Ron Paul won't win, we know it..So who will be supported by Libertarians ?
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Some say it's Mitt Romney's "turn", but I don't see how he's earned it at all. On the other hand, Ron Paul has. He's been "in the trenches", spreading the word of libertarian thinking for decades. I would love to see him nominated as the GOP candidate.
Didn't Paul get less than 2% of the delegates in the last election. Assuming he quadruples it, which would be quite a feat, he still will not win the nomination.
The problem with your analogy is that there is no Reagan waiting in the wings. Romney is just a different puppet who will be hooked up to the same strings. His advisors will recommend he stay the course on the War on Terror (Gitmo, Patriot Act, TSA screenings, etc.), continue a long slow pull out of Afghanistan, extend the Bush tax cuts of course, and probably go ahead and keep Obamacare, since it will be a political knife fight that Romney doesn't have the stomach to engage in.
If you really want to go with the 1980 election analogy, you need to have someone running against Romney who is actually DIFFERENT than Obama. Somehow who has a different vision, an articulated plan of how to get there and principles and guts to stick to it. Otherwise, it would be like going from Carter to George H.W. Bush, who would have gotten the nominee in 1980 if Reagan hadn't beaten him. Um, so what? H.W. would have pretty much stayed the course set by Carter.
You are very correct that troubled America will seek a leader with a vision. At this point Bachmann is that leader, but others have a chance to make their case as it's still very early in the process. I'm encouraged by the hate the LWM has for Bachmann and their personal and petty criticisms of her. If they had something that wasn't personal and petty, they would tell us about it, but they don't.
They criticized Reagan in the same way. Today the liberal press would paint a picture of Bachmann as a mindless conservative ideologue (what liberals now call a teabagger), possessing only superficial knowledge of international affairs, odd and unpleasant to be around, a pretender lacking the intellect needed for the job, a corrupt corporate shill, a war monger and a dangerous religious extremist promoting a religious agenda.
Nothing new here.
Reagan's Hollywood "Good Guy" image and his ability to read a script from a teleprompter served his new employers well, and enabled Reagan to quickly advance to the top of the ranks of corporate shills.
In spite of his growing mental confusion, the increasingly addled Reagan was able to retain his ability to read a teleprompter convincingly, while remembering the script for the GE public relations speech he was taught.
"On a personal basis, Rockefeller is a pretty nice guy," Nixon said. "Reagan on a personal basis, is terrible. He just isn't pleasant to be around."
He was also an ardent supporter of school prayer and anti-abortion laws. He withheld funding from international contraception programs. Over complaints by the ACLU, he officially declared 1983 to be "The Year of the Bible." And he appointed like minded Jesus freaks to his cabinet. During a 1981 Congressional hearing, Reagan's first Secretary of the Interior, James Watt, revealed the depth of his commitment to preserving America's environment for posterity:
"I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns."
when Reagan would say something phenomenally stupid during a press conference, most news outlets just let it go. Even when he was obviously lying, he never really got called on it. Reagan received the nickname "The Teflon President" thanks to this phenomenon, the name being that of a nonstick coating applied to cookware.
After Reagan made several misstatements and gaffes early in his presidency, White House aide David Gergen said in Reagan's defense, "The man has a reputation as a great communicator." However, there was something that Gergen didn't say about Reagan: without a script to read from, Reagan was often lost. Without a script, Reagan would frequently make erroneous and outlandish comments.
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