Back to It

So the Ron Paul Revolution is now over. He got roughly 16% in PA and did quite well in some of the more Republican south central PA counties like Juniata, Berks, and Lancaster.

So where do we go from here?

Some people have talked about joining the already established but apparently obscure Republican Liberty Caucus. Others want to form a non-partisan group in the area just called the Liberty Caucus. Many have left the Republican party to join the Libertarians, the Constitutional party, or become independent. The goal with all is to go after the GOP leadership in some sense and to support candidates who support the ideals of freedom and limited government. Here is my problem with all three approaches:

The GOP Liberty Caucus has been around for about 20 years and hasn't made a whole lot of progress is rebuilding a national organization and certainly not one in PA. Such an organization might, in fact, being meaningless on a national level anyway. I'd rather not join a group for the sake of using the name and sending in dues. The largest scale on which such a group could operate is at the state level. The problem is that these groups tend to degenerate into rules, by-laws, and title seekers rather than real organizations to accomplish anything. The purpose then becomes the group, not its goals. I've seen this happen with Young Republicans and College Republicans and I don't want to see it repeated by destroying the enthusiasm we have.

An independent statewide GOP Liberty Caucus might have some benefit, but it shouldn't be any more than a network of volunteers. No statewide officers or any of that bureaucratic nonsense. Independent volunteers working toward a common goal.

A non-partisan liberty caucus sounds great in theory, but let's face some unfortunate realities. The non-partisan group's purpose is forwarding the ideas of limited government. The democratic party has never been for that in the last 100 years. The closest we have is the GOP which still claims to stand for it. Libertarians, Constitutional party members, and many independents are really disaffected republicans who would be supporting Robert Taft and Goldwater Republicans whenever they go the chance. If they would all just stay and bring their enthusiasm to the GOP, they could set the party back on the right course. A loose coalition of disaffected Rs, Ls, and Cs, cannot influence a primary, where their votes might count the most, and may never have influence over a general without some serious effort.

The best return on value for effort is attempting to reform the GOP from within. People who switched to vote for Ron Paul need to stay with the party. Joining a third party is tantamount to political self-mutilation. You are depriving yourself of one important vote every year: the primary. And while it is true that for now most GOP primaries are Communist ballot, there may be enough enthusiasm to start converting the part of the flock that either follows whatever the leaders say or that just need their eyes opened to how much the neo-cons have changed the party (almost 180 degrees). A little momentum could allow the recovery of local parties and from their the state and national parties. There has been success with Eich and Folmer in this regard and it can certainly be repeated in many areas of the state if enough effort is put out there.

That is, of course, not to say that an independent, non-partisan liberty caucus might not work, but ultimately this group should be working to try and wrest control of the local GOP from phony conservatives. This is what the pro-life movement has been doing in many counties for years, and they have had some success in getting their members elected. The same could be done by the libertarian republicans, perhaps even with the support of the pro-life faction since many of them tend to be limited government supporters as well (though this is changing).

The third route of joining a third party makes no sense to me in practical terms. It is absolutely wonderful to join a party that represents your ideology. Unfortunately, it is no better than simply hanging a sign on your front door to proclaim your religion. No one will care and it really deprives you of the right to vote. The other problem is that these third parties can almost never elected anyone above the township supervisor level. As a result, the people who join these parties wind up diverting their energy into internecine fights about procedural rules, titles, and personality rivalries. The major parties don't have these kinds of divides because there are plenty of spoils to go around (which is the problem in the first place). Just as Henry Kissinger said that politics in academia are vicious because the stakes are so small, the Constitutional Party, the Libertarians, and the Reform party have all had huge wasteful fights that have either split or spent all of their energy on something other than accomplishing the goal.

If this is going to happen in our lifetimes, it will be through a recover of the GOPs core values of limited government and all that it entails. Otherwise both parties will just continue on their merry way to socialism and the economic stagnation that plagues Europe and Japan right now. We see it happening in front of our eyes and we ignore it because we somehow think our nationality makes us immune to these problems while endowing us with the abilities of 19th century Americans and entitling us to the prosperity of 20th century Americans.

Those of use who worked on the Ron Paul campaign need to take from his example and stay with the party and fight to retake the organization. We cannot take are marbles and go home. We can only go home and let the people who have ruined the party and the country (starting with Eisenhower) keep the marbles.