printHOW FAR WE’VE COME. On February 20, 2010, I blogged about the reaction of the CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) regimists to a straw poll that placed libertarian Ron Paul in the lead. (http://barelyablog.com/?p=21977.) Granted, out of 10,000 conference attendees, approximately 2500, very motivated Paulites had voted. Still, I expressed my hopes that this informal gauge of the state-of-the GOP was significant, and that, finally, “the bums and their statist sycophants” would be tossed out and replaced with strict Constitutionalists such as Peter Schiff and Rand Paul. “The small Beltway Politburo that runs CPAC” was certainly worried.
With a smart strategy, this scenario is not implausible. As abcNews reports (http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2011/01/romney-wins-new-hampshire-republican-party-committee-straw-poll.html), “In the first ever ‘straw poll’ of New Hampshire Republican party committee members sponsored by ABC News and WMUR and sanctioned by the state Republican party, ex-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney took 35 percent of the 276 valid ballots cast. This is just 3 percent more than Romney took in the 2008 GOP primary, when he finished in second place behind Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. Coming in a distant second was Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, with 11 percent. Paul took 8 percent in the 2008 GOP primary.”
Ron Paul can pull this off. But he needs the punch and the pizzazz of a Michelle Bachmann as second-in-command. Bachmann is cerebral (a quality poor Palin is without). She’s also beautiful, eloquent and is seldom fazed. Moreover, Bachmann is not wedded to the warfare state. She has officiated on enough panels with Paul, and is wise enough, to recognize the value of bringing moderate liberals into the fold by denouncing America’s forays abroad.
Hey, what do you know? On 09.28.09, I had already proposed a Ron Paul and Michele Bachmann ticket. The occasion? An address by Paul, introduced by Bachmann, about “The Ben Bernanke.” By that time, Bachmann had already beefed-up her knowledge of the Fed and was familiar with Tom Woods’ Meltdown.
Reps. Paul and Bachmann can neuter Mitt Romney politically, but they must unite to do so.
This is a great Idea Ilana. This would be a dream ticket as far as I am concerned. They would definitely get my vote. John Boehner and the rest of the Republican “leadership” would probably have a collective stroke if this were the ticket. Michael Savage would like a Romney-Bachmann ticket, but I like your idea much better.
Sounds good to me. If nothing else, it’s better than anything else I can think of; but, we always have to remember that the Republicans excel at snatching defeat from victory.
As anti-establishment as both seem to be, I still am skeptical that a ticket as old as my grandfather and mother should be trusted given the demands and saturation of technology in the future.
What’s more, neither has an engineering background.
Nice…except the ticket is upside down.
You are correct as usual.I agree whole heartedly.Keep up the good work.What you are doing is of supreme importance.
The GOP are too stupid to back an R.P/M.B ticket. People like Limbaugh, Hannity, etc have yet to embrace Ron Paul.
I would love to see a Paul-Bachmann ticket next year, but doubt 8% would represent the rest of the country. Of the twenty-two who cast their vote for this straw poll, I would venture to say most, if not all are part of the Free State Project. Sadly, I don’t think Paul could carry 2% with the rest of the country. Now, Bachmann for president is an entirely different story. This smart cookie has a lot of crossover appeal with various factions of conservatives, libertarians, and the “fed up” set, AKA tea partiers.
The country is sliding into bankruptcy and default and the largest principal culprit is the Interventionist Foreign Policy. Yes, spending oodles on Socialist Insecurity, Medicare, and the like are problems but most of that money is at least spent internally. The War on Drugs is another major case of Federal malinvestment. Ron Paul is correct on these issues. Gary Johnson of New Mexico seems reasonable. I am not sure where Michelle lies on some of these critical issues – the gap between “conservatives” and “libertarians” is rather large and not trivial to bridge in light of what the Bush family did over 2 decades of Big Government Conservatism.
“The country is sliding into bankruptcy and default and the largest principal culprit is the Interventionist Foreign Policy. Yes, spending oodles on Socialist Insecurity, Medicare, and the like are problems but most of that money is at least spent internally.”
The previous statement within the comments section is simply not based in reality. According to Heritage, amongst others, entitlement spending exceeded defense speeding in 1976. What’s more, entitlements exceed defense by a 2 to 1 margin. (Heritage 2010 Budget Chart Book: Defense Spending Has Declined While Entitlement Spending Has Increased.)
Closing 700 of the 737 United States military installations worldwide and eliminating 2 million of the 2.5 million personnel within the defense industry is a fine thought, but to achieve any sort of reduction of the federal budget, elimination of most entitlements must be considered, first. (The special forces sorts tend to carry far more of their fair share anyway. So by eliminating the positions of the malingering masses, we could expect an overall amelioration.)
If the door is not closed on entitlements soon (read: the Baby Boomers) it probably would be impossible to do so at all.
With respect to the ticket, the Media will suddenly discover a fondness for Gov. Palin and/or Rep. Gingrich about this time next year; thereby, assembling another lame duck Republican ticket. Although I like the fairy tale about Rep. Paul incarcerating bankers, the Media has no intention of allowing a transcendent candidate to hold the megaphone again. (A mistake that was made once by the Media with a nitwit from Hollywood.)
To rephrase my skepticism, the gap between Ron Paul or myself and Dubya Bush (or McCain or Gingrich and most “conservatives”) is more than an order of magnitude greater than the gap between Republicans and Democrats. They may spend billions of ads and 24 hours news network bloviators arguing over a few billion bucks in the 4 Trillion dollar leviathan but the duopoly (Republicrat-Demoplican) and their Ethanol-Goldman-Sachs-Haliburton pals have been mismanaging the country for generations.
It will take a 1964 Goldwater style “principled defeat” for a major party to lead the path to a limited governmental constitutional state and I don’t see it happening.
How about a Paul-Mercer ticket? I’d vote for you.
“It will take a 1964 Goldwater style “principled defeat” for a major party to lead the path to a limited governmental constitutional state and I don’t see it happening.” Truer words have never been spoken.
Michael: DoD budget in 1958 was 51.8 Billion – add inflation and you get 380.3 Billion in 2009. The government spent at least 750 Billion or more if you add the DoD, the “off budget” Global War on Terrorism, Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs – then there are other hidden funds related to national security in Department of Energy, State, etc. Some say it approaches $ 1 Trillion – and this is mostly against Neanderthal Moslems, not a Soviet Union with Nobel Prizewinning scientists. Yes – payments to Granny have gone up faster than payments to the DoD but ALL spending has been going up like crazy. And Granny spends her money back in the US, unlike Hamid Karzai.
Bachmann is scary. Has she publicly denounced her former employment as a lawyer for the IRS? (not to my knowledge) – It makes you wonder if all her anti-tax talk is really genuine.
Still, my vote would go to a Paul-Bachmann ticket because of Paul, and in spite of Bachmann.
Entitlement vs. Defense: I do not support the neanderthals within the Dept. of Defense or most of our World Democracy Tours of the past either. (Read: Because of the enthusiasm we displayed in disregarding the Principle of Double-Effect and Just War Doctrine during most of the 20th Century. Serendipitous seems to describe our general punch-drunk intent and the commensurate results.) But, I believe that your figures are in error, and ask for your source documents.
Paul-Mercer: That was funny. However, the general public would find both too esoteric and both are too principled to navigate the requisite dancing bear routine that is required of all candidates. As I stated earlier, the Media has no intention of permitting a principled candidate or a transcendent candidate to hold the megaphone. (The Media understands its mistake with that war-mongering Reagan.)
If you believe that the Internet will provide more access, consider how both parties are already shoring up their defenses to track those sorts.
It’s actually kind of clever how it will begin, too. It will begin with complimentary statements associating Rep. Paul and Rep. Bachmann with the Tea Party (Tea Party favorite, darling of the Tea Party, etc.) before eventually transitioning to an association with more vitriol and slanderous statements about the Tea Party. In other words, neither has a snowballs chance of navigating the GOP and the Media.
More on the Entitlement vs. Defense spending off-topic discussion:
Add the Budget Tables of the US Government, which are posted on the Government Printing Office webpage, to the entitlement to defense, 2 to 1 margin, and it is apparent that the focus on defense is indeed a legitimate concern, but the not the existential threat that rapine entitlement programs are.
(http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy11/sheets/hist03z2.xls)
Given that defense has become, in essence, an entitlement for the masses and the American aristocracy alike, the 2 to 1 margin argument becomes more persuasive.
Therefore, the issue is thus: Either you believe in compulsory giving or you do not. I am indifferent to any compulsory giving argument presented since the onset of the Progressive Era.
On topic:
The most we can hope for from Rep. Paul is the occasional inconvenience he has proven over the years to statists. I am not certain that a presidential bid would do anything other than distract from issuing subpoenas from the Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy.
A Paul/Bachmann ticket sounds fantastic …stranger things have happened ?