Steele challenge: GOP infighting continues with insults to RLC

The Republican Liberty Caucus is holding its national convention in Jacksonville March 27-29. I plan to cover the conference. For more information, visit the RLC website by clicking on the photo. [Photo of Jax by Kay B. Day.]Michael Steele, recently elected chair of the Republican National Committee, has his work cut out for him in the wake of losses in recent election years. Steele must deal with a hostile, Democratic-favoring establishment media and he must also deal with a few hostiles at the grassroots level. As a political observer, I’ve noticed complaints about Republicans and the complaints aren’t coming from liberals or Democrats. They’re coming from other Republicans.

Case in point: The Republican Liberty Caucus. I received an email this week with a snippet of commentary from a personal blog set up at Townhall. The commentary basically dissed the RLC, suggesting the group has no place at the GOP table. The writer alluded to members of the RLC as trash—“Let’s take out the trash,” he wrote.

Often when I visit ultra-conservative websites, I see comments suggesting anyone who doesn’t agree with the full platform move over to the Democratic Party. Perhaps the most volatile issue is abortion. The most intense criticism is leveled at those who support groups like Republican Majority for Choice.

Can a party whose numbers are smaller than the Democratic Party’s afford to lose or alienate voters? Should a political party expect 100 percent non-questioning devotion to political ideology? Isn’t that the mindset we often criticize other parties for? Isn’t lack of tolerance for dissenting opinion a trait we normally assign to liberals? Should we do what Sen. John McCain suggested during the 2008 presidential election and put our country's interests above those of our party?

I talk to a lot of people about politics, and I like to ask questions. Most people cannot name their representatives in Congress or their senators. Most people cannot tell you how much money is withheld from their paychecks for taxes. Most people have little knowledge of history. Most people cannot even name the secretary of state or, perhaps more importantly, our past disastrous secretary of the treasury (Republican) and our current tax-dodging secretary of the treasury (Democrat).

But these people vote. And they pick a party candidate often based on narratives actively shaped by establishment media.

The blogger at Townhall said RLC members are not true Republicans. If that blogger were to read history carefully—party history is on the RNC website—and then compare the RLC platform to the RNC platform, he’d come up short on building his argument.

Steele seems to be doing a good job so far of trying to mend fences and bring the “Gallant Old Party” into the present. It’s my opinion the RNC must cast a welcome to those who oppose socialist principles that began with President Bill Clinton (or with Franklin D. Roosevelt if you want to really go back in time) and continue to this day. I count our last Republican president, sadly, in that assessment.

No political party should hand a mandate to voters that says “If you don’t agree 100 percent, get lost.” That attitude dismisses free thinkers, devalues healthy intellectual debate and encourages brainwashing. There’s enough of that in Washington at present to last us a lifetime.

Comments

[Will Pitts]

My Response to Mr.Ianucci:

It is obvious from one of your comments that you are referring to those who supported Congressman Paul for President as being a fly in the ointment of the well oiled Republican Party.

What if a group of people that support a man that received only 19,285 votes nationally (less than Nader, Keyes, Baldwin, Barr, and McKinney) learned that they should stop being a fly in the ointment?

To me this is very perplexing. Yes, Congressman Paul did receive very few votes in the primary and his message was soundly rejected by the media and the Republican Party.

As I recall, during the primaries, the DOW was predicted to head to 18,000 the economy was expanding and we were in the greatest economic boom of American History.

However, as Matt Towery points out in the Florida Times Union column yesterday, Maybe we should listen more to much-maligned Ron Paul (below) there was one lone crazy person on the stage telling all of us that things are not as they seem. Ron Paul was telling us that we are on the verge of a financial collapse that can and will lead to a collapse of our monetary system. He stated that the root cause of the problem is our monetary policy controlled by the Federal Reserve System that allowed excessive debt and spending to finance both out military adventurism and social programs. He was derided as a loon making such statements during such prosperity.

Now, had Ron Paul been wrong there would be merit to your assertion that those who supported Ron Paul should be dismissed. However, have you seen the news or looked at your 401K lately?

In less than 12 months we as a nation have gone from a belief that we were in the greatest economic prosperity America has ever seen to being on the edge of the greatest economic catastrophe this nation has ever seen. Please tell me one other presidential candidate in the party who even remotely anticipated we would be where we are today. Bottom line, they were all very wrong and Ron Paul was spot on. Rather than boasting about how few voted Ron Paul received, the party should be questioning how they could have been so wrong about such a huge issue; and crisis has only begun.

We have just entered into a period of financial collapse. It may be temporarily abated or propped up by more inflation with this stimulus package but after this next mini economic boom the shoe will drop. We will see a depression never before seen by the US or the World. The US monetary base will resemble Argentina. If you want to see what that looks like view this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rH6_i8zuffs

Rather than pointing back and saying that these people should be rejected, people should be asking, why did they understand what was coming and how did the Republican Party reject the truth? Also, why are they so energized? How was party was led in the wrong direction.

Also, the Republican Party is now rejecting the stimulus package. Didn’t the party, only a couple of months ago rally around Senator McCain while he suspended his campaign to rush back to Washington to ensure the bailout package was passed. Again, we in the RLC rejected the bailout package. I guess we were a fly in the ointment then as well. Think about it, we have not changed our principles. We were against it then when Bush and McCain were for it and we are against it now that Obama is for it. If the party is against this huge welfare now why were they for it then?

“Right is right even if everyone is for it and wrong is wrong even if everyone is against it” –William Penn

Please keep in mind that we had good relations with Iran until we overthrew their elected leader in the 1950’s and installed the Shah. The Shah’s secret police then killed thousands who opposed him. Iranians viewed these murders as be committed by the US puppet, the Shah. This led to a rise of radicals that ushered in the Ayatollah that culminated with the Iran Hostage Crises.

Palestinians and Jews lived peacefully in Israel until the Palestinians had their homes taken away and their lives destroyed to make a new state for Israel in the 1940s. We should have given the Jews part of Germany for what the Germans did. Why punish the Palestinians for what the Germans did?

We helped Sadaam in his rise to power in the 1980s to counter the radicalism in Iran. Ironically, the war crimes he was executed for , killing the Kurds, was committed by chemical weapons provided to Sadaam by the US.

We supported Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan in the fight against the Soviets in the 1980's.

Since the Soviets were defeated in the Afghanistan and the cold war, the US escalated its presence in the Middle East.

Our presence in the Middle East and financial and military support of Israel is the root cause of the growth of radicalism against the US in the Middle East.

Our enemies have made this very clear. They will attack us until we leave the Middle East and they will attack us until we quit supporting the relocation, sanction and inhumane treatment of the Palestinians.

And yes, I may be a little naive. But as a dumb country boy I have learned enough that I don’t go kicking ant hills and then stand in the middle of them. And if I did, I definitely would not complain about how violent the ants are while they bite me as I stand in the middle of the hill.

Questioning the judgment of those in Washington that are sending our young men and women into harms way, with a military presence in 140 countries around the world must be examined.

Our soldiers are not allowed to question their mission. If we do not question it for them, who will? Many political leaders view our military as expendable resources to accomplish their individual political objectives. I am convinced that many in Washington are more concerned about their political careers and the desires of their special interest groups than of our troops.

Rest assured, if you want war, Rham Emmanuel (Former Israeli soldier) and Barak Obama are committed to an escalation of war in the Middle East. We will assuredly have many, many more young men proudly and nobly return in body bags before this administration ends.

A non-Intervention foreign policy was the policy of the founding fathers and of the Republican Party. If the party was so incorrect on our economic policy is it so wrong to re evaluate our foreign policy?

Regards,

Will Pitts

9/10/2001: Rumsfeld says $2.3 TRILLION Missing from Pentagon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU4GdHLUHwU

'America's Outrageous War Economy!'
Pentagon can't find $2.3 trillion, wasting trillions on 'national defense'
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/why-we-love-americas-outrageous/story.aspx?guid=0D31C880-32CD-4BA1-8133-329EA57CB069

Iraq war may cost US USD 7 trillion
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=45204&sectionid=3510203

The Iraq War Will Cost Us $3 Trillion, and Much More
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/07/AR2008030702846.html

Iraq war cost estimates run into the trillions
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0310/p16s01-wmgn.html

Here are a couple of articles by mainstream non-Ron Paul supporters that may be of interest.

Ron Paul, if only we listened
Dallas Morning News
I didn't vote for Ron Paul in the Republican primary (I was a Mike Huckabee man), nor did I write him in on Election Day (I penciled in farmer-poet Wendell Berry). But no Texan this year did more good for conservatism and his country than the congressman from the coast.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/points/stories/DN-dreher_30edi.State.Edition1.2b92bf2.html

Florida Times Union
Maybe we should listen more to much-maligned Ron Paul
By MATT TOWERY
It is considered dangerous in the mainstream media ever to reference U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas as anything but a political anomaly.
Well, here I go about Paul.
In November 2007, I was in the pressroom after the CNN/YouTube Republican debate in St. Petersburg, Fla. That was the night Mike Huckabee stole the show with his comment that Jesus was too smart to ever run for public office.
One has to take into account the fact that the debate was taking place in a metropolitan area that had already seen housing prices plummet and home sales dry up.
Yet, not one candidate even raised the issue of housing or the impending financial crisis.
Actually, there was one candidate that night who focused on where the nation was really headed. Attacked and derided by the more "acceptable" GOP candidates, it was Paul who warned that America was "going bankrupt" and that our infrastructure was decaying.
Throughout the 2008 campaign, Paul kept telling anyone who would listen that the nation was literally printing money to pile up massive debts, and that there would be a major price to pay for Congress and the president being asleep at the wheel.
Now look where we are.
We are spending money faster than we can print it, our nation really is going bankrupt, and Congress is being forced to deal with real issues such as infrastructure even as it pours massive amounts of pork into a stimulus bill that in reality has turned into the largest appropriations bill ever passed.
For balance of the Article
http://www.jacksonville.com/opinion/columnists/matt_towery/2009-02-13/story/maybe_we_should_listen_more_to_much_maligned_ron_pau

[Kay B. Day]

Well, that's just an amazing piece of writing. Thanks for your response to Ianucci's essay. I'm still astounded at the lack of respect the GOP gave Dr. Paul. I really appreciate your taking time to share this with our readers. best, Kay