Lucille
06-22-2012, 12:47 PM
Kentucky Massiecre (http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/kentucky-massiecre/)
The Bluegrass State extends Ron Paul’s revolution—again.
Democrats have seldom won this House seat, with the recent exception of conservative former Rep. Ken Lucas, and aren’t seriously contesting it this fall. “To call the Democratic candidate a gadfly is an insult to gadflies,” says David Adams, a local Tea Party activist who managed Rand Paul’s campaign during the GOP primary two years ago. Massie is a near-lock to win in November.
But libertarian money certainly did play a role in the race. Liberty for All, a super PAC started by a 21-year-old Texas college student, dropped nearly $600,000 to fund operations and television ads on Massie’s behalf. This soon crowded out the other candidates’ negative ads. Even the New York Times took notice: “With their favorite having lost the nomination for president, [Ron] Paul’s dedicated band of youthful supporters is looking down-ballot and swarming lightly guarded Republican redoubts like state party conventions in an attempt to infiltrate the top echelons of the party.” The Gray Lady quoted Massie as saying of the super PAC, “They owned the airwaves, everything from the Food Channel to Court TV.”
John Ramsey, the group’s founder, points out that he is just following his supporters’ lead. “Thomas Massie matches our values,” he says. “Our supporters saw an engineer and job creator in Northern Kentucky as a good candidate.” Ramsey says of his PAC, “We’re just trying to make the world a little freer.” Adams puts it a bit differently: “When opponents in a Republican primary are essentially reduced to complaining about the First Amendment, with 20-20 hindsight that was the point when the race was over.”
[...]
Massie is representative of a new breed of liberty-minded candidate. He is a strong fiscal conservative who emphasizes cutting government spending and reducing the national debt, but he doesn’t toe the neoconservative line on civil liberties or foreign policy. Massie told Young Americans for Liberty that he opposed the Iraq War and wants to end the conflict in Afghanistan. He is against the National Defense Authorization Act’s indefinite-detention provisions, the PATRIOT Act, and the TSA. He is for auditing the Federal Reserve.
[...]
Not all of the conservative primary challengers who have benefited from this trend are in the mold of Thomas Massie or Rand Paul. Many of these upstarts express their willingness to mix it up with the establishment by being equally eager for the country to fight more wars. But it is certainly an opening that Paul-influenced Republicans are well situated to exploit. After all, what kind of candidates are most likely to have opposed TARP or to have a record criticizing government growth even under Republicans? “Any enemy of freedom, be they Republican or Democrat, should be shaking in their boots,” says Ramsey.
More important than scooping up Ron Paul delegates to the Republican National Convention, Paulites are descending on state and local GOP gatherings to advance like-minded candidates. Local party leaders, of whom the liberty movement can claim an increasing number, may become local elected officials; they also can help swing competitive primaries. People yelling and screaming outside the convention hall seldom have as much power to effect change as those attending the boring meetings inside. It’s a tactic previously used in Republican politics by groups as disparate as the Goldwater movement and the Christian right.
Massie’s win may have particularly important long-term implications. With Ron Paul retiring from Congress after November, he needs successors, and the small band of constitutional conservatives in the House needs reinforcements. Barring a successful primary challenge against him, Massie could potentially hold his northern Kentucky House seat for as long as he wants it. And with Rand Paul possibly harboring national ambitions, it gives both men room to move up without setting back the movement.
“The liberty movement is succeeding in overthrowing the Republican establishment,” Bates says confidently. “The Karl Rove fear-and-smear types are dying out in the party.” But obituaries for the Republican establishment may be premature, given Mitt Romney’s relatively easy path to the GOP presidential nomination. And the libertarian wing of the party has experienced some setbacks this year.
[...]
The people giving Thomas Massie money care deeply about his views on the Patriot Act and formal congressional declarations of war. But many of the Kentuckians voting for Massie were more interested in how he saved money for Lewis County taxpayers by canceling a bogus contract: the county had been paying to rent land from a company that had actually sold it 20 years ago. Massie put an end to it. “Voters were looking for someone they could really trust to be for small government,” says Adams. “Not just the rhetoric, but to actually mean it.”
It’s a delicate balance. If Massie didn’t hold strict constitutionalist positions on foreign policy and civil liberties, he might not have raised the funds he needed to win. But neither would he have won if he simply ranted and raved about the Fed in his interactions with local voters. He found an intersection of politics and principle that often escapes Ron Paul Republicans and establishment types alike.
There’s a precedent for what Massie is doing: Ron Paul himself. Paul has held a House seat for 12 terms, winning election to Congress three times as a non-incumbent, by hewing to a similar strategy. He raises money from a national libertarian donor base that is attracted to him mainly because of his differences with the rest of the party. But Congressman Paul reflects local social mores rather than those of his libertarian benefactors. His office practices good constituent services, and he does the things a politician needs to do to win local elections. The result has been a successful congressional career pushing an anti-statist message, capped by two national campaigns that have given his ideas a wider audience than ever before.
None of this would be a bad thing for a new legislator like Thomas Massie to aspire to. “It’s like the first shot in a war,” Adams argues. “It may not be very loud, but look at what it starts.” Massie’s supporters hope that what started as a Randslide can continue with a “Massie-cre.” And it may show that the Paul movement is no longer just a family affair.
https://twitter.com/#!/jimantle
Antle writes for AmConMag (http://www.theamericanconservative.com/author/w-james-antle-iii/), and works for The American Spectator (whose commenters are some of the most hateful, bloodthirsty and stupid neo-Trot cultists I have ever seen, and that's really saying something.)
The Bluegrass State extends Ron Paul’s revolution—again.
Democrats have seldom won this House seat, with the recent exception of conservative former Rep. Ken Lucas, and aren’t seriously contesting it this fall. “To call the Democratic candidate a gadfly is an insult to gadflies,” says David Adams, a local Tea Party activist who managed Rand Paul’s campaign during the GOP primary two years ago. Massie is a near-lock to win in November.
But libertarian money certainly did play a role in the race. Liberty for All, a super PAC started by a 21-year-old Texas college student, dropped nearly $600,000 to fund operations and television ads on Massie’s behalf. This soon crowded out the other candidates’ negative ads. Even the New York Times took notice: “With their favorite having lost the nomination for president, [Ron] Paul’s dedicated band of youthful supporters is looking down-ballot and swarming lightly guarded Republican redoubts like state party conventions in an attempt to infiltrate the top echelons of the party.” The Gray Lady quoted Massie as saying of the super PAC, “They owned the airwaves, everything from the Food Channel to Court TV.”
John Ramsey, the group’s founder, points out that he is just following his supporters’ lead. “Thomas Massie matches our values,” he says. “Our supporters saw an engineer and job creator in Northern Kentucky as a good candidate.” Ramsey says of his PAC, “We’re just trying to make the world a little freer.” Adams puts it a bit differently: “When opponents in a Republican primary are essentially reduced to complaining about the First Amendment, with 20-20 hindsight that was the point when the race was over.”
[...]
Massie is representative of a new breed of liberty-minded candidate. He is a strong fiscal conservative who emphasizes cutting government spending and reducing the national debt, but he doesn’t toe the neoconservative line on civil liberties or foreign policy. Massie told Young Americans for Liberty that he opposed the Iraq War and wants to end the conflict in Afghanistan. He is against the National Defense Authorization Act’s indefinite-detention provisions, the PATRIOT Act, and the TSA. He is for auditing the Federal Reserve.
[...]
Not all of the conservative primary challengers who have benefited from this trend are in the mold of Thomas Massie or Rand Paul. Many of these upstarts express their willingness to mix it up with the establishment by being equally eager for the country to fight more wars. But it is certainly an opening that Paul-influenced Republicans are well situated to exploit. After all, what kind of candidates are most likely to have opposed TARP or to have a record criticizing government growth even under Republicans? “Any enemy of freedom, be they Republican or Democrat, should be shaking in their boots,” says Ramsey.
More important than scooping up Ron Paul delegates to the Republican National Convention, Paulites are descending on state and local GOP gatherings to advance like-minded candidates. Local party leaders, of whom the liberty movement can claim an increasing number, may become local elected officials; they also can help swing competitive primaries. People yelling and screaming outside the convention hall seldom have as much power to effect change as those attending the boring meetings inside. It’s a tactic previously used in Republican politics by groups as disparate as the Goldwater movement and the Christian right.
Massie’s win may have particularly important long-term implications. With Ron Paul retiring from Congress after November, he needs successors, and the small band of constitutional conservatives in the House needs reinforcements. Barring a successful primary challenge against him, Massie could potentially hold his northern Kentucky House seat for as long as he wants it. And with Rand Paul possibly harboring national ambitions, it gives both men room to move up without setting back the movement.
“The liberty movement is succeeding in overthrowing the Republican establishment,” Bates says confidently. “The Karl Rove fear-and-smear types are dying out in the party.” But obituaries for the Republican establishment may be premature, given Mitt Romney’s relatively easy path to the GOP presidential nomination. And the libertarian wing of the party has experienced some setbacks this year.
[...]
The people giving Thomas Massie money care deeply about his views on the Patriot Act and formal congressional declarations of war. But many of the Kentuckians voting for Massie were more interested in how he saved money for Lewis County taxpayers by canceling a bogus contract: the county had been paying to rent land from a company that had actually sold it 20 years ago. Massie put an end to it. “Voters were looking for someone they could really trust to be for small government,” says Adams. “Not just the rhetoric, but to actually mean it.”
It’s a delicate balance. If Massie didn’t hold strict constitutionalist positions on foreign policy and civil liberties, he might not have raised the funds he needed to win. But neither would he have won if he simply ranted and raved about the Fed in his interactions with local voters. He found an intersection of politics and principle that often escapes Ron Paul Republicans and establishment types alike.
There’s a precedent for what Massie is doing: Ron Paul himself. Paul has held a House seat for 12 terms, winning election to Congress three times as a non-incumbent, by hewing to a similar strategy. He raises money from a national libertarian donor base that is attracted to him mainly because of his differences with the rest of the party. But Congressman Paul reflects local social mores rather than those of his libertarian benefactors. His office practices good constituent services, and he does the things a politician needs to do to win local elections. The result has been a successful congressional career pushing an anti-statist message, capped by two national campaigns that have given his ideas a wider audience than ever before.
None of this would be a bad thing for a new legislator like Thomas Massie to aspire to. “It’s like the first shot in a war,” Adams argues. “It may not be very loud, but look at what it starts.” Massie’s supporters hope that what started as a Randslide can continue with a “Massie-cre.” And it may show that the Paul movement is no longer just a family affair.
https://twitter.com/#!/jimantle
Antle writes for AmConMag (http://www.theamericanconservative.com/author/w-james-antle-iii/), and works for The American Spectator (whose commenters are some of the most hateful, bloodthirsty and stupid neo-Trot cultists I have ever seen, and that's really saying something.)