As time goes on we learn more about the possible GOP candidates and which ones might be satisfactory to libertarians.
It appears that Marco Rubio is not going to be amongst that number if this report from CATO is correct.
|
|||||
|
We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people. Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house] Authors
Arts, Tech & CultureCivil LibertiesCommentary
EconomicsSamizdatistas |
Marco Rubio just struck outApril 22nd, 2015 |
 25 comments to Marco Rubio just struck out |
Who Are We?The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling. We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe. CategoriesArchivesFeed This PageLink Icons   |
|||
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
|||||
They are all out. There is no one to vote for, and voting against people merely delays the inevitable, and sometimes makes things worse.
Jeb Bush also just defended mass surveillance as being the best feature of the Obama Administration (and he was not attempting to damn with faint praise).
Rubio seems to be playing the security hawk crown to help offset a moderate lean on immigration policy; then again, that might be his natural take on the issue, but it will help with some conservatives.
Libertarians are more a Rand Paul province in the primary. If Rubio manages to get the nomination, he’ll need to show he’d be enough of an improvement over Hillary to get August and other disgruntled libertarians
to vote for him rather than stay home or cast a protest vote.
There aren’t any true libertarians in the running (Rand Paul comes the closest), but the real issue will be whether any of the candidates can capture the Tea Party vote. Frankly, I don’t think libertarians as a bloc matter too much. Obama won a second term (in the face of a massive shift in the character of the House) only because Mitt Romney couldn’t excite conservatives enough to bother voting for him. They stayed home in droves, and if Jeb Bush is the nominee in 2016 the same thing will happen again.
There are plenty of Republicans and soi disant conservatives who agree with Rubio on this issue. And there are lots of others who, while disagreeing, agree with him on enough other issues (and dislike Hillary enough) that they would vote for him anyway. So while I strenuously object to extending Section 215, and won’t be supporting Rubio, I don’t think this kills his chances either to win the nomination or the general election.
My comments have nothing to do with whether he or others will win in the primaries. I am only saying that Rubio has now solidly moved off the list of candidates whom I would even *consider* voting for. My guess is that I will be voting for whomever the LP puts up because I see the GOP leadership as a bunch of ultra-Statists who are differently anti-liberty from the Democrats.
I’d kind of like to see a couple of anti-candidates running, whose sole platform would be: if you can’t stand the Democrat but don’t want to vote for the Republican either, vote for the anti-Democrat – or vice versa with the Republican, vote for the anti-Republican. It’d be a way to vote against without voting for, something we don’t have now because votes for third party candidates, in all their multiplicity, just get shrugged off.
The object of the exercise would be to punish the major parties for running candidates whose main qualification is that they aren’t the other major party’s candidate.
Dale:
And that is precisely why every effort should be made to put forward a GOP candidate whose positions on important issues are contrary to, or at least sufficiently different from those of said “leadership”, while defeating their worst efforts against him (or her) – as such a candidate may actually have a chance in hell of winning, which in no way can be said of any LP candidate.
However, Rubio is not it for the reason which is the subject of this post, because mass surveillance is just such an important issue, and because I never found him an appealing candidate anyway. For now, my fingers are crossed for Walker, but we’ll see.
In the uk we could only dream of somebody like walker or rand having a shot of becoming prime minister. I think libertarians should be excited at the prospect of either of them becoming president (although I don’t like walkers support for everify)
Rubio ran on an anti-immigration and anti-amnesty platform. He did a 180 degree turn on both as soon as he got to Congress. He is untrustworthy. Period.
I agree with Alisa. Walker is probably the best shot and a remotely acceptable candidate.
Yeah, Rubio is definitely squirrely. Senator, maybe, but not President. I’d prefer Rick Perry, who has experience as a chief executive, once the blatantly political investigation of him is done. It would appear others agree with my assessment.
I see Election Day 2016 America as chaotic with no candidate or party having much appeal. The divided electorate will agree only that neither side will govern well or honestly.
Media will present a different picture and insist more of the same is the cure.
The Presidency will probably be secured by massive vote fraud where needed. The Democrats totally control the mechanism in the major cities and the GOP simply has no way to ensure honest voting or counting there.
In a given state, outside the metropolitian areas, the GOP may or may not have a majority. But it is one or two big cities that are decisive in nearly every state.
A gloomy prospect of more rot and more decline. The keenest observers will be unable to decide if syphlis or dementia better explains it.
Yes – Senator Rubio is not a big 4th Amendment man.
Indeed, of the candidates, I have only ever heard Senator Rand Paul speak strongly in favour of the 4th Amendment on both Civil Liberties and private property rights grounds (the same thing – at root).
Nor is it “just” this.
Senator Rubio denounces the present Federal government welfare subsidies – only to suggest slightly different ones of his own.
More wage subsidies – as if the Speenhamland system had not discredited these ideas centuries ago.
Even when Senator Rubio does attack the establishment man “Jeb” Bush (his actual name is John Ellis Bush – the man is almost 60 can we please stop using a teenage nickname, there is no “Jeb”).
Senator Rubio tends to ruin his own attacks.
For example he attacks Mr Bush for supporting “Common Core” (that nasty alliance of leftist “education experts” and big companies hoping to profit by pushing the propaganda of the “education experts”).
But then Senator Rubio declares that Common Core is a bad thing …….
Because the Federal government might use it as a excuse to cut off Federal funds to States and local governments who were not following “Common Core”.
That the United States Constitution gives the Feds no authority to provide money to State and local governments for education, does not seem to occur to Senator Rubio.
He seems to be in favour of (not opposed to) an unlimited Federal government – pushing endless spending on welfare and education and ….. (any “Social Justice” thing).
Although, unlike Mr Bush, a least Mr Rubio does not tell everyone “my Church explains why we should…..”
As if Pope Francis (from Argentina) was some sort of authority on economic policy.
For example, that illegal immigrants should be given lots of government benefits because……
Well no reason at all actually.
Still we shall see – it is early days in the campaign yet.
Sean Trende at RealClearPolitics put out a fairly convincing argument that libertarians and/or Tea Party types staying home and not turning out cost Romney his latest election. So while it’s tangential to Dale’s point, it does effect turnout.
That said, Rubio would not motivate me to go to the poll station rather than out to dinner.
The problem with voting for the LP candidate is that the LP is now on its tenth presidential election as the ‘not ready for Prime Time’ party.
Still better than simply not voting when your view of the choices is equivalent to that of a Spanish Civil War era voter. Commie or Nazi. Pick one.
I did vote LP last time around as a mere protest vote, as there was no candidate I could vote for without puking (holding one’s nose does not seem to prevent that). Like I said, so far the menu does seem slightly less bad, but of course we’ll all be wiser after the GOP convention or very close prior to it.
Mojo, I also think that former governors tend to be less-bad candidates, at least when it comes to Republican ones.
How can it be better than not voting? The dreadful polling places, the standing in line, the Nazi or Commie using the fact that you voted as a fig leaf for his pretense to authority- nah, stay home.
How can not voting be better than voting for someone who you actually agree with?
Thus far either Walker or Cruz would have my vote. Time will tell which one.
And it was exactly the right thing to do in that election. You think as a Big State apparatchik like Romney would been a whole lot better than the turd in there now? I certainly do not, but more to the point, Obama or someone like him would have followed on from Romney in due course regardless, just from an even more disastrous position than was established by that fuckwit Bush.
I am strongly of the view the problem in the USA is not the Democratic Party, it is the Republican Party not being worth voting for precisely because of generations of people voting for the lesser evil. Obama only became possible because people like George Bush (both of them) made him possible.
“Vote Cthulu! The GREATER Evil!”
Seriously. This isn’t some Soviet hellscape where voting is a mandatory and pointless exercise in very light slave-labor with the mild exercise in literacy that voting for the person your political master tells you to requires.
In a FREE country (or even the U.S.), the first question a candidate needs to answer is “are you worth forsaking time with my family (ANY time) so that I can stand in a line and vote for you?”
If the answer’s no, then the response of any sane individual should be “screw you, buddy, I’m going out to dinner instead.” You want my turnout? EARN my turn-out.
CATO is a Koch Brothers funded entity. No problem there. However, one of the two brothers just came out for Walker so you will see dirt on the other candidates from CATO.
No surprise. Anyway, I prefer Cruz to Rubio. He is the only one who knows what is wrong and can possibly fix the problems. The rest are managers who manage like a Bush or Romney.