My fellow Americans,
I bow out of this race. I want you to think I'm being noble somehow because of my sick daughter, but I'm not quitting the race because of her. Rather, the polling in my home state of Pennsylvania is too close to call. If I lose my home state, my political career is ruined. If I drop out now, I can run again in four years.
Mitt Romney will probably lose to Barack Obama, and in four years I'll be able to run for the Republican nomination. You Republicans have a history of nominating the previous loser--John McCain lost to Bush, and Romney lost to McCain. Reagan lost to Gerald Ford. So I hope Romney loses to Obama.
Another reason I'm quitting is Romney and I don't differ much on the issues. We're basically the same: we both want to spread our ideas through the force of arms, hysterically react to a podunk country like Iran, and search for monsters to destroy throughout the world. We're both big government conservatives.
Santorum dropped out for the same reason every other candidate drops out, not enough support. The writing was on the wall, the money was running out, what was the point in him staying in the race? As for him getting the nomination in 4 years, no way. Outside of a few bible belt religious kooks in the south his support was minimal. (OK, there were other religious nuts that supported him too) In 4 years, Romney may be running for reelection or we may have suffered with 4 more years of the imbecile in chief that we have now. The landscape will have changed and if I had to lay an early bet down, I'd go with Rubio. But it's way too early to tell.
ReplyDeleteNow as far as Ron Paul...
I've been where you are Mario, and in principle I agree with most Libertarian views and even voted for a libertarian I didn't even know out of principle one time, but I wonder if YOU are really as Libertarian as you claim?
Are you willing to legalize all drugs and let out all drug offenders from jail?
Do you want to open the borders up so anyone can come and go as they please?
Are you really willing to be a complete isolationist and let thugs and dictators commit genocide on their own people?
Are you willing to allow abortion for any reason at any time including 3d trimester?
Do you want to get religion completely out of the school? (by that I mean allowing ONLY the teaching of evolution and not this silly creation story we were told growing up)
We had an interesting project in an economics class I took. The teacher had several groups decide on a current problem (global warming, poverty, immigration, etc) and then we came up with completely free market ideas for solutions. Every problem has a free market solution, the problem is whether the politicians have the guts to implement them or not. In most cases, the answer is no.
So are you really Libertarian Mario, or just a conservative with libertarian leanings?
Yes, I am a Ron Paul follower to the death. I'll take on myself whatever label Ron Paul does.
ReplyDeleteI think your analysis is valid. Let me start with abortion. I don't think any Republican that has ever lived could be more pro-life than Ron Paul. His view is that abortion is a violent crime and according to the Constitution should be legislated at the state, not federal level. This allows for state-to-state nuances according to people's views. Then maybe Utah could criminalize 3rd trimester abortion and California could legalize it.
Education: If we eliminated the Department of Education (federal level) there would be much more religion in school than there is now. Texas could teach creationism and Massachussetts could teach evolution.
Isolationism: Ironically, it's the non-Ron Paul Republicans who are the isolationists. We re-established a relationship with China by playing a ping-pong game. Ron Paul wants to re-establish a commercial relationship with Cuba, but the supposed non-isolationist Republicans like Romney want to continue to put a barrier between us. Yes, there will be thugs and dictators who slaughter their own people, but some not-so-wealthy Americans like me and a lot of young Americans should not die for them. America first. World second.
Opening the border: I don't think Ron Paul is for free, unchecked physical movement between borders between nations. His fear is that any measures the federal government would take to keep people out of this country might be used to keep Americans in the country (if they don't pay their taxes, for example, or say something against the government, or simply want to leave the United States), just as dictator-run countries (the Soviet Union-run East Germany for example) did, e.g., the Berlin Wall.
I converted from big government conservatism to small government conservatism after I was in the military for a couple of months-- nay, perhaps days. If you want a strong dose of big government, join the military. It's my fear that a strong government that does what I want it to do could also make my life miserable. Also, I realized a disastrous foreign policy comes from a disregard of the Constitution and the young people who join the military. After all, the end result of toppling Saddam Hussein was making Iran stronger, but that may have been the big government people's design from the beginning. If young men are expendable, who cares if Iran emerges as a threat?
Love, Mario