Sunday, August 12, 2012

The Latest from Jesse Benton Attempts to Mainstream the Ron Paul Movement

Tamap Bay Online has a pretty decent backgrounder on what Jesse has been up to.

TBO tells us:
The RNC's announcement that Rand Paul will speak in Tampa, but with no mention of Ron Paul, hints at a deal between the Paul and Romney forces that neither side will confirm — a speaking slot for Rand Paul in return for convention peace...Paul campaign chairman Jesse Benton wouldn't discuss negotiations between the two camps or the timing of Paul's speech, but said, "We have been told that it will be a very prominent time."
As for Ron, Jesse tells TBO that, well yeah, something will have to be done:
Benton said by email that Ron Paul is not expected to speak, but that Romney representatives "are working with us (on) other ways to recognize and honor Ron at the convention."
As for Ron Paul delegates at the convention actually attempting to challenge Romney, Benton made clear THAT is not going to happen, if he has any say about it:
"Dr. Paul will not seek to be nominated from the floor," he added. 

23 comments:

  1. I'm not a fan of divorce, but if I were Ron Paul's granddaughter, I would be strongly weighing that decision.

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  2. Once again f that guy. I saw Lew post earlier that they're planning some video tribute at the RNC so they can control the message and try to co-opt Ron's supporters.

    Absolutely ridiculous and I have to believe Ron has mentally checked out from caring b/c he's letting Benton and Tate run the ship into the ground.

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  3. And the liberty movement is sold out yet again for what? So that crypto-neocon Rand Paul can maintain favour with the GOP base? Jesus, politics is hopeless...

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  4. And so Ron Paul's great presidential campaign fundraising ripoff scam rolls one.

    The great irony of this, is that libertarians like Lew Rockwell who claim to be for anarchy and yet are the biggest supporters of minarchism, are now on the outside, not even allowed at the "official" Paul event.

    I love it to be honest. The sooner the libertarian movement divorces the Pauls, the better. It has to learn to stand on its own feet, and not rely on messiah politicians to make the world a better place.

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    1. Lew Rockwell is the biggest supporter of minarchism? What a rediculous statement.

      Also, I can't hate on Ron Paul. He is the one who changed my life and led me down the path to becoming a Rothbardian. I'm not relying on him or any politician to make the world a better place, but I'm also not giving the man the finger when he has created more libertarians than any before him. I don't agree with him on everything since I'm an ancap but I still have a lot of respect and admiration for what Ron Paul has done for the libertarian movement.

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    2. There is no "fundraising ripoff scam", but I think maybe Jesse Benton has his own goals in mind. Compromisers like Gary Johnson aren't good for Libertarianism. Ron Paul is pure Libertarian. I can't say the same about his son, but that's life.

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    3. I disagree.

      RP's campaigns were NOT scams, no matter HOW much that scumbag Benton skimmed.

      The "liberty movement" has EXPLODED since the 2008 campaign started all due to RP and his campaign.

      Don't you have any knowledge of the history of the lib movement over the last few decades til 2008??

      It was PATHETIC! Five or six nerds in their mom's basement printing pamphlets. If THAT.

      The trick is, to keep this baby going without the RP focus. It's not going to be easy. In fact, it's damn near inpossible WITHOUT what you call a "messiah". Folks need SOME symbol.

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    4. Oh dear the fuhrer Prinzip raises its murderous head again.

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    5. I don't think Lew Rockwell is the biggest supporter of minarchism. There are other anarchists who i would use that label for (i mentioned their names plenty, not doing it again).
      Lew certainly is a big defender of Ron Paul, but when directly asked has always maintained that voting is pointless.
      Also, he posted the above article on his website before EPJ did, so it is obvious he doesn't like Jesse Benton any more than other people here do.

      The thing about Ron Paul is i think he is generally trustworthy, especially in what he believes, but unfortunately he has also proven that when push comes to shove, the people close to him are more important than going the distance when it matters most.
      Wouldn't be all that bad, if some of the people closest to him (Benton, Rand Paul) hadn't been political movers damaging to the RP campaign and/or the liberty movement.
      It also presents the question of how easily RP could have been manipulated by close people around him, had he in fact managed to reach the white house. Gullibility is NOT a good quality for a president to have.

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  5. You can't take away from what Ron has done for this movement, I found liberty through Ron, & despite the campaigns failures I am forever in debt to the great Dr.
    Take the campaign with a grain of salt, think of the explosion of liberty minded people he has inspired, he will be the reason that liberty has a second coming & history will regard him in a fond light.
    Ron Paul=the second revolution

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  6. It's all irrelevant at this point. Ron Paul supporters are supporting his positions, not the man. If the candidate, no matter what his name, doesn't walk the walk, "Paulists" will drop their support. Romney will be lucky to get 10% of Ron Paul supporters to vote for him, no matter what he says or does. I think Romney has realized this and that's why Ron Paul will be shut out of the convention as much as possible.

    Rand Paul is an idiot if he thinks the Republican elite won't stab him in the back the first chance they get. In the mean time, Rand is burning his bridges with his father's supporters.

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    1. I still think Rand's heart is in the right place, but I do have to concede that maybe his head is up someplace else.

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    2. Would that be his own ass, or someone else's?

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  7. In November, I'll write in "Murray Rothbard." (No I won't, I just made that up. I wouldn't touch a voting booth with a ten-foot pole.)

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  8. I am very disappointed in how the Ron Paul campaign has been run this year. 2012 is America's last chance to elect a president who would adequately deal with the upcoming economic collapse caused by decades of reckless spending, end the government's "let's police the world to promote our own interests" foreign policy, restore the civil liberties that were eliminated under Bush and Obama, and put an end to the inflationary Federal Reserve. America under Establishment rule is destined to become a totalitarian state given the Establishment's contempt for civil liberties. Ron Paul knows this, and so I thought that his campaign would have understood the importance of this election. There might not be a 2016 as we know it. The Ron Paul campaign should have taken a no-holds-barred, almost kamikaze-like, method of advertisement and campaigning in order to take the Republican Party back from the evil neoconservatives who hold contempt for civil liberties, fiscal conservatism, and non-interventionism. Ron Paul should have spent his entire campaign constantly "giving the middle finger" to the Establishment, just as Ron Paul did in his congressional farewell speech in 1984 or in his run in 2008 when he decided not to support McCain. Ron Paul will be retiring from politics anyway, so it's not like he had anything to lose by doing so.

    Unfortunately, not only has the Ron Paul campaign not taken this method, they have actively decided to "play nice" with the Establishment by rarely criticizing the presumed nominee Mitt Romney, by not being aggressive enough in their campaign advertising, by "suspending" their campaign in May, which left very delegate-rich states such as Texas and California completely in the control of Romney, and by encouraging their delegates and supporters at the RNC to "be respectful" to Romney and the rest of the Establishment. The campaign has taken a radical, last-chance effort to save America and utterly castrated it. Even worse, the Campaign has diverted libertarian resources almost fully to it, which left libertarians and others who care about the future of America without a viable, equally radical "Plan B" in case the Ron Paul campaign failed. For example, the Libertarian Party is running Gary Johnson as their presidential candidate. No offense, but Gary Johnson is nowhere near as radical as Ron Paul is. How is it that the Libertarian Party candidate is less libertarian than one of the Republican candidates? Had resources been spent in such a way that the Libertarian Party ran a radical Austrian School-affiliated presidential candidate, this would have provided Ron Paul supporters a viable alternative in case the Ron Paul campaign failed (like it will most likely do). Unfortunately libertarians are stuck with a relatively softcore libertarian. There is no Ron Paul-like option in the 2012 election; it's either vote for libertarian-lite Gary Johnson or hold your nose and vote for Romney or Obama, who are virtually indistinguishable from each other on the important issues. I plan to vote for Gary Johnson barring a miracle at the RNC, but honestly I don't know if Gary Johnson will be as effective as Ron Paul would have been.

    (continued in next post)

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  9. The entire management of the Ron Paul campaign has convinced me that there is no hope for using electoral politics as a way of promoting libertarian values. The Establishment would not allow it; they have done everything they could to stop the Ron Paul campaign from gaining traction, from having the Media ignore or misrepresent us, to all of the shenanigans used to strip away Ron Paul's delegations, and everything in between. But I think the Ron Paul campaign did the most damage to the Ron Paul movement, far more than the Establishment did. A radical, anti-Establishment movement can *never* play nice with the Establishment. Anybody person with an anti-Establishment political agenda who plays nice with the Establishment always gets burned. Rand Paul sacrificed his libertarian support by endorsing Romney, and how did Romney thank him? He wasn't even *considered* for vice president!

    This entire campaign has convinced me that electoral politics is a sham and that libertarians should not focus on electoral politics as a way to change government and society. While libertarians should continue running campaigns in order to give the statists a challenge, I now firmly believe that libertarians should work toward promoting a *voluntary* society by developing and promoting free-market alternatives to government services, and by also promoting a voluntary culture that relies on persuasion, and not legislation, to solve social problems. I am still torn between promoting a night-watchman state or anarcho-capitalism, but I am now firmly a voluntaryist and I believe that it is more important to push for a voluntary society than it is to devote all resources to libertarian politics (although it is important to devote some resources in order to always give Leviathan a challenge).

    Unfortunately, I am very pessimistic about the short term. America is doomed if Obama or Romney becomes president. My biggest fear is not an economic collapse, but having our remaining civil liberties removed and America becoming a fully-regulated totalitarian state. This is my fear.

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    1. First of all, it seems you're well on your way to becoming an anarcho-capitalist. Your awareness of political reality only needs to grow a little more to realize that any "legalized" monopoly on violence will always attract powerhungry, ambitious psychopaths, like dogs will always attract fleas, and people will attracts mosquitos. Think about it; if there is an institution that has a 'legal' way of controlling and robbing people, that allows you by virtue of being part of that institution to do untold number of things that are illegal if you as a citizen would do it, do you think the well-intended will flock to it? Or those looking for power, influence and money? If the monopoly stays, how will that ever fix the low quality, increasing prices and the sense of entitlement of monopoly-employees?

      But the poor quality of the RP campaign i think can be attributed to one or two things:
      A deliberate, undermining softball attempt by Jesse Benton, to keep open for himself in-roads into a career in establishment politics once his time with Ron Paul is finished. If the Ron Paul campaign torches bridges with establishmentarians like Romney, Jesse Benton too can kiss his future ambitions goodbye.
      Another possibility which is related to the first, is that Ron Paul is either consciously or subconsciously softballing his campaign to keep those bridges open for people in his family, including Rand and Jesse. He knows his political career is finished, but the careers of his family members aren't, and he is playing nice for their sakes.

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  10. I'll never vote again...well, unless Tom Woods runs.

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    1. Same here Chris. Thomas E. Woods is the man! He's the greatest orator the Austrian School has and is also a magnificent historian.

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  11. Judas Benton must go!!! Now!!!

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  12. I still have faith in Ron Paul and for that matter in his son Rand to advance the cause of liberty. But having said this I believe the only race going on right now is for the Benedict Arnold Award in the movement and this is between Tate and Benton. A sad state of affairs but when you work with those seeking to advance themselves in the establishment, this is what you get.

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  13. Jesse Benton is looking out for Jesse Benton. I wonder what kind of deal he got that personally benefits himself? Only time will tell. And I hope freedom-loving people are there to dog him and chastise him for his actions for many years to come.

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