The Political Inquirer

I admit, I have many problems with the other candidates. The problem that concerns me the most can be summed up in this phrase, “You can’t beat Hillary by being Hillary.” It is harsh, but also true. I dislike most of the Republicans running for office because they are, frankly, Hillary-ites or Hillary-lite, or in John McCain’s case, Hillary-clone.

The presidential race offers me few choices this election cycle. I am of a strong libertarian persuasion (not libertine, mind you), as well as one who believes that politicians should be virtuous and truthful. My ideal statesman is one who models himself after Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, or, particularly, the great Patrick Henry. Without having a model like one of these for a political office, corruption is likely to ensue. Without virtue and a strong defense of liberty, a politician is nothing. This is why I do not support any of the Democrat candidates, and I have had a hard time supporting any of the Republican candidates. The Republicans are, in “principle,” closer to my belief system, but de facto they might even be farther away than the Democrats. I will list why I dislike the major candidates in this race and why I refuse to support them.

To start, I will tell of John McCain a little. The Arizona Senator has consistently shown me that, of all the candidates, he is the closest to a socialist. McCain has fought against taxation, he is for the amnesty of millions of illegal aliens in the United States, he has fought against the First Amendment with his McCain-Feingold bill, and even espouses pro-global warming views. I have problems with all of these. (Before anyone rants at me for being a global warming skeptic, just remember that even if global warming is real, as a libertarian I believe that the market would find a proper solution.) All of this is documented in the Political Inquirer’s recent expose on John McCain.

McCain’s staunch defense of amnesty has me already in direct opposition to him, as well as his argument that government is the solution to global warming. It isn’t. Private property rights are the answer. His anti-free speech views espoused in his push for McCain-Feingold are nothing less than disturbing. Lastly, John McCain has fought tooth and nail for the Iraq war, trying his best to make sure it sure it succeeds (though I argue it cannot). There is nothing for me with John McCain. He does not believe in supporting the Constitution of the United States, but only violating it in more ways than most of the other candidates. For that, I cannot support him.

Mike Huckabee is the next John McCain. Perhaps he is no maverick, but he is a socialist and a deceiver, if there ever was one. Huckabee and McCain agree on more than they know, but Huckabee has his own problems which cause me not to support him. Most of my criticism is sourced in the Political Inquirer’s Mike Huckabee: The Facts Behind the Fraud and John Keller’s The Huckster File.

Huckabee’s relentless lying about his role in the paroled rapist scandal has proven him to be a dishonorable contestant immediately. I cannot support anyone who sees the facts as they stand, cannot deny that the man is a threat to society (hence why he is in prison), and then paroles the prisoner anyway. It is disgusting and frankly, wrong.

The Arkansas governor has used Christianity in ways probably never before seen in politics. To lie and deceive the Christian masses is a tribute to his skillful tongue (but also a sign that the Christian masses are quite naïve). This “vote for me” gimmick is something that I do not like in a candidate, and I refuse to support Huckabee for it.

Hillary Clinton is preferred to Huckabee by Arkansas residents on a 4 to 1 margin. He is pro-government, pro-socialist, pro-war, anti-freedom, pro-tax and anti-Constitution in more ways than most of us can possibly imagine. A vote for Huckabee is a vote against the Constitution and everything else just in this world. I cannot support mike Huckabee for president.

Mitt Romney is another person I have a big problem with. He is a known liar and a flip flopper. His stances on abortion, taxation, and illegal immigration have all changed at least once without any sort of proof or action over the years to show that he really means what he says. Romney is a businessman turned politician, not a statesman. The Mitt Romney Record at Mass Resistance is the largest expose of Romney faults on the Internet. The ultra-conservative Human Events has attacked Romney in the past, putting him in the number eight spot for the “Top Ten RINOs” in 2005. (RINO, of course, meaning a Republican in Name Only.)

Frankly, Mitt Romney is another flip-flopper much like the other Massachusetts scum, John Kerry. For all the documentation in the Mitt Romney Record, plus observing Romney on my own, I cannot support him for president. I will come out in saying I think he would be better than John McCain or Mike Huckabee, though, but not by much, and he definitely will not get my vote regardless of my opinion of him being a “lesser evil.”

I will not even bother going into detail on Rudy Giuliani or Fred Thompson, both have performed so poorly in the race that they have a worse shot at the Republican nomination than the one man I can support. As of this writing, Fred Thompson is expected to drop out soon, and if Rudy Giuliani wants to save face, he might as well drop out, too. However, I could not support either of these candidates anyway, for they share most of the faults of the three I did list, Thompson perhaps being the best of the five, but still anti-freedom in many respects, particularly in his support of McCain-Feingold, which he liked to call McCain-Feingold-Thompson. His support in the Senate helped it get through and eventually passed.

The one candidate that I can support, though, is Ron Paul. His consistent record over the past thirty years, contained in his writings, his speeches, and his voting record in the House of Representatives, has gone to show me that he is a man of character and integrity. For any disagreements one might have with him, there is no criticism of him being a hypocrite or violating the Constitution of these United States, a claim none of the other candidates (Republican or Democrat) can claim. I agree with his stance on nearly every issue. For this reason I give him my full fledged support on February 5 as I go to vote for him in the polls. It has largely been due to his beliefs in economics, primarily in monetary policy and the role of government in the economy, that I support him. The overblown war on terror and his foreign policy agenda I also agree with (or have come to agree with over the years, after feeling lost in the dark, knowing the neoconservatives were misleading the Republicans) are big issues that might have attracted most of Ron Paul’s support, but it is not the reason I support him.

I support Ron Paul for president, and it is my hope that all Americans will one day, too. Through education and the Internet, we have a chance at spreading the message of freedom and the Constitution through American society once again, reviving the spirit of ’76.