Small progress on the Fed

It is appropriate, as this Register editorial does, to take note of the fact that Ron Paul's bill to audit the Federal Reserve system, which he has introduced since the 1980s, finally got House approval this week. I have often thought that when the founders contemplated the Congress they were establishing that they hoped for a Congress full of people like Ron Paul --devoted to the Constitution and thinking first and foremost of making sure the government abides by its strictures. Instead, we have Congress with one Ron Paul and a few others with something 9of a passing knowledge of the Constitution. Ah, well.

Of course it would be nice if this were a serious preparatory step toward abolishing the Fed instead of something of a symbolic gesture fueled mostly by uncomprehending populist anger at a powerful and mysterious institution. But I'm afraid Jefferson was right when he said the natural order of things is for government to grow and liberty to retreat. We get a little pushback now and then -- this vote, a growing sense of unease with Obama and his kneejerk efforts to expand government in every sphere of life -- and sometimes a little advance for liberty. But even hanging on to the oiberty we have, I'm afraid, is the work of a lifetime.

Audit the Fed!!

Here's the Register's editorial heartily endorsing Ron Paul's bill, HR 1207, to audit the Federal Reserve System. Since the Fed was a major contributor to the recent financial meltdown and is slated to acquire even more power under Pres. Obama's -- and Ben Bernanke's -- plan for federal financial regulatory overhaul, perhaps it's not surprising that the proposal has received so much support, sometimes from unexpected quarters. I suspect they'll never have committee hearings or move the bill to the floor -- and I'm not sure whether an audit would uncover enough sexy corruption, as compared to massive power misuse -- but its very presence on the docket is a healthy sign.

Hijacking the Tea Parties

Here's a post I put up at the Register's Orange Punch blog today about the likelihood that what began as a libertarian idea was hijacked by establishment Republicans. A commenter asked why the antipathy to conservative Republicans. Well, not all, but most of them followed Bush blindly down the path to a needless war, violations of civil liberties and the biggest increase in domestic discretionary spending since LBJ. And they want us to take them seriously as advocates of limited government?

There has been a fair amount of grumping that today’s Tea Parties were originally the idea of various libertarian-oriented grassroots groups, many circling around Ron Paul’s candidacy, but that the idea was hijacked by more establishment-oriented Republican hacks as a way to try to demonstrate some kind of populist resistance to the Obama onslaught. To be sure, it is more than a little grotesque to see people like Newt Gingrich (the New Newt?), who lobbied his old buddies to get the Medicare Part D monstrosity passed, and Fox News lowlifes like Sean Hannity, who cheered Bush’s warmongering and overspending for eight years and denounced those who questioned the Holy Writ of Bushism as traitors as headliners at what are deemed to be anti-tax rallies. And it’s also the case that the rallies are being used a vehicles for anti-immigrant and anti-gay louts, people who question Obama’s citizenship and various other distasteful loonies who never questioned big spending during the Bush Ascendancy and still want to wage more wars overseas.

As a libertarian who has never been any kind of organizer, however, I have to say that insofar as this is the case, libertarians simply got out-organized. The Paulistas pioneered (well, the Deaniacs pioneered and the Paulistas took it to another level) Internet organizing, but the standard conservatives learned — and had the advantage of Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Reynolds, Pajamas Media and other institutions to push it to a level the MSM had to notice.

I still don’t think this event will be enough to revive the conservative movement or the Republican Party. It’s still too unfocused. Look for more years wandering in the wilderness. Shucks, they may not even be ready when people finally figure out how counterproductive the Obama program is.

Tom Woods Diagnoses the financial meltdown

I promised a link to my review of Thomas E. Woods' book, "Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed," and here it is. While he mentions the Community Reinvestment Act and various government mandates to give mortgages to people of marginal (at best) creditworthiness, he pins most of the responsibility on the Federal Reserve's enormous expansion of the money supply after 9/11, and argues that we could get along quite nicely -- in fact much better -- without the Fed. I'm inclined to agree. Best line, I think from the introduction by Ron Paul: To blame the financial meltdown on greed is like blaming a plane crash on gravity.

War and Inflation

Few people can get to the point in a simple and persuasive way as well as Lew Rockwell of the Mises Institute. Here's a link to a piece he did, based on a talk he delivered, on the connections, many of them that few people think about, between war and inflation. It is also a more detailed explanation of something that mystified many observers of the Ron Paul campaign: Why he kept talking about eliminating the Federal Reserve, which few people saw as related at all to his desire to get out of Iraq and have a considerably humbler, non-interventionist foreign policy, but as some sort of gold-bug crank issue.

As Lew demonstrates, however, a central bank with a monopoly over producing currency, however the keepers of the conventional wisdom may proclaim that it's role is to fight inflation, is precisely a mechanism for creating inflation. Thus governments can achieve spending power through inflation of a much greater magnitude than through taxes, because at some point people will resist taxation. That spending power has made possible the U.S.'s aggressive foreign policy -- which began, it's worth noting a few years after the Fed was created in 1913. The government couldn't finance endless wars through taxes; people would revolt. So it finances them through deficits and inflation.

Trying to rescue conservatism

Here's a link to my review in Sunday's Register of former Congressman (OK) Mickey Edwards' new book, "Reclaiming Conservatism: How a Great American Political Movement Got Lost -- and How it Can Find its Way Back." I talked with Mickey on the phone -- he's teaching at Princeton after a decade at Harvard -- and he sounded remarkably upbeat considering his thesis is that conservatism got hijacked and twisted almost into its opposite by the religious right, the neocons and the allure of power. Has especially critical things to say in the book about George W. and Newt Gingrich. He didn't support Ron Paul but was glad he ran, wished he had spent more time on foreign policy and less on monetary policy.

It will be fascinating to see whether the kind of limited-government conservatism embodied by Barry Goldwater and (to a lesser extent) Ronald Reagan will make a comeback in the U.S. Will time in the wilderness (where such conservatives will be no matter who is elected in November) lead to renewal or diminishment?

Ron Paul still in it

Even the Washington Post finally noticed that while Ron Paul wound down his campaign when it became necessary to defend his Texas congressional seat in the Republican primary (he won handilyamong those who have known him longest as a political figure) he never quite quit the presidential race. He took about 16 percent in the Pennsylvania primary (wonder how many of those votes will go to McCain in November?) and the GOP in Nevada had to postpone its delegate-naming convention last week when it turned out there were more Paul supporters than McCain supporters. I suspect he'll pull some votes in Indiana and North Carolina today; not all of those disillusioned with McCain are crossing over to vote for Hillary.

As I had speculated earlier, he expects to have around 50 delegates at the GOP convention and is angling for a speaking slot, which based on his performance among voters and the intensity of his supporters he certainly deserves. Unless McCain is as nasty as we suspect he is, of course.

DC Freedom Rally April 15

This came in as a comment to my last post on Ron Paul -- maybe there's starting to be something of a community? -- and I thought it should be seen by those who might not have clicked on the comments:

Ron Paul Suggested it! We're doing it!"FREEDOM RALLY"

Dear Ron Paul Meetup Organizers and Members:My name is Bill Stegmeier.I'm a Ron Paul Meetup organizer from South Dakota. http://republican.meetup.com/534/
I'm contacting every Ron Paul Meetup organizer about the following:You may have heard of this upcoming event, but if not, I would like to bring to your attention the Washington D.C. "Freedom Rally", featuring among other speakers, our very own Ron Paul! It's billed as the April 15th "Mass Rally in DC to Take Back America."
While not being exclusively about Ron Paul, it is most certainly about the "Ron Paul Revolution" which we all credit Dr. Paul for having "lit the fuse."I won't go into much more detail about the April 15th Freedom Rally, except to encourage you to do the following:

1. Check out the websites listed below to get a handle on what's planned.
2. Google the distinguished speakers that will share the stage with Ron Paul.
3. And then, once you are totally excited about this event, plan a Ron Paul Meetup in D.C. for April 15th! If your Meetup group is large enough, you may want to contact your local charter bus company for the trip to D.C. No one has to spend the night. Bus in, do the Rally, and bus right back home. That's what I will be doing in my motorhome with at least ten other patriots from the Midwest! (And hopefully a charter bus if needed)

For those of you in Mountain or Pacific time, forget about a bus. Charter an airliner!You all be there now, ya hear!
Yours in Ron Paul,Bill Stegmeier
http://republican.meetup/534/
Check out the following "Freedom Rally" websites:
http://www.grannywarriors.com/rally.htm
http://www.hauling.ronpaulroadshow.org/
http://www.freedomrally.info
http://www.taxday08.com
http://www.freedomrally.info/RallyBasiceagleguestlist.pdf
(Great Freedom Rally Flier)

P.S. For a Word doc. of this message, go to:
http://republican.meetup.com/534/
Click on "Files", then click on "Freedom Rally"

McCain snubs Ron Paul supporters

Here's another reason to wonder whether John McCain is all there. In a Washington Times interview, Ron Paul acknowledged that not only had the McCain campaign made no effort to make contact with the candidate who inspired the most enthusiastic grassroots support, especially among young people, essential if the Republican Party is to have a future, but McCain and the party establishment have actively snubbed him and his supporters. Apparently the drop-dead requirement to be a "good Republican" in today's party is to love war and foreign interventionism. The GOP should be put on suicide watch, but it may be too late.

Blogging the horserace

Here's a link to the Register's Horserace'08 election blog. Recent posts discuss Obama's win in Mississippi, the implications of the GOP losing Denny Hastert's seat in Illinois, a link to Justin Raimondo's confession that he may end up rooting for Obama, and some thoughts on where the Ron Paul Revolution goes from here.

Lew Rockwell hopeful but worried

Here's Lew Rockwell's latest post on the Ron Paul congressional challenge. He says he hears from people who should know that Ron is a shoo-in, but by nature he's a worrier. Here's a link to the Paul congressional campaign Web site (which gives the updated donation total at $1.037 million). You can donate or volunteer through it if you're so inclined.

Ron Paul's congressional opponent

Ron Paul is back in Texas, defending his congressional seat against a primary challenge from one Chris Peden, a local city councilman whose sterling record in public office consists of trying and failing to have English made the official language of the city (named Friendswood). In January he issued an admiring statement about how he respects Ron Paul for standing by principles even when it's politically difficult. Shortly thereafter he declared against him.

Here's a piece by Tom Woods that goes into some of the background. And here's a piece by a Houston native who says Peden is a consummate opportunist, and he's assisted by a devoted Establishment Republican lady who doesn't even live in the district.

I'm not sure what to make of all this. The word is that Ron shifted his fundraising efforts to the congressional race (he can't use the money raised for the presidential race) and raised some $800,000 in a week or so, compared to Peden's $220,000, $150,000 of which he loaned his campaign from personal funds.

Roger Simon of Pajamas Media has joined exuberantly in the smearbund, and says polls (which must be internal to the Peden campaign because nobody has actually seen them) show Paul trailing Peden 43-32. What's striking to me is that neither Peden nor Simon can come cl,ose to describing Dr. Paul's positions accurately and explaining why they disagree. They just babble on about him being a 9/11 conspiracist (he isn't) and blaming the U.S. for the terrorist attacks.

I'll try to get more up-to-date information, but does anybody else out there know more? Should we be worried?

On Ron Paul

Here's a link to the editorial the Register ran on Ron Paul recently. The Register doesn't endorse, but does write editorials when candidates come to visit. Ron hasn't made it to the Register for an editorial board yet (and who knows if he will now that the California primary is over; however there is still money he could raise with appearances in the state). He did get to the Freedom paper in Colorado Springs, however, and they did an editorial. We sometimes reprint theirs, as they do ours.

I keep promising myself I'll tabulate how Ron did on Tuesday, but haven't had time. Anybody know of a site out there that has done it? I'm sure there must be one.

Blogging the election

I had the assignment last night of blogging the Super Tuesday election for the Register's Horserace'08 blog, which you can see here if you're interested in my thoughts at the time, as well as a few morning-after ruminations. Briefly, Huckabee surprised me, and he may have sunk Romney. I don't know what the Huckster is auditioning for, but I hope he gets it and it pays well and he is never tempted to run for president again. It's not quite a done deal, but McCain is looking pretty inevitable.

It's intriguing on the Democratic side. I think I agree with Howie Kurtz at the WaPo that the TV "analysts" were too fascinated with Barack to give Hillary her due, at least until she won California (she'll only get 20 or 30 more delegates than Barack but it was still an impressive win, and made fools of Zogby and some other polling organizations. On the Republican side, because the GOP awarded 3 delegates foir each congressional district won whereas the Dems split them proportionally, McCain is slated -- subject to revision as some absentee ballot were still being counted today -- to get all but 6 of the 159 delegates chosen through CDs.).

I haven't finished tabulating Ron Paul's numbers, but although I saw some high teens and I think even a 21% in one of the caucus states, and he now has 10 delegates, I thought they were disappointing. Perhaps it's inevitable as the media focus (understandably and justifiably at this stage) on the frontrunners, but I would love to see him start scoring at least in the 'teens regularly. Even though the pundits and pollsters say the war is a secondary issue with voters now, I'd like to see him focus more intently there; it's his unique selling proposition, as the marketers used to put it, and it's frustrating to see Republicans who say they're antiwar voting for McCain the uber hawk. It will be difficult, but if he scores respectably in primaries to come there's just an outside chance that a GOP I think is destined to lose big in November will take his positions into account as it struggles to rebuild.

The Improbable Sen. McCain

Here's a link to the piece I wrote for Sunday's Register Commentary section on John McCain. Perhaps I'm fooling myself, but I somehow have the feeling that he might not be as inevitable now as I thought when I wrote it and as all the pundits seem to think. I think there's a chance Romney could realistically stay in the race after tomorrow -- not that he's any great prize. My utopian scenario might be that Ron Paul would start beating Huckabee (as he did in the Maine caucuses Saturday, pulling 19 percent to Huckabee's 6), but he was the only one besides Romney-and-surrogates who even went to Maine; the others conceded it to Romney -- neighboring state and all) and begin to approach the Romney-McCain numbers and establish his supporters as people whose views must be considered. What I'm afraid of is that with the media focusing on the two frontrunners so intently, people who might have considered voting for Paul will start thinking of it as a "wasted vote."

Hmmm. Maybe it would be better for McCain to clinch it tomorrow. Perhaps then more potential Paul supporters would actually vote for him if they considered the issue decided already.

Blogging the GOP

I covered the GOP debate or panel discussion or whatever it was in Simi Valley last night, including the Giuliani endorsement of McCain, which took place in the Spin room at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley. I live-blogged it for the Register's Horserace'08 blog, so if you want to see the impressions I had while it was going on, you can go here. (You'll have to scroll down a bit, though I would note that the entries above the debate blogging, hardly any by me, are worth reading.) But after a day I do have a few overall impressions.

Let's face it, McCain has become the frontrunner, though Romney could still take it, especially if he's willing to dip further into his childrens' inheritance (he told our editorial board on a phone interview this morning that he's authorized a "seven figure" ad buy in the Feb. 5 states, but wouldn't be more specific than that). Huckabee has proved to have little appeal beyond evangelical Christians. I'm pleased as punch that Ron Paul is one of the Final Four, and I hope and believe he will stay in it through the convention, because he's saying important things that I believe will resonate and have the potential to change the country for the better beyond this election, but so far the lightning he would need hasn't struck.

Dave Boaz at Cato has written extensively about political science studies that estimate that anywhere from about 8 to 20 percent of American voters could be described as roughly libertarian if you use a fairly inclusionary definition. He also notes that under the Bush administration many of those libertarian-inclined voters have moved toward the Democrats, and even argues that libertarian-inclined voters, especially those frustrated about the war but also about civil liberties and Bush's big-government, big-spending approach, played a key role in the Democratic takeover of Congress in 2006.

That means that quite a few such voters (some of whom don't self-identify as libertarians), are fed up with the Republican Party, so even though independents have been able to vote in some GOP primaries, like New Hampshire, Ron Paul has to appeal to residual libertarian sentiment among those willing to vote as Republicans. I can't cite the exact poll, but something like 70-plus percent of self-identified Republicans still support Bush and his policies, which is why all the candidates except Dr. Paul, while not invoking Bush as a model (to put it mildly; they don't mention his name), have been reluctant to criticize him directly.

What Ron Paul has accomplished in intensity of support and fundraising, is remarkable and gives me great hope for the future of this country. But if the percentage of the electorate likely to respond to his views is 20 percent in all parties, the odds don't favor him winning many GOP primaries. I'm not yet willing to say it's impossible, but the odds are long, especially when the dominant media of almost every stripe treat him as marginal or ignore him (that's improving, but consider how few questions he or Huckabee got now that the pundits are focusing on two frontrunners; I didn't think it was fair, but I can see the rationale).

I thought Romney would have to do something dramatic to overcome McCain's perceived status as frontrunner. I think he tried, and did well in dealing with the obvious McCain misrepresentation on a timetable for troop withdrawal -- sad to say, he's almost as bellicose as McCain. But I don't think he did enough. It's possible to overstate the importance of the debates since they're not all that widely watched, but those who pay some attention can get impressions, even from inadequate news stories. I thought I saw McCain visibly control himself to make sure his famous temper didn't spill over on national television, but he did control himself and landed a few blows of his own. I'm afraid he's looking inevitable -- though it's worth remembering that Hillary was seen as even more inevitable not so long ago.

Register rates the candidates

The Register does not endorse candidates, as is explained at some length in the introduction. But we do pay attention to candidates and hold them up against a libertarian worldview. As you might suppose, few get much of a seal of approval, except for Ron Paul. But I thought the measuring the candidates feature Sunday, to which all three of us editorial writers contributed, was pretty good, in that it offered readers a fairly good glimpse at the presidential candidates, outlined some of their most important views (which sometimes weren't all that easy to find amid all the campaign verbiage), and explained succinctly but civilly where we agreed and disagreed with them. Commen6ts welcome, on the Register site or here.

Ron Paul a closet racist?

This may take several posts as there are different aspects to the question, but the short answer is surely no. Valid questions can be raised about his judgment, his due diligence, and perhaps his strategic thinking. But there's no evidence beyond some over-the-edge slurs (in my view) in some newsletters published over five years or so (out of 30 during which Dr. Paul published newsletters). I've done some blogging on this over at the Register's "Horserace '08" blog, and I have more I want to say, probably tomorrow.

To refresh, if you haven't been following. Jamie Kirchick at the New Republic posted a piece Jan. 8 quoting old Ron Paul newsletters that had some veering-on-racist comments and at least insenstive anti-gay stuff as well. I was too busy to read the piece until yesterday. I have little doubt the quotes are genuine, though some could use more context. The question is who wrote them and how much supervision Ron exercised over material that was going out over his name and was a source of revenue at a time when he was practicing medicine, trying to make sure his five kids had a good start in life, and in the last couple of years considering a political comeback. Reason has done a good piece and Jacob Sullum has written a good column.

The short version is that after Dr. Paul's poor showing as the LP candidate in 1988, Lew Rockwell and Murray Rothbard started developing an approach to advancing liberty they dubbed "paleolibertarianism," combining anti-statism and conservative cultural values (family, religion, respect for tradition, impatience with weirdos, hippies, disturbers of the peace). It was conceived as an outreach to the restless right. It got tied to Pat Buchanan for a while, the divorce coming as Pat moved increasingly toward "economic nationalism." It's likely though not nailed down that Lew wrote much of the stuff in question, in an effort to talk the language of the target audience. It wasn't the craziest thing libertarians have done to try to reach out to other groups with which they share some values or affinities, but it didn't pan out that well.

Several people have noted that in 35 years of public life nobody has reported hearing even faintly racist remarks drop from Ron Paul's lips. My contact with Ron Paul has been sporadic over the years, but it began when he was first elected to Congress, I was living in DC, and was assigned by Conservative Digest magazine (long defunct) to do a profile of him. He strikes me as an individualist to the core, who sincerely believes, as he told Wolf Blitzer that it's impossible to be a libertarian racist, because he judges people as individuals and understands that a free society will function best when most people do so as well. As Ayn Rand put it (paraphrasing), racism is the lowest form of collectivism. And I've never heard anything faintly racist come from his mouth.

Anyway, I don't think Dr. Paul or the campaign have dealt adequately with this issue yet. It was a hit piece that tells us something ugly about how Marty Peretz views libertarians, but there was enough "there" there to warrant enough details to put the issue to rest.

Why in South Carolina?

I have to admit that I haven't heard the official explanation yet to the obvious question. Why was Ron Paul excluded from the Fox-sponsored Republican debate (OK, they called it a "forum") in New Hampshire on Sunday but included in the Fox-sponsored Republican debate in South Carolina tonight? Did they get enough complaints that they decided to change their policy? The idea that he did well enough in New Hampshire to warrant inclusion along with Thompson, who came in at 1 percent, doesn't really wash given that he got 10 percent in Iowa and only 8 percent in New Hampshire.

The only explanation that makes sense to me is that they feared he might make a breakthrough in the "Live Free or Die" state and wanted to do whatever little bit might be in their power to prevent that from happening, but they figured he wasn't going to do all that well in South Carolina anyway, and perhaps exposing his views to more South Caolinians might actually hurt him (he came in last in Frank Luntz's focus group). As it happened, Ron Paul would probably have done quite well in the somewhat more relaxed (almost chummy) environment Chris Wallace provided in New Hampshire, but I have my doubts whether that one event would have helped him all that much (the foofaraw over the exclusion might have helped him). As Ron's New Hampshire office manager told me election night, he did almost exactly what the pollsters said he would do, as did almost all the other GOP candidates.

Hope in New Hampshire

A couple of aspects of my trip to New Hampshire have given me some hope for the future. The first was spending time at the Free State Project's Liberty Forum over the weekend. The Free State Project has urged libertarian-minded individuals to move to New Hampshire to have a long-term impact on the state's already independence-minded political climate. The numbers to date -- a bit more than 500 officially registered, though there are probably a few hundred more who haven't registered-- aren't as impressive as one might like, but they're growing steadily and the level of enthusiasm and activism is almost breathtaking.

These people really think they have the key to freedom in their lifetime and they're willing to work hard for it. There were about 350 registered attendees and some 20 exhibitors, from gun rights advocates to constitutionalists to the Fully Informed Jury Association to drug law reformers. Attendance for Ron Paul's speech Sunday (go here for a longer summary) was around 700 vocally enthusiastic freedom lovers. I talked to some of Ron Paul's campaign staffers later, and they said he was just blown away by the response.

The second was my visit last night to Ron Paul's state headquarters in Concord. People manned (personned?) the 35 or so phones constantly and groups were sent out to canvass in person, even on the night before the election. There were hordes of mostly young people there, from Texas, California, North Carolina, Virginia, Illinois, Pennsylvania and elsewhere, all eager to help. The most common phrase I heard was "what can I do next?" I don't know where all that enthusiasm will go if Ron doesn't get the nomination, but it's bound to have an impact throughout the country.