I've said it a thousand times: the future of the U.S. as we know it rests on an Obama defeat, and there is
no time for petty conservative/libertarian squabbles. But the RNC is foolishly alienating Paul supporters again. This time they're pulling a power move over a venue location. From
Politico:
Supporters of Rep. Ron Paul suspect the Republican National
Convention is toying with them, and they’re taking their complaint to
social media, talk radio and anyone else who will listen.
“They’ve
been fighting us all along,” said Deborah Robinet, a Southern
California activist working to organize a three-day celebration of
Paul’s libertarian ideals on the eve of the convention. “We’re
Republicans. Do they want to alienate us, or do they want to bring us
into the fold?”
At issue is the location of Paul Festival 2012, which could bring an estimated 20,000 or more people a day to Tampa.
It would run from Aug. 24, four days after Paul’s 77th birthday, to Aug. 26, the day before the convention begins.
In late March, the nonprofit group Liberty Unleashed — not a part of
Paul’s presidential campaign but peopled by his supporters — applied
with the convention to use the 355 acres of the Florida State
Fairgrounds for the event, which would bring together music,
entertainment and activism.
The fairgrounds, east of Tampa, is one of the 73 official event
venues for the convention. The Republican Party’s convention planners
control which groups go to which venues.
Robinet said conversations with the fairgrounds seemed to be going
well until last week, when she heard from two convention staff members
that no decision had been made, and it could take another two weeks
while other requests for the fairgrounds are considered. No, she said
she was told, it didn’t matter that the Paul Festival applied in March,
because this isn’t a first-come, first-served decision.
“We can’t proceed without a secured venue,” Robinet said Monday. A
kickoff announcement, ticket sales, fundraising and contracts with bands
and other talent — all have to wait until the location is secured. The
longer it takes, the harder it will be.
“And I think that is their goal,” she said.
It is their goal. The RNC is too stupid to realize that there aren't enough young Bible thumpers to compensate for attrition. So they alienate the future of the party--young Paul supporters--with stunts like this, oblivious to the harm it will cause the party down the road. Keep it up, Republicans. You're going to end up the party of the elderly. Or the dead.
Excellent commentary.
ReplyDeleteThere is no longer a Bill Buckley to provide any intellectual basis for neo-conservatism. Rush Limbaugh? Sean Hannity? Meh.
But, if young libertarian/paleo-conservatives think that the old guard will go down without a fight, they are mistaken. There is too much money and prestige at stake.
Personally, I feel that the only meaningful thing that any one person can do is to withdraw their consent from the established political system. The big secret is that the system depends ultimately on consent - its the reason everyone, starting in kindergarten, is forced to pledge allegiance and encouraged to vote and to at least participate on that level. When you vote, you grant legitimacy to the system, and when the tax feeders can convince us all that we really need them and then to boil the "elected" official selection process down to Jerk A and Jerk B, they dupe everyone into really believing, under the guise of democracy, that "we are the government." We constructed Obama's kill list. We willingly give our money to "too big to fail" banks and unions. We personally go bomb third world civilians we have never met. We taser, mace and arrest ourselves for putting what we want in our bodies. We constructed 75,000 pages of federal register.
The U.S. has a two-party political system, and libertarians will never get much traction as a third party. In order for us to have a voice on the national stage, we must be part of the Republican party. Which is fine. U.S. political parties are heterogeneous. There are some in the Republican party who care about little but the 2nd Amendment. And they still vote straight-line Republican. Such a heterogeneous landscape is fine *as long as the party gives libertarians, who, like it or not, are the future of the party, a seat at the table*. Democrats have been registering young voters like madmen since W's election. Republicans need every young voter they can get. It is therefore incredibly foolish to alienate libertarians, who I would wager are the majority of Republicans under age 35. Like I said, we're the future of the party. And we don't look kindly upon stunts like this.
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