R.T.

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I am sorry to see that among Ron Paul’s worst enemies in all this are other libertarians—particularly the libertarian “establishment”—the LP leadership, the Crane-Cato-Koch types, the Cosmos.

You need to spend a bit less time reading LRC. I was at a Reason event in DC last night and a great deal of the people were wearing Ron Paul buttons. More of the people last night, although not wearing buttons (it wasn’t a political rally), support Paul.

My response:

I was basing that statement on my own non-scientific survey of blog posts and articles I’ve read concerning RP on various sites (although I do like LRC).

For example, the only people who seem to care about the old newsletter story anymore seem to be libertarians. Even the mainstream media, Fox, etc. never really ran very far with the story, but it still regularly appears on some of the libertarian blogs.

I agree with you that if you go to an a Reason event or even a Cato event, you’ll see lots of Ron Paul supporters. I was speaking more on the leadership of those organizations, rather than their readers or supporters. At best, the leadership of such organizations or publications have been lukewarm towards RP. And when I see people under the Cato umbrella supporting the war, the drug war, Bernanke, and government spying, it makes me want to puke. These people can’t seem to make up their minds whether they want to support libertarian ideas or reject them.

I’m doing neither. I left the LP over its support of Paul and refusal to condemn the newsletters. I’m voting for Obama if he gets the Dem nomination to hopefully bring about a change in Washington (in approach and attitude, if not in policies) and to hopefully finally kill the modern war-mongering, religious fundamentalist, big government GOP. If Hillary gets the Dem nomination, I’ll vote for divided government instead, which is likely how I’m gonna vote in the future. Bartlett may have been rude to you, but I think he’s right about interest groups being the way to go.

Mkethcher,

You say Ron Paul is the “poorest man in the Presidential race”. You sure about that?

Ron Paul’s wealth is in Real Estate. It’s not easy to track. He’s quite clever. And has a lot of CPAs and Lawyers surrounding him. Catch my drift?

My answer:

What I said was that “he’s probably the poorest man in the presidential race.” That was just a guesstimate. Below is the actual listing. Out of those currently remaining in the race, he’s still a little above Huckabee and Obama, but way below Hillary and McCain.

The list below—at the end of this post—was pulled from financial disclosure statements that the candidates filed. The following Washington Post article, which discusses the candidates’ net worth, has links to the disclosure documents filed with the FEC:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/16/AR2007051600811.html

One has to wonder how McCain and Hillary, both of whom have spent much of their careers in civil service jobs, have amassed such huge fortunes. Ron Paul’s $2.3 million is not really that out-of-line for a 72-year-old physician who has invested his money well. Indeed, most of his listed investments are gold and natural resource companies, which have done quite well the past few years.

There are a couple of property company’s listed on his financial disclosure statement, so he may have some real estate holdings that don’t appear as an exact figure in the disclosure statement. However, some of the other candidates also have items that raise questions (Edwards has a Cayman Island company for some of his investments, for example). All of the candidates have access to the same lawyers and accountants as Ron Paul does. When you compare Ron Paul’s $2.3 million to McCain’s $40 million or Hillary’s $35 million, it has to raise some eyebrows.

Given the hatred of Ron Paul by so much of the big political, media, and financial establishments, it would be very unwise for him to try to hide information from the FEC. I’m sure the same people who bankrolled the dredging up of those ancient and obscure newsletters would love to be able to attack Dr. Paul on any shady—or even questionable—financial dealings.

Since, according to disclosure statements filed with the FEC, Dr. Paul really doesn’t receive much financial support from people affiliated with the big special interest groups, it’s doubtful that he would have much to hide. It’s far more likely that the other candidates—who grovel embarassingly before every special interest group they can—have much more to hide than Dr. Paul.

Candidates ranked by estimated Net Worth

Mitt Romney R $202,000,000
John Edwards D $55,000,000
Rudy Giuliani R $52,000,000
John McCain R $40,000,000
Hillary Clinton D $35,000,000
Fred Thompson R $8,000,000
Bill Richardson D $6,600,000
Christopher Dodd D $2,400,000
Ron Paul R $2,300,000
Duncan Hunter R $1,500,000
Barack Obama D $1,300,000
Tom Tancredo R $800,000
Mike Huckabee R $700,000
Dennis Kucinich D $300,000
Mike Gravel D $250,000
Joe Biden D $93,000

http://www.dailypaul.com/node/36385

quote:

Another Ron Paul supporter proposed striking out and replacing a section that said something to the effect of: “The Republican Party of Alaska supports the aggressive world wide war on terror and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.” The replacement that PASSED read something like: “We will not support military intervention in a foreign country unless a constitutional, congressional declaration of war is made.” How HUGE is that?

And perhaps the craziest win of the day, in my opinion, was when we passed a movement to change the party platform to read that we, as Republicans, support the legalization of industrial hemp. LOL!

Lots of other awesome platform changes passed, having to do with state’s rights, educational choice, and immigration. Everything was in line with the Ron Paul platform, and pretty Libertarian sounding!

The other conventions that took place elsewhere today and earlier in the week have also reported high numbers of Ron Paul delegates to the state convention, and similar interesting successes at their local level. It really looks to me like we can go to the state convention and ENACT some extremely controversial party platform changes! It would be so great to see the neo-cons have to run independent for failing to endorse the Republican Party platform, and so great to see them squirm in terror when they realize that RON PAUL has TAKEN OVER THEIR PARTY!

“If I were asked to choose between these two churches, I could not. I would either alternate attendance between both or choose a non-denominational Christian church.”

I’m wondering if this might be the root cause of your desire to bring the LP and GP together, and why you don’t quite fit into either. Embrace Rome – Free market philosophy will then follow from your reason, even if not from your bishop.

However, the articles highlighted the relationship between libertarian, Libertarians and Republicans. This relationship is something which needs to be looked at from time to time …

Absolutely. The LP needs to disassociate itself from the Republican Party as much as possible. We will not accomplish that by openly offering support to candidates running in Republican primaries and by placing folks openly fund raising for Republican candidates on our national committee.

Yep they’ve certainly put out the welcome mat.

Eric Dondero, Ron Paul fan!

Sheesh!

Aside from conspiracy theories, if anything Ron Paul announcement helps the LP. Now they don’t have to wait around to see what he’s going to do, they can pick their nominee this spring and go forward from there with ballot access and so forth and presumably with the help of RP supporters. After all, RP’s national camapaign has been suspended and the only thing left to do is to trying and pick up delegates in state conventions. Why can’t his supporters do both?

The LP can very well exist as a party for local and statewide races. There’s nothing the Republicans can do to stop this anymore than the Democrats can stop the Greens from existing to cost them statewide races as well. As I said, the biggest impact Ron Paul’s camapaign will have is to focus the priorities of the non-majority parties like the CP and LP towards local and state races and leaving national races to the majors while at the same time allowing their activists to pick a candidate that best represents their views, like Ron Paul.

That’s the way to go.

Anyone that saw the treatment of Ron Paul by the various state parties, Fox News, and other candidates can see Republicans don’t care about us. According to the typical Republican, the only thing libertarians have right is their view on “taxes”, everything else has always been ignored. And of course, the Republicans gave a bunch of tax cuts during G.W. Bush’s terms.

“libertarian” is more important than “Libertarian”

just as some radio commentators believe “conservative” is more important than “Republican”

Fixed it for you.