Our friends at GOProud get the nature of Ron Paul’s appeal. In his critique of the president’s State of the Union address, Christopher R. Barron, Co-Founder and Chief Strategist for the group offered a nice synopsis of what kind of leader libertarian Republicans want:

The American people – gay and straight – deserve a President who will encourage free enterprise to grow the American economy and create jobs. We need a President who understands that government doesn’t have all the answers – indeed often government is the problem. We need a President who will defend individual liberty and keep Americans safe, at home and abroad. In short, we need a new President.

Nice to see the leader of a gay group commend free enterprise and the ideal which allows it to flourish — individual liberty. And to make clear that we need replace a failed incumbent.

If the eventual Republican nominee succeeds in making clear the libertarian nature of Reaganite conservatism — and runs on that platform, he could do as well among young voters as the Gipper did in the 1980s.  Bear in mind that twenty somethings today as in the Reagan era seem to have a thing for septuagenarians who talk about freedom.

Ron Paul may be a flawed messenger, but his message resonates.  College students, Glenn reports, are becoming more libertarian.  They may calls themselves “liberal”, but that may be because it’s just “cool” to be liberal in college.  They tend to support a live-and-let-live attitude that defines the Reagan wing of the GOP.

It behooves the GOP to make clear to young voters (indeed to all voters) that is the party of individual party — and to support policies to that end.  And to remind people that Democrats favor policies which limit the choices individuals can make.

Caught this last night on their home page:

UPDATE: It’s not just AOL; NYT quotes “retired Cuban leader” Castro.  What is it with liberal journalists who quote this tyrant as if he is some wise old man?  (Could he be his views of the GOP correspond with their own?)

. . . why didn’t he submit legislation to the 111th Congress when the Democrats had a majority in the House and a super-duper majority in the Senate (filibuster-proof for six months)?

And why aren’t our friends in the legacy media asking him about this oversight?

Question came to mind as I was reading Rush’s response to Obama using Warren Buffet’s secretary as a prop:  ”There’s something inherently unfair about the Republican tax code, as though Warren Buffett’s secretary is eating pork and beans while sitting in the sewer grate, while her boss is flying around on his NetJets planes. And, lo and behold, she was up there!”  Read the whole thing.

Republican tax code?  Democrats had full power for two full years and didn’t try to reform it.  So, shouldn’t we be calling it a Democratic tax code?

FROM THE COMMENTS: chad writes:

Republicans need to do a better job explaining double-taxation with dividends and capital gains. The way it is now, people hear about how so-and-so made all this money and only paid 15% while some much poorer person paid 20% or more, never getting the explanation as to how this is an apples-to-oranges comparison so long as we have high corporate income taxes that take a huge cut of profits before they become dividends or capital gains.

Indeed.

“Can you imagine,” Hugh Hewitt asks, “if George Bush had told Karl Rove to get Howard Dean nominated and to spend millions to do so?”

The blogger cites a story in the Orlando Sentinel which would have gotten national attention had the incumbent’s much maligned predecessor done just that:

The Democrats are targeting Mitt Romney as if he were already the Republican nominee running against President Barack Obama, with campaign ads, Internet videos, daily news conferences and dozens of news releases attacking the former Massachusetts governor.

Traditional Democratic partners are jumping in, too. Both theAmerican Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees’ and Service Employees International Union’s political-action committees are running their own TV commercials in Florida this week — attacking Romney.

Gingrich and the other two Republican candidates, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and Texas U.S.Rep.Ron Paul, are being all but ignored by the DNC and its allies. Instead, they’re hammering Romney harder even than his rivals are, paying for TV and radio ads saying that Romney changes his positions on issues such as abortion; that his hard-line positions on immigration would be “devastating” to Hispanics in a state full of them; that his business record was characterized by “greed.”

Hugh contends that “Obama fears Romney so he is trying to eliminate him early“, adding that “In the old days it would be called a ‘dirty trick,’ but MSM loves the president and won’t criticize his operation.”

Via Powerline where Scott Johnson observes that Sentinel reporter Scott Powers compares this tactic to Richard Nixon’s reelection strategy in 1972, quipping that “When the shenanigans of Nixon’s crew were exposed . . . , I seem to recall that they were held out as something of a scandal“.  Scott, that’s because when Republicans do such thing, they are scandals.   When Democrats do them, well, they’re just not newsworthy.