Things have gotten started at the Mayflower Hotel. For the moment I’m in the Media Room and the TV screen as jumped to life…. with no audio yet. So I may hightail it to the ballroom.
In the meantime, US Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) has joined us here for a live radio show. And the host of the talk show is a bit loud and obnoxious….
RUDY GIULIANI
Rudy was the first speaker to the Summit and man, did he bat the ball out of the park! He gave one of the most articulate conservative economic messages I’ve heard in quite sometime. Heads and shoulders above anything George W. Bush has tried to say on the economy.
Rudy made it simple: “Lower taxes work. And it isn’t just my philosophy — I did it in New York but cutting taxes 23 times and $9 Billion dollars.” He then went on for about 15 more minutes with a simple, understandable economic vision to help Americans make their own choices with their own money. And, despite his critics best attempts to say he is only running on a “9/11 platform”, Rudy never once mentioned that day or the war on terror at all. He knew his audience and he stuck to a pro-growth, conservative economic message which included a declaration that under a Giuliani Administration, earmarks would come to an end.
I was very impressed and so were the 1,700 activists jammed into the Mayflower Hotel’s Grand Ballroom. Rudy got a standing ovation.
******
Senator Tom Coburn just finished at the podium and I’m back in the Blogger Room — where I’m hoping Rudy will show up shortly.
*******
Ron Paul is speaking now and getting lots of cheers from the crowd… and I’m not even in the ballroom anymore. But clearly this is a Ron Paul crowd. I “don’t get him”…. so I’m not elbowing my way back into the ballroom. And I have to go the bathroom something fierce.
-Bruce (GayPatriot)
Bruce, trusting you got back from the bathroom 🙂 (no ugly Larry Craig joke intended) – What kind of thing did Ron Paul have to say?
Count me as another one who just “doesn’t get” Ron Paul. He just strikes me as a “fringe player”, the GOP’s pet-Kucinich. Ron Paul comes across in TV like he has an aluminum hat and a book-shelf of X-Files tapes at home.
And what’s with Dennis Kucinich’s creepy NSDAP-esque campaign slogan, “Strenth through Peace“? Mein Gott…..
http://www.dennis4president.com/ **shudder**
Paul gets cheers for the same reason McCain did in 2000….the “maverick” factor.
And he has the same problem McCain did back then too….contradiction is not an intellectual argument.
Like Kucinich, could the other candidates stand to listen to him and consider what he’s saying? Yup.
Also like Kucinich, would we ever want him leading the country? Hell no.
You’re quite wrong, North Dallas Thirty. Anyone who:
1) Believes in a right to life
2) Knows the best government is a small government
3) Remembers that our government is supposed to be one of defined and limited powers
4) Understands that diplomacy and politics are like physics: for every action there is an opposite reaction
5) Feels entitled to hold onto earned money without being shaken down by gunpoint by the government
6) Realizes illegals will flock to this country for as long as we subsidize their breaking of the law
has every reason in the world to want Ron Paul leading this country. Thankfully, there are tens of thousands of us who understand the above key issues and our numbers are growing every day. I hope to see you re-awaken to what it is to be conservative and join the only candidate who is fighting to uphold the above. I can assure you that, should you really think about these issues and see the light, you will be standing shoulder to shoulder with many likeminded people in what is quickly becoming a legitimate push for a return to true conservative ideals.
So, if Ron Paul is so into small government, how is it he manages to get $millions in pork earmarked for his own district?
V the K, you aren’t paying attention. Ron Paul does pass on the requests of his district for federal money, the “earmarks”, but he doesn’t vote for them! A representative ought to let the Congress know what his constituents think, that’s part of his job! Ron Paul does not VOTE to approve the spending.
The issue is simply this, David; those all sound good, but I have enormous problems with how he’s planning to carry them out.
Paul’s problem is that he has forgotten that government is a necessary evil. The government will never outperform the private sector, but there are certain things that it is a waste of time, a distraction, and an excessive expense for the private sector to do. Those are the proper functions of government.
For instance, Ron Paul opposes any sort of national standards for education. I simply point out that, without national standards, I have one of two choices: test employees rigorously to ensure that they have the educational background I need at my expense, or take a chance on hiring the functionally-illiterate. Either way, I lose. However, this is something that virtually every other employer cares about but doesn’t want to waste time doing; thus, it is a logical task with which to charge the government.
Any good manager likely can do certain things better than their subordinates, but when one calculates the time and lost opportunity cost of doing it themselves versus having an average job done on it by their subordinates, there is a net benefit to delegating it.
In the same way, government is to be our servant and our subordinate; it takes care of the dirty jobs we don’t want to deal with so we can spend our time on bigger and better things.
North Dallas Thirty, that is a rational argument and I can go away from this feeling good even if we disagree. You have a basis for your beliefs that is built upon actually thinking about issues and their ramifications, and I respect that a great deal.
However, I think your argument is crucially flawed. Educational standards are important, but federal control is hardly necessary for a good end product. In fact, most employers tend to agree that entry level candidates are actually of worse quality now than they were in years and decades past. One of the single most common complaints issued by those who do the interviewing and hiring of young workers is the appalling lack of written communication and critical analysis. Those are core abilities crucial to a wide range of careers, and our students simply are not being taught to do them.
There has also been a steady trend in the quality of education in the United States going down when measured against the rest of the world; we’ve gone from a science and math powerhouse to an also-ran. We actually have to import large numbers of technicals and professionals to fill jobs that the products of our own education system cannot competently fulfill.
As these problems have continued to worsen, government involvement in education via the federal funding stick has been used with greater and greater frequency. If you know teachers, you’ve probably heard a common complaint that the policies are focused on teaching a standard tested and not on providing the skills necessary for productive, competent members of society. This occurs because schools have become dependent upon the promise of federal monies which encourage them to be held less accountable to the locality than to the central authority.
So again, I can see why you feel as you do about the central government — neither myself nor Ron Paul would disagree that there are certain, vital functions central governments do best — but education is probably as far from a useful example as can be found. Making the states be self interested in education, or crime, or any number of other programs is to induce them to figure out effective, efficient solutions. It simply doesn’t happen when there is a federal teat from which to suckle.
As a final note, who is it that wins the vast bulk of national educational contests in a given year? That’s right, the home schooled kids…
I wish you the best, and I hope you stick to your principles of thinking about the things that matter. If you do, I honestly think there’s a decent shot that we’ll end up supporting the same candidate sooner than later.
Oh. Well that makes it perfectly OK then.
…contradiction is not an intellectual argument.
Oh, that’s rich.
No, Monty Python. 🙂
“Argument is an intellectual process. Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes.”
My number one source of skepticism about Ron Paul is quite simply this: it seems almost every time his supporters are asked a question, they spew numbered talking points / campaign speeches, more than answers. (David #9 may be a respectable exception to that; but not David #5.)
That, plus the fact that when it comes to Iraq, Paul may as well be a Surrendocrat.
#11 – Yes HH, in fact, I believe it was even a Monty Python sketch?
Americans for Prosperity…prosperity for who..With Ron Paul it’s the people…the rest belong to the Council on Foreign Realtions. They are puppets for the shadow govt. Check it Republican and Democrat running for President that belong to the CFR…. They don’t tell the people and if asked will probably deny it! The CFR wants complete amnesty and the North American Union. If you middle class in the US Ron Paul is your only hope…clues jobs going overseas, NAFTA truckers driving across the US to Canada, Amnesty..WAKE UP PEOPLE!!
THE FRIGGEN WRITING IS OFF THE WALL AND IN THE NEWSPAPER. IF YOU CARE ABOUT YOUR FAMILY RON PAUL IS YOUR ONLY HOPE!
Ron Paul does pass on the requests of his district for federal money, the “earmarks”, but he doesn’t vote for them! A representative ought to let the Congress know what his constituents think, that’s part of his job! Ron Paul does not VOTE to approve the spending.
So, he gets money put into spending bills, and then votes against them when he knows they’re going to pass anyway? So, he gets to take credit for the pork he shovels back to his district and gets to sanctimoniously posture against big government? What a hypocritical weasel!
What Ron Paul is going to do is become the Ross Perot of 2008, a nutty Texan whose third-party candidacy puts a socialist Clinton in the White House.
Sounds like you do not want to “get him” seeing as you did not seem to care to listen to him speak (not in the ballroom). By the way, Guilliani is not a true conservative (takes more than “cutting taxes” to be a conservative).