.  Millions of people and every time he’s on the MSM, that trend continues.  For examples:  Try this article in the Los Angeles Times and try Paul’s visit to Rachel Maddow’s show.  (Thanks to Campaign for Liberty)  I thought Maddow was respectful and listened to Paul. 

Please Cong. Paul, make me a conflicted libertarian:  Run for President in 2012, and name Governor Gary Johnson as your running mate!

Is libertarian rock star and Texas Republican Ron Paul going mainstream?

He’s got everyone from South Carolina Republican Sen. Jim DeMint to Minnesota moderate Democrat Collin Peterson to California liberal Barbara Boxer on his side in his audit-the-Fed crusade. He’s drawing liberal support in his push to rein in the cost of the war in Afghanistan. Senate candidates like Democratic Rep. Paul Hodes of New Hampshire are finding Dr. No’s populist economic anger to be useful in the campaign, echoing Paul’s criticism of the Federal Reserve.

I agree.  Libertarianism draws from BOTH the left and the right.  And will have enemies from both left and right as well.  Here is the comment from a Democrat candidate for Senate in New Hampshire:

“So far, the Federal Reserve has refused to answer questions about special loans and deals for Wall Street banks. I support an audit of the Federal Reserve to provide answers for working families and to protect New Hampshire taxpayer dollars,” said [Rep. Paul] Hodes, a Democrat who is running for Senate in New Hampshire and backed the Fed measure.

I think that Cong. Paul started a movement that will transcend party, region and ideology.  It will be an exciting time. 

Thanks to both Politico and Lew Rockwell’s blog.

Another interesting realignment comes in criminal justice, where the Campaign for Liberty and the New York Times are saying the same thing.  Too many federal crimes!  Thanks to Ron Paul News.

I have this terrible Walter Mitty nightmare: Just after Governor Jindal personally asks me to help him with his 2012 campaign, Congressman Ron Paul decides to run for President as well – and wants me to help HIM too!

I am a Ron Paul voter. I was even in a Meetup group for Paul and tried to set up a rally at the state capitol. I collected a few signatures to get him on the ballot and was interviewed by my local newspaper as a leading RP supporter. I think he is correct on just about every question. I have written on libertarian subjects for Style Weekly, the local urban alternative newspaper. However, I support Governor Jindal because of my personal admiration for him and his accomplishments and that he can change the way people feel about Republicans and conservatives. I believe he could implement some of Dr. Paul’s ideas about smaller government and more liberty in Washington.

Let me suggest several ways to try to get some Ron Paul voters to the cause!

Governor Jindal signed into law in 2008 an act making Louisiana the 21st state to refuse to implement the REAL ID (some call it Dangerous ID and they are right ) Act. That act, at Section 1, paragraph 9, refers to the Tenth Amendment:

That the enactment into law by Congress of the REAL ID Act, will cause unneeded expense and inconvenience to those people, and was enacted by the Congress in violation of the principles of federalism contained in the 10th amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, and thus the state of Louisiana will not participate in the implementation of the REAL ID Act.

Great language! Wait there’s more:

Section 2. The Legislature of Louisiana does hereby direct the Department of Public Safety and Corrections, including the office of motor vehicles, not to implement the provisions of the REAL ID Act and to report to the governor any attempt by agencies or agents of the United States Department of Homeland Security to secure the implementation of the REAL ID Act through the operations of that division and department.

Governor Jindal was lauded by a diverse coalition of groups, from privacy advocates (see the Privacy Lives blog of Melissa Ngo ) to the Best of New Orleans Blog:

(http://blogofneworleans.com/blog/2008/07/20/jindal-vetoes-his-vote/#comment-10900

Even the ACLU of Louisiana commended the governor and the legislature for its bold pro-liberty stand:

“The ACLU of Louisiana commends both Governor Jindal and the legislature for standing up to the Bush Administration in a nationwide movement against Real ID,” added Marjorie Esman, executive director of the ACLU of Louisiana. “The residents of Louisiana should be proud that our state officials honor our privacy and have chosen to protect it in spite of the demands of the federal government for greater surveillance.”

Governor Jindal can strengthen his libertarian bonafides by endorsing Congressman Ron Paul’s leading legislative initiative: HR 1207, otherwise known as the Audit the Fed Act. It has exploded onto the political stage with over 220 co-sponsors. It is obvious from a recent testy exchange between Paul and Fed chairman Ben Bernanke that the Federal Reserve is concerned about this matter:

“I will resist any attempt to dictate monetary policy.”

How can any servant of the people in a democratic republic claim they are beyond the accountability of the people’s representatives? The Federal Reserve is our servant – not our master.

Governor Jindal could simply indicate that if he were still in Congress he would co-sponsor and vote for the Audit the Fed Act (HR 1207) and urge the Louisiana delegation to do so.

Another effort that Governor Jindal could do is work on the elimination of useless, wasteful state governmental agencies. As I wrote in a earlier blog entry (May 13, 2009), Governor Jindal intends to ask the legislature to adopt a “Commission on Streamlining Government” to present a list of governmental cuts with an up or down vote similar to the base closing commission.

This is a key effort. By doing this at the state level, Governor Jindal can show real results transferrable to the federal level.

Governor Jindal also should seek a speaking spot at a future Campaign for Liberty or Ron Paul type event. I think he may find a friendly audience. Tanya Diagle blogged at the Campaign for Liberty website that:

“Recently, Republican leaders got together for a little pow wow in Florida to strategize for 2012. From what I read, the only one with any sense was Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana. Gov. Jindal characterized it best when he said, “When the Republican Party is no longer the party of fiscal conservatism… then clearly I would argue we’ve lost our way. We have to match our action to our rhetoric.” * * * With all the blah blah blah I’ve been hearing, I heard Gov. Jindal LOUD AND CLEAR.”

This is great news for both Governor Jindal and libertarian conservatives. But the governor will have to explain several votes in Congress on items like the original REAL ID act and support for the renewal of the USA Patriot Act. In fairness, most establishment Republicans voted for those acts and some are just now coming around to the harm and threats these increased federal powers bring. Governor Jindal can easily find ways to explain those votes in a more libertarian manner without endangering his standing with national security conservatives.

We’ll see (maybe at this blog first!) how this plays out.

We’ll see if Governor Jindal gives a public statement about this. 

Sandy Sanders/Assistant Blogger/www.jindal2012blog.com