Jack Hunter, Rare Contributor
Posted on February 13, 2014 10:12 am
Recently, Zack Beauchamp wrote at The Week “The GOP establishment is dying — but libertarian ideas could save the party.” Yahoo News’ Chris Moody wrote an article called, “Rand Paul is pitching libertarian ideas to social conservatives. And it’s working.” A story by Reason’s Steven Greenhut noted, “States Consider a More Libertarian Approach to Crime,” with a focus on Republican Texas Governor Rick Perry’s newfound tolerance of marijuana.
These are just the stories with “libertarian” in the title. And these are just the stories from the last week.
If we expand to libertarian-friendly titles over the last seven days, we learn that Glenn Beck is reading Matt Kibbe’s “libertarian manifesto” we see that Ron Paul supporters now lead the Nevada Republican Party and neoconservative Jonathan Tobin is asking at Commentary, “Is the GOP now Rand Paul’s party?”
Last month, The Atlantic’s Peter Beinart declared Rand Paul the Republican frontrunner.
It has been a pretty good week for libertarian ideas. In fact, it has been a great year for libertarianism in many ways.
It has been a horrible few years for Senator Graham and his ideas.
Staying out of Libya was the conservative Republican position. It was also the position of most Americans.
Graham called Tea Party Republicans who fought to keep the United States out of Syria last year “isolationists” (opposing any war, anywhere, for any reason is the new definition, apparently) and said a failure to intervene might mean the United States could get nuked.
Staying out of Syria was the conservative Republican position. It was also the position of most Americans.
When we learned that the National Security Agency had been spying on virtually every American’s phone, conservative leaders and groups rose up in outrage.
Graham said he was “glad” the government was spying on everyone.
Still, opposing NSA mass surveillance remained the conservative Republican position. It was also the position of most Americans.
