Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Who will rally the libertarians?

From today's Wall Street Journal Political Diary, 2/13:

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Who will rally the libertarians?

It's a sign that some Republican primary voters are dissatisfied
with the current field of presidential candidates. Economist Walter
Williams, who often substitutes for Rush Limbaugh, has found himself
the object of a committee drafting him for president. Of all things,
it's headed by a cartoon duck.

It's true. The comic strip "Mallard Fillmore," which is drawn by
Bruce Tinsley, has used several installments to urge the 70-year-old
George Mason University professor to run for president. The
outspoken Mr. Williams has been flooded with e-mails and phone calls
from enthusiastic boosters.

For his part, Mr. Williams agrees that career politicians have
disappointed conservatives. "I personally think that if we chose the
president of the United States at random, we'd get a better
president than any president since Ronald Reagan," Mr. Williams told
the Washington Times.

Mr. Williams is flattered by the attention but says he already has a
candidate: Rep. Ron Paul, a Texas congressman and former 1988
Libertarian Party presidential nominee, who recently announced he is
forming an exploratory committee for president. Mr. Williams is
under no illusion that Mr. Paul is likely to win but he says Mr.
Paul's presence in the debates would be refreshing. "If the framers
of the Constitution were somehow to come back, Ron Paul is one of
possibly only three people in Congress that they'd even talk to," he
says.

The 71-year-old Mr. Paul, a physician, has been in and out of
Congress since 1976 when he was one of only four GOP House members
to endorse Ronald Reagan's challenge of President Gerald Ford. He
has assembled an army of 15,000 individual donors across the nation
who endorse his unwavering support for the flat tax, his call for a
radical reform of the Food and Drug Administration and his hostility
to overseas military conflicts like the war in Iraq and his
disapproval of any and all federal trampling of states rights.

Michael Barone, co-author of The Almanac of American Politics, once
noted in a profile of Dr. Paul that his agenda has marked him as
an "oddball." He concluded: "Of course, in Rep. Paul's view, it's
the rest of the nation's politicians, with their devotion to an
inherently inflationary currency and self-defeating government
programs, who are the oddballs."

-- John Fund

Sunday, February 11, 2007

Ron Paul to appear in first Presidential debates in April

This is excellent news! The first Presidential debates have been announced, and Ron Paul has been invited:

CNN/WMUR/Union Leader to host first presidential debates
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- New Hampshire's two leading news organizations will partner with CNN to host two presidential debates in April, executives with the three media companies announced Friday.

CNN, WMUR and The New Hampshire Union Leader will hold the back-to-back debates on April 4 and 5, the first such events to be held of the 2008 presidential campaign. CNN's Wolf Blitzer will moderate the debates with questions coming from WMUR's Scott Spradling and Union Leader's John DiStaso. WMUR's Jennifer Vaughn will be moderating questions from the audience. The debate will be televised live nationally on CNN and throughout New Hampshire on WMUR.

--

The South Carolina GOP has announced it will be hosting a debate among the GOP Presidential candidates on May 15 in Columbia. Let's make sure Ron Paul is included in that debate as well!

--Tom