I listened to it live. Beck didn't sound that anti Rand to me. He basically just said the same thing that many of us have said, which is that Ron couldn't win the Presidency running on a completely honest and principled platform, and Rand has had to make some compromises with the establishment in order to have a real chance to win in 2016 and do what his dad couldn't do.
Agreed. People take things way out of context. In fact, if I do remember correctly, Beck thinks Rand has a better shot at the winning presidency than Ted Cruz because, in his view, Rand has learned to master the art of coalescing party leaders around him and embedding libertarian ideas into the political mainstreams, whereas Pat and Stu prefer Ted. Both have their strengths, of course: Rand knows how to play well with young audiences, and Ted has the uncanny ability to, not only crush opponents in political debates, but raise money from Value Voters and evangelicals as well. Ultimately, the Republican Party will need to unite both civil libertarians and religious conservatives to win, which unfortunately isn't happening. Jack Hunter, for all his faults, penned a great piece on how
political libertarianism can be made palatable for
socially conservative audiences. He also points out many of libertarianism's leading spokespersons (Tom Woods, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Ron Paul) are social conservatives themselves. Glenn is pretty enamored with both men, but Pat, unfortunately, is turned off by Rand because of his pandering on Voter ID and immigration. It amazes me, though, why he thinks Marco Rubio's sudden change of heart on immigration is sincere, rather than opportunistic. Pat makes great points about how conservatives need to stop pandering to certain demographic groups and diluting (as opposed to refining) their message, but seems to have some sort of blind infatuation with Rubio. Glenn Beck, on the other hand, has called Rubio a Marxist piece of garbage. We have to remember that Glenn Beck's radio program is hosted by three men, all of whom have different opinions, not only on tactical strategy, but on matters of substance. I've hard them yell at each other on air over relatively petty differences.
