Disappointed over Rand Paul's Romney endorsement? Gary Johnson has a liberty agenda as well

File photo

U.S. Sen Rand Paul (R-Ky.and former Gov. Gary Johnson of New Mexico running as the Libertarian candidate for president.

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By Andrew W. Griffin

Red Dirt Report, editor

Posted: June 12, 2012

Reddirtreporter@gmail.com

OKLAHOMA CITY – With all of the infighting, hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth among the Ron Paul wing of the Republican Party (anti-war conservatives, libertarians, etc.) following U.S. Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-Ky.) endorsement of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney for president.

Sure, Ron Paul admitted that he does not have enough delegates to win the nomination in Tampa, but that having 500 delegates there “puts us in a tremendous position to grow our movement and shape the future of the GOP!”

Brian Doherty of Reason.com (author of Ron Paul’s Revolution: The Man and the Movement He Inspired) wrote yesterday that “Rand Paul is of course playing a delicate game of trying to build on his father’s libertarian base out to the more standard red-state right-wing-talk-radio mainstream edge of the Republican Party.”

Continues Doherty: “(I)t remains to be seen how large a percentage of the over 2 million people who voted for Paul this primary season are the kind of hardcore who will be alienated permanently from Rand by this endorsement.”

There are a lot of great things about Rand Paul. He adheres to the Constitution. We see he is joining Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden’s push to allow “farmers to grow industrial hemp” (certainly a step in the right direction and I know our Founding Fathers would nod in approval). He takes some pretty bold positions in the Senate from time to time. That is needed in Washington.

But Rand Paul would not endorse his own father? When Ron Paul is still running his campaign? It doesn’t make any sense. As you may recall, Red Dirt Report did get to ask Congressman Paul one question during his visit to Oklahoma City in February. We asked if he had “struck a deal” with the Romney campaign in an effort to form an alliance. Paul immediately bristled at our question and responded: “No. Never.” We believed him but were struck by his defensive reaction. Perhaps at that point something really was in the works.

But maybe it was the question itself. Perhaps, thinking about his son’s political future, that we should have asked, “Is your son trying to find a place in mainstream Republicanism in order to appeal to a broader swath of the American voting public?” Of course we didn’t think of that one at the time.

Story continues reddirtreport.com