MC admired the energy and enthusiasm of the Ron Paul supporters who flooded into the Republican Party of Minnesota during the 2008 election cycle. That said, Dr. Paul is a seriously unserious man, prone to paranoia and the strangest of associations which MC can only roundly condemn. We feel, alas, him to be a latent anti-semite. But wait, as the saying goes, there's more:"Paul isn't a traditional conservative. His obsession with long-decided monetary policy and isolationism are not his only half-baked crusades. Paul's newsletters of the '80s and '90s were filled with anti-Semitic and racist rants, proving his slumming in the ugliest corners of conspiracyland today is no mistake."
As conservatives, MC isn't willing to cede the ground to this sort of nonsense. We have no litmus test for who is a conservative; by the same token, we have no reticence in calling out a cult.
Click on the title of this post to read an excellent article in Reason magazine about the Ron Paul delusion. Click on the image above to enlarge it.
"We have no litmus test"? Why not? How about some sort of set of basic principles that we would ask our candidates to generally support? How else are we to decide who is "one of us" and who is not, if we don't ask and they don't tell?
ReplyDeleteJ. Ewing
MC has no litmus test because who are we to set up such a test? We would ask the same question of anyone else who would propose such a test: who are you? Wouldn't another person or group come up with a different test? Which to use? Hence MC says: none.
ReplyDeleteBut this is not to say we can't judge others and their conservative credentials. If someone is big government, high tax, anti-defense, anti-military, spread the wealthy, nanny-state "conservative," we'd likely say "not to us."
And so on. A litmus test front ends the discussion; it excludes on the basis of one or two issues. All MC is saying is let everyone in, see where they stand and then draw your own conclusions. We think that is healthiest for the GOP but certainly respect those who disagree with us.
The problem is your continued use of the phrase "litmus test," as in "none shall pass except by me." What was proposed in Hawaii was the notion that, in an organization like the Republican Party supposedly composed of "like-minded individuals," we needed rough measure of what "like-minded" actually means. Asking people to agree with 8 of ten generally-agreed basic statements of principles is not a litmus test. If you want to make it seven, or to modify the specific words, feel free. Heck, anything that 70% of the Party agrees on goes into the Platform, regardless of how stupid it is. When you are accepting the donations of 100% of us, why SHOULD the Party be spending that to elect somebody that doesn't support what 70% of us do?
ReplyDeleteI'm not disappointed that the specific resolution was defeated, rather than modified to be more "reasonable." I AM disappointed that the underlying idea, that of supporting like-minded candidates, was so quickly not only forgotten, but completely disrespected.
J. Ewing
Latent anti-semite? I certainly don't agree with everything he does, but this is just a baseless smear. He's in the legislature. He votes "no" when democrats or RINOs want to expand the government and restrict freedom. That's good enough for me. What don't you like about that?
ReplyDelete