CNN: U.S. Representative Ron Paul- 'Ready To Be The Oldest President'

Source:CNN- U.S. Representative Ron Paul (Libertarian, Texas) at the CNN GOP debate.

"Ron Paul says he is ready to be oldest president of the United States and he is willing to release his medical records." 

From CNN 

I'm not sure that Ron Paul is prepared to be the oldest President of the United States, not because he's not physically and mentally fit to be President, but because I believe he's realistic enough and tends to walk on Planet Earth with both of his feet on the ground and knows he's not going to be President of the United States. 

This populist-Christian-Right-Tea Party (also known as the modern Republican Party) is simply not going to nominate for President, a Libertarian who wants nothing to do with the Cultural War, let alone would fight that war for them as President. Libertarians believe in to each his own and live and let live. Which are actually Christian values, as well as Libertarian values. But they're not modern Republican Party values.

Reason Magazine: Nick Gillespie- '3 Reasons Conservatives Should Cut Defense Spending Now!'

Source:Reason Magazine- no wonder The Pentagon is so big: we spend 700 hundred billion on it every year.

"The Congressional Budget Office projects that if we keep spending the way we have been, federal debt held by the public will grow from around 60 percent of GDP to a whopping 82 percent of GDP over the next decade, with no end in sight. That's the sort of borrowing that can ruin a country's economy.... 

From Reason Magazine

If you want to know why we have trillion-dollar budget deficit and a 17 trillion-dollar national debt, I'll tell you anyway: 

When you borrow 700 billion-dollars to double the size of a Medicare program that's already facing financial problems and go to war twice in 18 months thousands of miles from home against third-world countries that represent no threat to us, and are responsible for the national defense for other developed countries and they get that defense at American taxpayers expense, you are going to run high deficits every year and pile on your national debt. Oh yeah, the Great Recession and the steps that were taken to deal with it are also part of our budget deficit. 

To say that there is no room to cut in the defense budget, is like saying there's no more water in the Pacific Ocean. I guess people were just too thirsty and ran out of places to bathe. It makes absolutely no sense and and is completely believable. It's also admitting that you are not a fiscal conservative and you don't give a damn about fiscal responsibility. 

You can't cut Food Assistance and Public Housing your way to fiscal sanity and health and to one day when you've finally balanced the budget. You have to go where the money is, which is in defense, entitlements, and the tax code that almost no one understands. 

Damon Root: 'How FDR Contributed to the Libertarian Movement'

Source:Wikipedia- with a look at President Franklin D. Roosevelt's (Democrat, New York) New Deal agenda.

"The New Deal was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1939. Major federal programs and agencies included the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), the Civil Works Administration (CWA), the Farm Security Administration (FSA), the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 (NIRA) and the Social Security Administration (SSA). They provided support for farmers, the unemployed, youth and the elderly. The New Deal included new constraints and safeguards on the banking industry and efforts to re-inflate the economy after prices had fallen sharply. New Deal programs included both laws passed by Congress as well as presidential executive orders during the first term of the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The programs focused on what historians refer to as the "3 R's": relief for the unemployed and for the poor, recovery of the economy back to normal levels, and reform of the financial system to prevent a repeat depression.[1] The New Deal produced a political realignment, making the Democratic Party the majority (as well as the party that held the White House for seven out of the nine presidential terms from 1933 to 1969) with its base in liberal ideas, the South, big city machines and the newly empowered labor unions, and various ethnic groups. The Republicans were split, with conservatives opposing the entire New Deal as hostile to business and economic growth and liberals in support. The realignment crystallized into the New Deal coalition that dominated presidential elections into the 1960s while the opposing conservative coalition largely controlled Congress in domestic affairs from 1937 to 1964." 

From Wikipedia

"Root tells the tale of several noted leftists of the ’20s who found themselves marked right-wing reactionaries in the wake of FDR’s New Deal. 

Toward the end of a mostly sympathetic profile of the great journalist and critic H. L. Mencken, Christopher Hitchens once claimed that Mencken’s only “brilliance and verve” occurred during “the period between 1910 and the end of Prohibition.” Which is to say, before Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal came along. It’s an all too common refrain. Biographer Terry Teachout characterized Mencken as “blinded partly by his hatred of Roosevelt.” 

Mencken scholar Charles A. Fecher—whom you’d expect to know better—declared Mencken’s opinion of Roosevelt to be “maniacal—there is no other word to use.” Although it’s true that Mencken ended the 1930s as an enemy of what he called FDR’s “More Abundant Life,” he hardly started out the decade that way. 

A self-​described “lifelong Democrat,” Mencken voted for Roosevelt in 1932 and voiced cautious support for the New Deal’s first stirrings, writing in March 1933, “I have the utmost confidence in his good intentions, and I believe further that he has carried on his dictatorship so far with courage, sense and due restraint.” 

It wasn’t until Mencken realized the vast size and intrusive scope of that “dictatorship” that he went on the attack, lambasting the New Deal as a “puerile amalgam of exploded imbecilities, many of them in flat contradiction of the rest.” Indeed, in a passage that could be recycled and reused in our own troubled times, Mencken denounced Roosevelt for proposing “to lift the burden of debt by encouraging fools to incur more debt, and to husband the depleted capital of the nation by outlawing what is left of it... 

You can read the rest of this piece at Libertarianism.Org.  

To put it simply: the reason why we have a smaller Libertarian Party that's part of a broader Libertarian movement in America, is because of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. Thanks Democrats and Republicans for giving us a party, for people who believe in both personal, as well as economic freedom, and limited government, as well as federalism, and the U.S. Constitution. 

Of course there was a Progressive movement in the 1910s and even 1900s, but there wasn't any Federal safety net for America until the 1930s with the New Deal with President Franklin Roosevelt. And then President Harry Truman unsuccessfully tried to expand the New Deal in the 1940s with his Fair Deal agenda. 

We get the Federal, public infrastructure system in the 1950s with President Dwight Eisenhower, who was Center-Right, Progressive Republican. And of course the Great Society in the 1960s with President Lyndon Johnson. 

So the main reason why Libertarians aren't Democrats or Republicans, because both parties have long histories of expanding the Federal state in America. Progressives were a major part of the Republican coalition up until the 1990s or so. And then you have the Christian-Right take over the Republican Party in the 1990s. 

So there hasn't been any real home for Libertarians as far as a political party, at least since the 1920s. Which is why the Libertarian Party was created in the early 1970s. 

CATO Institute: Neil McCluskey- 'No Child Left Behind: A Decade of Failure'

Source:CATO Institute- Neil McCluskey talking about the 2001 No Child Left Behind Law.

"The No Child Left Behind Act was meant to compel states to adopt high standards and rapidly improve K-12 education in public schools. It is now clear that NCLB has been a failure and has set the stage for even greater federal control over curriculum. The solution, contrary to what many advocates claim, is to get the federal government out of America's classrooms. Neal McCluskey, associate director of the Cato Institute's Center for Educational Freedom, comments on NCLB's decade of failure."
 

From the CATO Institute 

Before I get into the No Child Left Behind Law, you need to know the background on it and why a Republican President named George W. Bush would even be pushing Federal education reform at all. 

In 1999-2000, then Governor George W. Bush ran as a Compassionate Conservative, which essentially translates into a modern Progressive Republican. If you are old enough to remember the 1990s and the political environment in Washington during that decade, you know that the Republican Party was moving into a fundamentalist, populist, direction, with an economic libertarian component. Which is probably why the Republican Party lost the 1996 presidential election, along with nominating Bob Dole for President, because they were seen as a party that didn't care about average Americans and minorities and only cared about their religion, guns, and wanting to keep their taxes down. 

G.W. Bush in Canada would be called a Progressive-Conservative (no, that's not an Oxymoron) which means he's someone who believes in using government through market principles help people in need who are struggling. And is someone who doesn't want the Federal Government running public education, but who believes that the Feds have a role in education when it comes to funding and setting standards, making suggestions, providing funding for public schools and even private schools. 

If the Democratic Party sounded more like Republicans on economic policy in the 1990s thanks to President Bill Clinton, then the Republican Party sounded more like Democrats when it came to domestic policy in the 2000s, thanks to President George W. Bush. Because you have a large block of independent voters who don't like the fringes in either party. And when you are trying to run a national campaign for the presidency, you need voters who aren't part of your hard core party base. Public education and immigration, as well as Medicare reform, was how George W. Bush spoke to non-traditional Republican voters. And it worked for him politically. 

Ron Paul: 'New Hampshire Primary is Wide Open'

Source:CSPAN- U.S. Senator Rand Paul (Republican, Kentucky) talking to CSPAN's Washington Journal. Which presidential candidate do you believe he's supporting?

"Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) talked about 2012 Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul’s campaign strategy in New Hampshire. He responded to telephone calls and electronic communications.

Senator Paul is the son of Ron Paul." 

From CSPAN 

U.S. Representative Ron Paul (Republican, Texas) being interviewed by CNN about the 2012 Republican presidential primaries. The video that this photo is from is not currently available online right now.

Source:CNN- U.S. Representative Ron Paul (Republican, Texas) being interviewed by CNN.

You would think that a state like New Hampshire that lives by the motto: "Give me liberty, or give me death" could be Ron Paul country. But you have to consider that even if New Hampshire Republicans are Conservative Libertarians, that the end of the day they are Republicans and want to win in 2012. And that means voting for the candidate that they believe has the best shot at beating President Obama in November. And running a Libertarian nationwide against a Progressive Democrat, might not the best choice for them. Even if ideologically Representative Paul represents everything that they're looking for.

The Situation Room: U.S. Senator Rand Paul On Rick Santorum

Source:CNN- U.S. Senator Rand Paul (Republican, Kentucky) on The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer.

"Rand Paul exposes Rick Santorum & Mitt Romney CNN 1/4/12" 

From Liberty Source 

I agree with Senator Rand Paul that Rick Santorum is not a Conservative, at least not in the constitutional, fiscal, economic, or even national security sense. (Running out-of-ways for someone to be a Conservative) But let's not pretend we see UFO's in the sky and gigantic flying ants in our dreams and pretend Rick Santorum is a Liberal either. 

Name the right-wing, social, cultural issue and Senator Santorum is on the Far-Right fringe in American politics. Which is why the business community in the Republican Party, to go along with Senator Santorum's blue-collar populism, will never support Santorum For President.