Who’s the Libertarian Now?

[Origanalist]

People can blame it on Trump entering the race last year but if Rand had the fire in his belly and did not come off as Mr. Establishment he may have matched or even beat Trump. Trump was blowing it and people were looking for a polished anti-establishment candidate which would have naturally been Rand but there wasn't one. Rand rather became the defender of the RINO establishment. The wing of the party the voters despise.

If you watched any of Rand's events online last year it seemed pretty clear he had no intention of winning and was just running an educational campaign. People were worried about the economy, jobs, trade, immigration and yet Rand was going around making speeches focusing solely on police abuse issues. A subject that only a small minority concerned themselves with or limited to Progressive left that would never vote for him in the first place.

Rand seemed like he was running solely to capture the Colbert viewers which defies logic considering you cannot just with a small fraction of young voters on the left.

I can't disagree.

 

[undergroundrr]

When Paul declares Trump is authoritarian, he is addressing his positions, without reference to the themes or strategic progress the outsider trend represents. Indeed, when I have asked people to set Trump aside, and at least address the benefits of that trend, all I got was the sound of crickets. So I can only conclude that the opposition to Trump is mainly personality driven, and personality fixated.

Crickets? You got the sound of people pointing out that trump in no way represents an outsider trend. He represents the long-term cementing of the establishment with Chris Christie, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Pence, Newt Gingrich, Jeff Sessions, a raft of CFR foreign advisors etc. etc. at the helm.

The further success of arch-insider trump's campaign represents the (maybe orchestrated) end run blockade of true outsiders, preventing them from having any voice whatsoever for a long, long, long time.

You've drawn a different conclusion. The same one the media has been feeding the sheeple. We get that.

 

[Peace&Freedom]

There are plenty of posts denouncing Johnson, I would submit that only the ones denouncing Trump get your attention because of your strange desire to defend him.

That plus the fact that this site is over run by threads that attemt to spin the Donald in a good light so of course there will be more anti Trump posts in rebuttal.

There are thousands of anti-Trump posts on RPF, mainly by the same six or so people, compared to the dozens critical of Johnson. I was even away for a week last month where didn't read or post at all, and upon returning still found far more attack threads and posts on Trump than defenses. And to repeat, I have asked the denouncers about discussing the implications of the outsider trend for liberty WITHOUT Trump, but still found no takers.

Crickets? You got the sound of people pointing out that trump in no way represents an outsider trend. He represents the long-term cementing of the establishment with Chris Christie, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Pence, Newt Gingrich, Jeff Sessions, a raft of CFR foreign advisors etc. etc. at the helm.

The further success of arch-insider trump's campaign represents the (maybe orchestrated) end run blockade of true outsiders, preventing them from having any voice whatsoever for a long, long, long time.

No one saw the outsider trend coming, including Trump, so your point is unfounded. And I got the sound of none of the critics willing to talk about the trend when offered to leave Trump out of the issue, i.e., crickets.

 

[Smitty]

Calm down, now. Everybody just calm down. Glenn Beck is working on the situation as we speak.

 

[cajuncocoa]

//

 

[Brian4Liberty]

Raimondo has a very selective memory. trump took this @!#@#% line from Rand Paul.

From June 2014:

http://www.businessinsider.com/rand-paul-iraq-obama-cheney-bush-iran-2014-6

Jack Hunter, considerably more lucid than the clueless Raimondo, addresses the true line of influence here:

http://rare.us/story/ron-and-rand-paul-are-still-reshaping-the-republican-foreign-policy-debate/

Another stupid pro-trump thread by an RPF mod. This place smells funny.

Raimondo was talking there specifically about the Rand campaign leading up to the first primary. The neoconservatives and especially the teocons had worked tirelessly to paint Rand as an establishment toady, most specifically of McConnell. Rand was rapidly losing the mantle of outsider, and it seemed that nothing could fix that. They knew they could marginalize Rand with Ron supporters by maneuvering him to appear to agree with the neocons in some instances, and then they could turn around and pound him again if he appeared to side with McConnell and the Chamber. At the same time, they pumped up Rubio and Cruz. It was blatant, most typified by pundits like Levin and Hannity, along with all of the usual neocon online pundits.

As you just said, Trump was stealing thunder from Ron and Rand by using some of their anti-interventionism rhetoric, which most recently (past decade) was popularized solely by Ron. Is it so hard to imagine that Raimondo from anti-war.com would find some small amount of satisfaction when Trump seems to be taking his side on anti-interventionism, even though it might not be sincere? Most voters are completely ignorant of anything other than the surface level, and if Trump can make anti-interventionism slightly more popular with them, is it possible that this opens the door wider for Raimondo?

As far as this being a "pro-Trump" thread, sorry, that is not the intent.

 

[Smitty]

Jack Hunter, considerably more lucid than the clueless Raimondo, addresses the true line of influence here:

Jack Hunter is helping Glenn Beck work on the situation.

 

[NewRightLibertarian]

People need to snap out of it and realize that Rand needs to do some serious soul-searching and re-evaluating before his next Presidential run. He messed up very badly and must change course. No need to get butthurt every time someone with clout (such as the great Justin Raimondo) points out the obvious reality of the situation.

 

[Origanalist]

Calm down, now. Everybody just calm down. Glenn Beck is working on the situation as we speak.

 

[Peace&Freedom]

As you just said, Trump was stealing thunder from Ron and Rand by using some of their anti-interventionism rhetoric, which most recently was popularized solely by Ron. Is it so hard to imagine that Raimondo from anti-war.com would find some small amount of satisfaction when Trump seems to be taking his side on anti-interventionism, even though it might not be sincere? Most voters are completely ignorant of anything other than the surface level, and if Trump can make anti-interventionism slightly more popular with them, is it possible that this opens the door wider for Raimondo?

MUCH more popular, not just slightly. Raimondo has long expressed that the GOP could not recapture the White House until they ran a candidate who repudiated the US invasion of Iraq. Not just "regretted" what happened later, or thought "mistakes were made," but somebody who rejected the decision to go in, and the people associated with advocating for it. At this point, the typical Republican brand is associated with only being serious when it comes to invading or overthrowing more nations in the Mideast, while caving on, or putting on the backburner issues on every other front, be they fiscal or social.

So by this dynamic the only people who could get elected, given the Republican field, were Rand and Trump. More crucially, Trump found the way to make non-intervention more sellable to the majority via 1) revising an America first emphasis (a concept more voters can positively and emotionally support than being "antiwar"), 2) using Jacksonian "peace through strength" rally rhetoric to assure voters he was "strong" on defense, and 3) openly blasting those who pushed for the Iraq war as liars and losers.

The mild and dryly intellectual rhetoric Rand used, which was overly respectful to the hawks whose wars have killed millions, and wasted billions was never going to be enough to gain the voters needed. So Trump didn't steal the anti-intervention vote, he won it by presenting it in the best way for the purposes of engaging a larger bloc of voters. Raimondo and other libertarians have the right to notice this, and its usefulness to getting a net more liberty policy put into effect, without being called a sellout, as declared by others earlier in this thread.

 

[Ender]

MUCH more popular, not just slightly. Raimondo has long expressed that the GOP could not recapture the White House until they ran a candidate who repudiated the US invasion of Iraq. Not just "regretted" what happened later, or thought "mistakes were made," but somebody who rejected the decision to go in, and the people associated with advocating for it. At this point, the typical Republican brand is associated with only being serious when it comes to invading or overthrowing more nations in the Mideast, while caving on, or putting on the backburner issues on every other front, be they fiscal or social.

So by this dynamic the only people who could get elected, given the Republican field, were Rand and Trump. More crucially, Trump found the way to make non-intervention more sellable to the majority via 1) revising an America first emphasis (a concept more voters can positively and emotionally support than being "antiwar"), 2) using Jacksonian "peace through strength" rally rhetoric to assure voters he was "strong" on defense, and 3) openly blasting those who pushed for the Iraq war as liars and losers.

The mild and dryly intellectual rhetoric Rand used, which was overly respectful to the hawks whose wars have killed millions, and wasted billions was never going to be enough to gain the voters needed. So Trump didn't steal the anti-intervention vote, he won it by presenting it in the best way for the purposes of engaging a larger bloc of voters. Raimondo and other libertarians have the right to notice this, and its usefulness to getting a net more liberty policy put into effect, without being called a sellout, as declared by others earlier in this thread.

Trump thought Iraq was a great idea and a success.

 

[AuH20]

MUCH more popular, not just slightly. Raimondo has long expressed that the GOP could not recapture the White House until they ran a candidate who repudiated the US invasion of Iraq. Not just "regretted" what happened later, or thought "mistakes were made," but somebody who rejected the decision to go in, and the people associated with advocating for it. At this point, the typical Republican brand is associated with only being serious when it comes to invading or overthrowing more nations in the Mideast, while caving on, or putting on the backburner issues on every other front, be they fiscal or social.

So by this dynamic the only people who could get elected, given the Republican field, were Rand and Trump. More crucially, Trump found the way to make non-intervention more sellable to the majority via 1) revising an America first emphasis (a concept more voters can positively and emotionally support than being "antiwar"), 2) using Jacksonian "peace through strength" rally rhetoric to assure voters he was "strong" on defense, and 3) openly blasting those who pushed for the Iraq war as liars and losers.

The mild and dryly intellectual rhetoric Rand used, which was overly respectful to the hawks whose wars have killed millions, and wasted billions was never going to be enough to gain the voters needed. So Trump didn't steal the anti-intervention vote, he won it by presenting it in the best way for the purposes of engaging a larger bloc of voters. Raimondo and other libertarians have the right to notice this, and its usefulness to getting a net more liberty policy put into effect, without being called a sellout, as declared by others earlier in this thread.

Trump has taken anti-interventionism mainstream after Ron Paul took it out of the shadows.

 

[CPUd]

Trump has taken anti-interventionism mainstream after Ron Paul took it out of the shadows.

What part of bombing the shit out of them and taking the oil is anti-interventionist?

 

[surf]

There is not a doubt that if Trump had decided to run as a Libertarian right from the start, he would be the Libertarian candidate today...

bite me.

it's not the easiest task defending Johnson for us libertarians, but what you've written is what republicrats would define as "hate speech"

 

[BV2]

People need to snap out of it and realize that Rand needs to do some serious soul-searching and re-evaluating before his next Presidential run. He messed up very badly and must change course. No need to get butthurt every time someone with clout (such as the great Justin Raimondo) points out the obvious reality of the situation.

But it doesn't work like that. He abandoned the consistency that, more than anything, made is father so dear to liberty minded individuals. He can never regain that consistency, his word will always be suspect.

I like Rand Paul. His filibuster won me, made me believe that he was still authentic and just playing the media's game of veneers.

Trump is a waste if perfectly reasonable outrage. I wish Ron would have run again, thats all I can say-because he actually was on the side of the little guy- Then I could at least vote. Though ill be writing his name in anyways.

I'm not voting for Trump because I have ben taught:, by life, by a philosophy I share with Dr. Paul, and my time on this very forum, not to betray my honestly held political principles. You know, be "consistent."


Edit: and I am really disappointed that so many of the people here, and in 08 and 12, seem willig to abandon the consistency, like just another plebian fad.

 

[CPUd]

But it doesn't work like that. He abandoned the consistency that, more than anything, made is father so dear to liberty minded individuals. He can never regain that consistency, his word will always be suspect.

I like Rand Paul. His filibuster won me, made me believe that he was still authentic and just playing the media's game of veneers.

Trump is a waste if perfectly reasonable outrage. I wish Ron would have run again, thats all I can say-because he actually was on the side of the little guy- Then I could at least vote. Though ill be writing his name in anyways.

I'm not voting for Trump because I have ben taught:, by life, by a philosophy I share with Dr. Paul, and my time on this very forum, not to betray my honestly held political principles. You know, be "consistent."


Edit: and I am really disappointed that so many of the people here, and in 08 and 12, seem willig to abandon the consistency, like just another plebian fad.

Rand was too trusting that people would look at his voting record over rhetoric.

 

[Origanalist]

There are thousands of posts on RPF, mainly by the same six or so people, compared to the dozens critical of Johnson. I was even away for a week last month where didn't read or post at all, and upon returning still found far more attack threads and posts on Trump than defenses. And to repeat, I have asked the denouncers about discussing the implications of the outsider trend for liberty WITHOUT Trump, but still found no takers.



No one saw the outsider trend coming, including Trump, so your point is unfounded. And I got the sound of none of the critics willing to talk about the trend when offered to leave Trump out of the issue, i.e., crickets.

So what is your point? What conclusions are you drawing from the lack of interest in discussing Trumps perceived outsider status?

 

[Origanalist]

Trump thought Iraq was a great idea and a success.

See? Thats why the neo cons hate him so much.

 

[Ender]

See? Thats why the neo cons hate him so much.

Must be. Whodda thunk?

 

[RonPaulMall]

Q: Who's the Libertarian now?
A: Nobody running for POTUS.

Castle is pretty good. If I were to rate the candidates in terms of "Libertariansim" it would be:

1. Castle

(then a huge gap down to)

2. Trump
3. Johnson

(then another huge gap)


4. Stein
5. Clinton.