Ron Paul

The response to Ron Paul's CPAC straw poll win ranged somewhere between dismay and outright panic. Let me offer a contrarian take. 

I have written in recent years about CPAC being an insular affair -- a trade show for Beltway conservative groups, but little more. The vibe I picked up at this year's CPAC was a little different -- more students, more grassroots, more friends from outside the Beltway making the trip. Matt Lewis has an astute take on this shift: 

CPAC director Lisa De Pasquale told me: "Our pre-registration numbers were 20 percent above last year's. We're expecting over 10,000 attendees and more than half of them are college students. I think it really speaks to the excitement and energy in the conservative movement right now."

One seasoned CPAC veteran, who asked not be named, bluntly told me, "I've been coming to these for years. This used to be a convention of blue hairs; now it has youthful energy." If you're a conservative -- as I am -- it was nice to see fresh young faces, who attend at a greatly reduced price. "Blue dog" Democrats are one thing, blue-haired Republicans are quite another.

It shouldn't be too surprising then, that a group outside the normal circles of conservative influence was able to out-hustle and out-organize, and win the straw poll on dramatically increased turnout. Across the board, lots of new people are getting involved in the movement (see: tea parties), creating fertile ground for a seismic shift in the results. 

While I won't necessarily be rooting for a Paul 2012 candidacy, I *like* the fact that CPAC was shaken up, for two big reasons. 

First, it shows that Ron Paul and the Campaign for Liberty are engaging constructively in the conservative movement. In 2007, the Paulites were an oppositional force trying to submarine the GOP's commitment to the war on terror, thus threatening traditional conservatives. Today, libertarians and conservatives have come together against Obama's endless expansion of the State, with Ron Paul supporters supplying creative organizing tactics and boots on the ground. 

This leads into my second reason: in terms of grassroots organization, Paul supporters are some of the best -- if not the best -- that we have. The iconography of the tea party movement is heavily libertarian (think the Gadsden Flag) and that's no coincidence. If you broke down the organizers and even those in attendance, you'd find more than your fair share of Ron Paul supporters. 

This is a categorical shift that's happened in the last year. Remember when the image of conservatives in the political arena was that of dutiful salaried workers with families and limited time to engage in the kind of direct political protest perfected by ACORN and MoveOn.org? That image has been turned on its head by the tea parties and 9/12 protests. And I think that's due in no small measure to the influence of libertarians, who've been more willing to employ bold tactics conventionally thought of as leftist (but effective). 

In terms of organizing, conservatives can learn a lot from libertarians. Online, the moneybomb concept originally pioneered during the Ron Paul campaign has started to work for more conventional Republicans like Scott Brown. 

The 2008 Ron Paul campaign can be compared to the 1988 Pat Robertson campaign in helping a movement find its way into the Republican Party and thus establishing itself as a permanent fixture in the party. Like Robertson, Paul did not come anywhere near capturing the nomination, but the influence of Christian conservatives -- and now libertarians -- endures. 

1.9 trillion is an amazing number. It is almost impossible to relate to. I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen a trillion of anything. But I am sure that it represents a ridiculously large amount of money. Since it’s so hard to wrap your mind around, lets put it in some perspective. With $1.9 trillion dollars we could:

• Have 33,000 times the net worth of Bill Gates.
• Go into McDonalds and buy 2.5 trillion hamburgers,
• Purchase 1.9 million of Jerry Jones’ new state of the art football stadiums
• Send 270,655,270 kids to public universities on a full scholarship
• Buy 20,357,130 thirty-second Super Bowl ads
• Build and purchase homes for more than 11 million families
• Give $6,000 to every person in the United States

1.9 trillion is simply an astounding sum. It is the equivalent of spending $61,000 PER SECOND for an ENTIRE YEAR! But this is exactly how much Congress has just voted to raise the debt limit by. Moreover, simply stating the figure they are raising the debt limit by risks masking the true national debt figure – $14.3 trillion, or about $40,000 for each man, woman, and child in the United States.

Congress is acting like a greedy teenager that has no shame in maxing out their credit cards. But unlike the average citizen who is brought down to earth with a “CARD DECLINED” signal, the federal government keeps on spending freely. As Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus said,

“We have gone to the restaurant. We have eaten the meal. Now the only question is whether we’ll pay the check. . . We simply must do so.”

Ok. Well this must’ve been an all you can eat buffet because the government has gorged over the past year on a Wall Street bailout, a stimulus plan, and a marked increase in the size of the federal bureaucracy. But now it’s time to back away from the trillion dollar Twinkies and go on a fiscal diet. Sadly, and despite recent protestations from Barack Obama, Congress is unlikely to make the wholesale changes necessary to stop the spiraling debt figure. As Andrew Taylor of the Associated Press writes,

“Less than a decade ago, $1.9 trillion would have been enough to finance the operations and programs of the federal government for an entire year. Now, it’s only enough to make sure Democrats can avoid another vote before Election Day.”

But $1.9 trillion should be more than a stopgap. It should be the end of a line. As Ron Paul predicted back in 2004 after Congress had just voted raise the ceiling $800 billion,

“Does anyone really believe this will be the last time, that Congress will tighten its belt if granted one last loan? What a joke! There is only one approach to dealing with an incorrigible spendthrift: cut him off.”

So we must cut them off. Come November we must vote for real change, not simply more promises to be better next year. We, the young people of America, simply can’t afford more promises. Eventually this debt limit will be ours and it will be our responsibility to pay it down. We are not the one’s incurring the debt but we will be the one’s paying for it. So let us make our voices heard. Let’s cut off the spendthrifts who over the past year have sunk us further into debt than ever before.

Not scared yet? Check out: http://www.usdebtclock.org/

Brandon Greife is the Political Director of the College Republican National Committee (hat tip Matthew Cavanaugh)

This is an ongoing fight in many states. Republicans need to figure out how to work with libertarians, rather than treating them as unwelcome outsiders. You can't ask for libertarian votes and then tell them to shut up and go away.  But on the other side of this, libertarians also need to realize that a winning coalition requires an accomodation of interests and the way to lead the coalition is by showing them how they can actually win.  Revolution! may be a lot of fun, but revolutionaries tend to get their heads cut off.  Libertarians need to play electoral democracy....and Republicans need to remember what Ronald Reagan said: "the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism". - Jon Henke

On Friday — timed just right to minimize news coverage — Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer and the state party Grievance Committee notified a number of party members, many of them holding elective office, that they were effectively purged from the party and had been removed from their offices and would be ineligible to hold any other party positions for periods ranging from two to four years.

Greetings from the Great City of Austin in the Great State of Texas in the Good Old U S of A on this, our Independence Day.  Just spent three hours under the 105 degree Texas sun (in addition to walking back and forth to the capital...about 2 miles in each direction).  Before I collapse from Heat Stroke, let me share a few observations:

Attendance: Roughly 3000.  Substantially lower than the April tea party @ the Capitol.  Then again, at the April party the temperature was 75.

Crowd: Mostly folks in their 50's and 60's.  Some families with children.  All in all, an older crowd than April.  About 30% Ron Paul types, 50% more traditional GOPer, 20% assorted other.

Signs: Generally quite clever.  Personal favorites: any of the several that referred to Waxman/Markey as "Crap and Trade."

Sleeper GOP Gubernatorial Candidate: Debra Medina.  I might be biased because I met her today (also briefly met Sen. Cornyn and Gov. Perry) AND got to talk to her a bit.  She's a down the line, SERIOUS, conservative.  Like the message, concerned about viability.  I told her I intend to re-elect the incumbent, but that if she could prove herself a viable candidate in BOTH the primary AND general, I'd consider giving her my vote.

Most Embarrassing Moment for a Speaker: Sen. John Cornyn being greeted by a loud chorus of Boos as he took the stage due to his vote on TARP.

Most Embarrassing Moment for the Ron Paul supporters: Continuing to Boo Senator Cornyn after he acknowledged their concerns and moved on to Porkulus/Crap and Trade/Obamacare where he's firmly on our side.

Best Speaker, Runner Up: Wanye Allyn Root.  The 2008 LIbertarian Party Vice Presidential Nominee gave the crowd an inspiring speech on the value of limited government with a whole lotta quotes from Goldwater and Reagan thrown in.  Gets brownie points in my book for his rousing (by libertarian standards) defense of President Bush's overspending and bailouts being several orders of magnitude less bad than President Obama's overspending and bailouts.

Best Speaker, Overall: Governor Perry.  No one else even came close.  Whatever his alleged flaws, Governor Perry has done A TON over this past decade to have left us the strongest economy in the country right now.

In many ways, the attitude of people in Texas towards Governor Perry right now reminds me of the attitude in NYC of people towards Rudy in July 2001.  The man's gotten so much right that his citizens now take these things for granted.

All in all, an Afternoon well spent!

I hope this helps.

That is all.

Cahnman out.

I have written a bunch about the role of Ron Paul supporters in the party and the impact that John McCain's military supporters may have. Yesterday, I went to the convention of the Republican Party of Virginia. The only seriously contested race was for the nomination for Attorney General. State Senator Ken Cuccinnelli, the candidate of grassroots conservatives, was the most likely winner, given who normally attends a state party convention. And indeed he won.

However, many people were shocked that he won on the first ballot over John Brownlee, former US Attorney, and Dave Foster, a Republican who sits on the Arlington County School Board. When I drove down to Richmond for the convention, I certainly did not expect that result either.

But when I got to the convention floor on Saturday, it was clear what was going on. The Virginia chapter of the Republican Liberty Caucus had endorsed Cuccinelli. They were out in force. From eyeballing, people identified with either the Republican Liberty Caucus or the Campaign for Liberty seemed to be about 10-15% of the convention. They pushed Cuccinelli over the top. I think that this marks a pattern for the future of the GOP in smaller caucuses and conventions.

During the 2008 Republican Presidential primary, Paul supporters were highly organized and were able to effectively impact events smaller events like lower-profile caucuses. They got close to taking over state parties like Missouri, Nevada, and Idaho. Many more state parties were concerned with how to manage the situation. Ultimately, however, Ron Paul supporters did what you are supposed to do in politics. They brought new people to the process and organized them.

The question remained whether these outsiders would stay organized and be integrated into the GOP in some form.

This weekend in Richmond, they did. They found legitimate reasons to support the candidate whose supporters would probably constitute a near majority of a Virginia GOP convention anyways.  Tom Tinker from the Campaign for Liberty used strong language:

I had the privielege of attending the VA Republican Convention this past weekend.  Though I am usually wary of Republicans and their so-called "conservatism", I left the convention with a new hope for the restoration of Constitutional principles in my home state of Virginia.  Bob McDonnell and Bill Bolling, the two nominees for Governor and Lieutenant Governor, are good candidates, and though wishy-washy when it comes to their conservatism, are far better than anyone the Democrats could put up.  But the candidate for Virginia Attorny General, Ken Cuccinelli, restored my hope in the GOP, and should give all Virginians a hope for bringing our state back to Constitutional roots, both state and national.  I will support him 100% these next few months, and I encourage you to do so.

A lot of people in Washington argue whether libertarians and social conservatives can be in the same party. Operationally, the activists were. And together they carried the day and shaped the GOP. Whether they represent a broader range of voters, we shall see. But the activists did execute this coalition. And RLC/CfL/Ron Paul supporters are likely to continue to hold an important swing role in party contests like this.

I find it puzzling that I consistently see the same wrongheaded argument being presented to me by my Democrat friends in their desperate efforts to excuse the excesses of the Obama administration. I'll bring up something like massive troop deployments in Afghanistan and Pakistan or inprecedented deficit spending and corporate bailouts, and their rote reply seems to be that I can't criticize Obama because of all the terrible things that Bush did. Further, because I'm a Republican then I must be complicit in whatever crimes Bush committed and therefore am disqualified from questioning or criticizing Obama.

What they seem to miss here is that if the things Bush did were wrong, then aren't the same things still equally wrong when they are done by Obama? Aren't they even more wrong when they are done by Obama on a larger scale? Bush overspent and created deficits. Obama has already doubled his spending in a few months. Bush deployed hundreds of thousands of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, where our interests are at best debatable. Obama has done the same and is talking about a deployment more than double the size of Bush's biggest commitment to the region. I defy any Obama supporter to identify a qualitative difference between the excess spending and troop deployment of the Obama administration and that of his predecessor. There is certainly a quantitative difference. Obama has dramatically spent more money and put more lives at risk for less reason. If I'm disqualified from criticizing Obama because of Bush, then why aren't Democrats disqualified from criticizing Bush because Obama has done the exact same things and worse?

Their second error is the repeated assumption that because I bear the "Republican" brand I must have supported every Republican and every act of a Republican going back to my infancy. Apparently I have to shoulder the blame for everything both Bushes did wrong and presumably for the sins of Reagan, Ford and Nixon as well. Never mind that I actively protested Nixon's administration, wrote scores of articles critical of Bush and his policies during the last 8 years, and voted Libertarian in every presidential election since 1980. Does this mean that conversely they are going to accept responsibility for the Carter's loss of the Panama Canal, the Drug War, Vietnam and Jim Crow laws? Somehow I doubt it.

Their belief that all Republicans are the same ought to be embarassing, if they had any sense of shame. Their victory in the last election gives Democrats a certain level of arrogance and a tendency to gloat which is truly unappealing and apparently makes them immune to any obligation to think with any subtlety about political issues. They just can't grasp that Republicans are a diverse group. They assume that we're all warmongering, Bible-thumping reactionaries who are apparently on the verge of becoming domestic terrorists -- at least so Obama's Department of Homeland Security seems to believe. My actual beliefs seem to matter nothing to them -- as a Republican I can't possibly be pro-choice, areligious and generally opposed to unnecessary wars. They would certainly never believe that I know thousands of other Republicans who are politically active, share those views and were critical of Bush over these and many other issues.

You would think that some simple self-examination would enlighten them. Lyndon LaRouche, the Unabomber and Louis Farrakhan are or have been active members of the Democratic party and remain largely on the poilitical left. Does that mean that all Democrats share their views? There are even large factions within the political left and the Democratic party which don't agree with each other. Most of the Democrats I know aren't outright socialists or communists, but those philosophies thrive within the progressive wing of the party. Nativism and strong anti-immigrant beliefs are common among union Democrats, but many other Democrats remain liberal on the immigration issue. If their party isn't homogenous, why do they assume that all Republicans are the same?

This idea that the sins of one administration or political faction do not excuse the abuses of another also extends to foreign policy and seems to confuse the left there as well. When dealing with the issue of Iran, they always seem to fall back on blaming the United States because we put the Shah in power. Apparently we have to excuse the sins of the current regime because of the wrongs done by the Shah. Never mind that they killed more political dissidents in their first two years in power than the Shah killed in 17 years and have done more to limit freedoms for the general population and especially for women than the Shah ever did. It's the same with Israel. Because Israel is militarily aggressive and inhumane, it excuses every action of violent excess from the terrorist groups and equally aggressive and inhumane neighbors like Syria and Iran. Somehow Arab violence doesn't count because Israelis deserve it.

What they seem not to grasp is that wrong is wrong and right is right, regardless of the political persuasion of the perpetrator and regardless of the actions of others. You can't pick and choose between murderers and madmen and say that the crimes of one are excused because of the crimes of another. You can't excuse the policies of someone you voted for and criticize someone you opposed for policies which are exactly the same. While there may be different standards of what is right and wrong, whatever standards you choose to accept have to be applied uniformly. If you don't follow that rule and instead live by a subjective double standard which applies one set of rules to those you like and another to those you dislike, then you should expect rational people to dismiss your political opinions as worthless and brand you a hypocrite.

So please, the next time I criticize Obama or your favorite terrorists or Hugo Chavez, please keep in mind that the things they do should be judged on their own flaws and merits. Everyone is responsible for their own actions and nothing done by someone else excuses or justifies them.

Republicans need libertarians more than libertarians need Republicans.  It's time for libertarians - fiscally conservative, socially tolerant people who advocate limited government and individual freedom - to start fighting back. - Jon Henke

There are all sorts of self-described libertarians out there: Ron Paul libertarians, Libertarian Party libertarians, Club for Growth libertarians, Cato libertarians, Reason libertarians, Next Right libertarians, Neal Boortz libertarians and Lew Rockwell libertarians.  There are also millions of people who don't even know they are libertarians.

During the Goldwater-Reagan years, Republicans knew they needed libertarian votes to win the White House.  After George H. W. Bush disregarded his "read my lips" pledge, libertarians felt pretty isolated until the Republican Revolution.  Once the Republican Party gained control of Congress, libertarians and the goals of the Republican Revolution were simultaneously flushed down the commode of win-at-all-costs politics.

Republican leaders were warned time and time and time and time again that they would pay a price for dismissing potential libertarian supporters. Republicans did pay a significant price in 2006, but continued on as if nothing had changed.  Immediately after it became apparent that John McCain was going to win the 2008 Republican nomination, the Libertarian Party sent a funeral wreath to the RNC.

There are a lot of senior Republicans who apparently wish for this downward spiral to continue, as they continue to bash libertarians to this very day. 

Let’s take a glimpse at the evolution of the role of technology and so-called “new media” in politics. In the early years, there were “Web” departments — for example, my colleague Patrick Ruffini served as the “webmaster” for Bush-Cheney ‘04. The new jargon for this role has become “new media,” which typically serves as an umbrella for all forms of “new” communication, such as the Internet and mobile technology. The problem lies in the fact that we are still using the adjective new, which inherently distinguishes it from other forms of traditional media (i.e. TV, radio, and so forth). Accordingly, the people who oversee new media are called “New Media Directors” and work in “New Media,” while the people who oversee traditional media are given the title of “Communications Director” and work in “Communications” or something along those lines. The bottom line is that not only is “new” media no longer new, but even more importantly, “new” media is rapidly replacing “traditional” media. If the right is going to become the side on the cutting edge, then right-of-center campaigns and organizations must ensure that the separation of traditional and new media comes to an end.

The decline of traditional media becomes clear when you look at recent polling trends. For example, a substantially increasing percentage of Americans turn to the Internet for their news. Moreover, a poll taken in 2008 indicates that nearly 70% of Americans consider traditional journalism to be “out of touch,” and as a result the plethora of respondents use the Internet as their primary source of news and information. Twice as many Americans said they “regularly learn[ed] something about the [2008] campaign from the internet” as they did in 2004. And of course, millennial voters almost universally turned to the Internet as their primary source for 2008 election news.

In addition, there were two Presidential campaigns whose profoud impacts demonstrate the importance of integrating all forms of media. It goes without saying that President Obama ran an incredible web-based campaign, raising two-thirds of its money online and peer-producing 200,000 offline events, 400,000 blog posts, and 3 million phone calls. Likewise, Ron Paul’s campaign was almost entirely organized and built around the Internet, using existing tools like Meetup.com to build an incredible yet extremely low-cost national infrastructure. What was the differentiator between these two campaigns and most of the others from the past cycle? They didn’t separate “new media” from their other operations; instead, they allowed it to serve as a sort of circulatory system that fed and empowered every other part of their organization. “New media” wasn’t a part of their campaign; it was their campaign.

The line between traditional and new media is disintegrating, and therefore, separating the two puts the right at a disadvantage. So let’s embrace this change. “New media” must become “media,” and must be embraced as the heart and soul of our campaigns and organizations.

Crossposted at NextGenGOP.

The Nation has a profile on Howard Dean that's well worth reading.

Money Graf:

A few months later the state chairs asked Dean and the other contenders for DNC chair to give $200,000 a year to each state party. Dean enthusiastically embraced and enlarged the plan en route to easily winning the DNC race and gave every state the resources to hire at least three or four organizers and access to a high-tech database of voters, which became the twin cornerstones of the fifty-state strategy. Under Dean, battlegrounds like Ohio still took priority, but every state got something. That might not sound like much, but it was practically a revolution within the Democratic Party, which tended to view the DNC as a PR agency and ATM for Congress and/or the White House. "We had a great building and no debt," Dean says, referring to the work of his predecessor, the high-flying Clintonite Terry McAuliffe. "But there was essentially no technological infrastructure and no political infrastructure of any worth." The states, by and large, had been left to fend for themselves.

As someone who was skeptical about Dean, I'm surprised how successful he's been.  That said, there are certain lessons I think we need to learn from this moving forward:

1) COMPETE EVERYWHERE - This is the most important lesson we need to internalize.  That's why I wrote my controversial blog post about San Francisco.  Woody Allen says 80% of success is showing up and he's largely right.  Where Dean dispatched organizers (sidenote: I still HATE that term; any alternatives?) to Indiana and Alaska, we should dispatch organizers to Maine and Wisconsin with the goal of electing Republicans at the state and local level while hoping to pick up the occasional House or Senate seat.

It's important to physically show up and ask people for their vote.  I have a family member who is a VERY Conservative Republican Redneck Bitter Clinger who lives in John Murtha's district.  This guy votes the straight Republican ticket EXCEPT for John Murtha.  Why does he vote for Murtha?  He votes for Murtha because every 6-8 months Murtha shows up at the bar he hangs out at and talks to him about the state of world affairs and the guy just likes Murtha personally.  If John Murtha can do this, why can't we pick off some Dems doing roughly the same thing?

In 2009, there will be a Governor's race in New Jersey.  With the economy tanking, Governor John Corzine wil eventually raise taxes.  Unfortunately for him, New Jersey has a history of tax revolts.  This gives us an opportunity, but we have to start organizing for it now.

I live in Austin, TX.  We have a House seat here I'm convinced is winnable.  I'll address this in more detail later.

2) Nuts can still do Nuts and Bolts - It wasn't just The Scream.  As anyone who remembers his 2004 Presidential campaign can attest, Dean frequently made colorful remarks.  As DNC chair, that didn't matter.  Dean's responsiblity was strictly electoral, he didn't have any role in shaping public policy.

On our side, that means reaching out to the Ron Paul crowd.  They've shown that they have a knack for online politics and they've been successful.  While I find their views on Foreign Policy masochistic, I still agree with them on more issues than not.  Why not bring them aboard in a more systematic way?

3) Apostates are OK; Grandstanding RINO's are not - While the article doesn't touch on this, another major factor in the Democrat rise was that they nominated much more conservative candidates.  Democrats were willing to tolerate a few ideological apostates in order to win; they just won't tolereate those members grandstanding against their own party.  We should take the same approach.

Thoughts/Suggestions?!?

I have spent the last week recovering from the disappointment of election day. I have spent a lot of time talking to the mid-level operatives from the McCain campaign. (the top level are on TV playing the recriminations games, in undisclosed locations, or drinking their brains out in Vegas)  There are things that we can learn from this election.

The first is that John McCain won the primary because of an often neglected part of the coalition: military voters. Redstate's Erick Erickson said the point well on the night of the Florida primary:

Tonight was not a failure of conservatism, but a triumph of military voters who have made their home in the Republican Party because we are the party of a strong national defense.

In both South Carolina and Florida, they won it for McCain. In the grand coalition of the GOP, we've talked about social conservatives and fiscal conservatives. We've all ignored the military voters, except John McCain. And he won them big. His message resonated.

This is not a sufficient grassroots for the GOP in a national race, but it was a powerful one in the primary. We as a party should feel and water this part of the coalition better than we have done in the past. We will likely get a generation of candidates who served in Iraq and/or Afghanistan who will be powered by the volunteer work of volunteers who supported McCain. In addition, I wouldn't be surprised if this developed into a meaningful faction in GOP politics in the next couple of years.

Second, the GOP is good at managing the mechanics of GOTV. However, we are not very good at managing and empowering our grassroots. The Democrats are. Open Left's Mike Lux, now on the Obama transition team, said:

I am grateful that field organizing and working with grassroots volunteers is actually in fashion again, and in so much bigger a way than it has ever been in my lifetime.

At a time that technological and volunteer energy was at an all-time high, even on the GOP side, the RNC deployed a mythically small number of field staff, opened a mythically small number of campaign offices, and generally deprioritized grassroots. We simply didn't tap into that energy effectively. Often we failed because we were inept. Often, these were the product of intentional decisions by state parties (see below) who were afraid of new people (see above). More broadly, a whole number of volunteer engagement plans failed to materialize. I still have drafts of some of them.

Third, many of our state parties are completely dysfunctional. COMPLETELY. There have been some horror stories out of state parties that should have been able to pull their own weight but simply weren't. I won't name names yet, but it is not good. There is indeed a correlation between the states that have lost elections and the state of their parties. There are two solutions to this. Either someone needs to take them over from below or, much less preferably, they need to be fixed top-down from DC with new staff, bypassing and eventually surpassing the state parties.

Fourth, history will probably show that the mistake of squashing of the libertarian grassroots out west in the form of the Ron Paul campaign could resonate for years. Fewer activists, less money, etc. Many people will try to blame McCain and/or his campaign, but I do not believe that a single state party stood up for a significant part of their grassroots. Often, the parties were so weak that they ended up being complicit in tossing out Paul-supporting libertarians because they were afraid of new people coming in and taking over. These same parties were already in desperate places because of their inability to respond to the growing strength of latino voting blocs with outreach to bring them over. These are not the responses of healthy parties.