Ron Paul is Barry Goldwater's disciple

“I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is "needed" before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents' "interests," I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can.”

Barry Goldwater The Conscience of a Conservative

AU H2O was the bumper sticker for me when I was fourteen. It was the year Barry Goldwater took the GOP nomination from Nelson Rockefeller and the eastern establishment. It was a year that Republicans pressed the reset button. My parents were conservative, William F. Buckley conservative, but being from the Northeast they were doubtful about Goldwater. It took Ronald Reagan's half hour televised speech a few nights before the election to turn them around in spite of my urgings and the issues of the “National Review” lying on the table in the den. Ron Paul is of course my standard bearer today. His campaign is as pure as Goldwater's and it comes at another time that the GOP needs to renew its commitment to liberty.

Free market capitalism is the core value of the right. I would posit that unfettered free market capitalism is libertarian and that Adam Smith's “invisible hand” gives moral credence to individual's selfish pursuit of economic gain because the result of that independent activity by many players in a market promotes the general welfare better that if it had been directed from on high. It's a form of crowd intelligence beneficial to society. An extremely important caveat to Adam Smith's theory is that there be many players in a market system for this greater good to happen. Unfortunately Republicans have not been a trust busting force since Teddy Roosevelt and have let crony capitalist weeds overtake the garden.

Republicans resist liberty as an ideology because they think it's unelectable. Goldwater was swamped by a landslide. Ron Paul answered a question posed to him during the campaign on whether he realistically saw himself in the White House with a quiet, “not really.” This type of answer is an anathema to professional politicians who will say and do anything required to get the prize. The safe electable GOP candidate is one that answers the questions nobody asks. The Tea Party's message is of discontent with elite big government and so the party responds by nominating a Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich?

George W. Bush's administration was so poor it should condemn the Republican Party to the dog house for at least two terms to ponder their utter lack of direction. Until they understand what a danger the “W” years were for the country they have no right to demand the seat of power. In the mean time Democrats are doomed to suffer poor economic results for many years. Junior wrecked the economy so thoroughly that no amount of tinkering is going to turn it around quickly. It's a case of Republicans be careful of what you wish for because you just might get Herbert Hoover's ghost.

Goldwater's primary battle against Nelson Rockefeller was against big government and Republican's in name only. It's an unfortunate trait post FDR to creep toward the big government side of the ledger. If you define the left as pro big government then Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum are Democrats! Republican's have to learn to root out these impostors. It's only a clear commitment to Liberty as espoused by Goldwater, Reagan and now Paul, that should define a true Republican leader. With the GOP rudderless, now is the time for them to embrace Goldwater again and patiently preach liberty and avoid false gods claiming to be electable.

The current Tweedledee Tweedledum difference between the two parties guarantees a third party effort. Under those circumstances Obama wins and the GOP gets pushed aside with it's infirm, intolerant and old constituency. The concentration of money, power and influence flowing towards Washington needs a counter and if Republicans let go this opportunity to seize the representation of the people for the people, then they are as irrelevant as Newt Gingrich's protestations that he is not a lobbyist.

Audit the Fed

Ron Paul's Audit the Fed proposal is not unreasonable given it would be required before doing a massive restructuring of the banking system. My personal opinion is that the Fed be reduced to the FDIC. Its window to be open to banks who pay insurance and whose assets are one tenth of one percent of the nation's GDP. Banks with more assets, investment banking, proprietary traders and insurance will not be part of club. Hopefully, in this new world, the bigger they are the more risk premium the market will demand and get. Funding of large projects would go back to Wall Street syndicates managed by private partnerships. These partners will pay salaries as truly merited since they will go quickly out of business otherwise. Salaries at small banks will be very dull indeed as they were during most of the previous century.

Liberals - Weed your garden

David Brooks editorial in the NY Times is such a simple message that reduces Ron Paul's proposals to cut several government departments to practical suggestions rather  than ideological declarations.  Bloated government consumes resources that hinders the delivery of authority and liberty.  A Department of Energy does nothing for either side for example so that eliminating it should be an easy decision.  The Department of Education on the hand has a lot of political baggage attached to it, but if it consumes resources and does not deliver what's a liberal to do?

Give me your muddled masses

More thought on Ron Paul not really seeing himself in the White House.  I can see the higher ups in the Republican party agreeing about wanting smaller government but resisting his pacifists foreign policy.  Ron Paul will not get the GOP nomination because the Republican party does not know what it is about.  Is it Authoritarian or Libertarian? Until it chooses one or the other unequivocally its just a mass of discontents with a country club president in charge.

My belief is that there should be a two party system with one having an authoritarian and the other a libertarian perspective. Left and right are such a muddle that the electorate is confused. If the left would take the mantle of authority and justify government intervention then the right should represent liberty and push back.  The ying and yang of these two ideologies would more perfectly represent us then the current liberal versus conservative reality that is being defined for us.  I don't buy the status quo and neither does Ron Paul. But nobody else gets it, on either side.

There is a book in here.

Not really

I heard Ron Paul answer the question of whether he saw himself in the White House and my pundit brother in law jumped to say that he is not serious candidate if he can't see ultimately winning.  I beg to differ.  Serious enough to care more about what he stands for than getting elected.

Mitt Romney willfully unlearns his life lessons

Ron Paul is the only candidate that declares the emperor is naked! He wants to cut whole departments. Mitt Romney on the other hand wants to add more aircraft carriers to our naval fleet.  Who is the one willfully unknowing the known, that we are broke?   I hate seeing Mitt compromise and deny his personally conservative and money responsible upbringing with a politically blind appeasement to foreign adventure minded neocons. If he were at Bain and running a firm similar to the U. S. Government he would be attacking the budget with a meat cleaver. I can't stand the fact that he so wants to be President that he does not articulate any such thought.  He is willfully unlearning his life's lessons of prudent, modest and parsimonious behavior.

Unknowing the known - The Banks

Geoffrey Wheatcroft's January 1st opinion piece in the NYT unveils a political newspeak that I am not comfortable with. Generally it's a political discussion of truths that knock out all further investigation of a line of reasoning.  The editorial mentions Donald Rumsfeld famous line of knowns and unknowns. First there are the known knowns, then the known unknowns and thirdly the unknown unknowns. But curiously it takes an Irish author, Fintan O'Toole to illuminate the fourth of the series, the willfully unknown known.

The piece goes on to describe the Iraqi war and the Madoff ponzi scam as examples of willfully unknowing the known.  I find, with the exception of Ron Paul, that our political class on both sides of the aisle of practicing the unlearning of lessons learned. The best example that I can think of is the Pecora commission of 1933 which created the the Glass Steagall act.  The past fifty years was the gradual undoing of the act.  Today's version of Glass Steagall, Dodd Frank, will not withstand the test of time because it does not separate investment from commercial banks.  It's the known risk of giving a banker a huge bonus or the taxpayer a giant liability that is compromised out of Dodd Frank so that its an exercise in regulatory masturbation, much heat generated for no purpose.  Glass Steagall had a framework that was very clear. There was a need for bank services and insurance of those services in case of a calamitous event.  In order to play with FDIC insurance banks had to follow bank regulations and pay for the insurance. It works well as long as there are many small players where none are TBTF, so a new requirement should be that no bank can control assets more than x percent of GDP.   One tenth of one percent sounds good to me.  If you want to be free to fail then as a bank you opt out and serve as an investment bank with no safety net for the partners or customers.