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Maybe Next Time

Perhaps it’s because I don’t live in northern Virginia, but so far this year I haven’t had much to say about the GOP primary challenger in Virginia’s 8th District, Amit Singh, but I should say a few words on the occasion of his defeat in the primary.  Richard and Dan have had a lot more […]

Perhaps it’s because I don’t live in northern Virginia, but so far this year I haven’t had much to say about the GOP primary challenger in Virginia’s 8th District, Amit Singh, but I should say a few words on the occasion of his defeat in the primary.  Richard and Dan have had a lot more to say about his campaign.  Singh was endorsed by Ron Paul himself, and represents one of a number of House and Senate Republican primary challengers who have been inspired by Paul’s presidential run to advance a more libertarian, small-government and non-interventionist line within the GOP.  It is actually quite heartening that Singh was able to garner 44% of the GOP vote in northern Virginia running on a platform that included scaling back overseas deployments in Europe and Asia.  I’m trying to think of many other Republican House candidates advocating anything similar, and I am not coming up with a lot of names.       

From the antiwar conservative perspective, his stance on the war was hardly ideal (notable is the lack of any call for withdrawal on any timetable), but he was clearly a far better alternative than his primary opponent.  Unless one insists on being a single-issue Iraq voter, in which case Moran has been right from the start, Singh was a reasonably attractive candidate and his success would have been a healthy development inside a moribund and confused GOP.  As little time as I have for the modern GOP, it does not serve the American interest to have one overreaching unified government replaced with another that is equally unaccountable and unchecked.  A GOP with more Amit Singhs and fewer Mark Ellmores as its elected leaders would function as a better opposition party in the short term and offer a more credible alternative to what the Democratic majority will offer over the long-term.   

If Ron Paul’s influence on U.S. politics is going to become a phenomenon more enduring than one or two election cycles, the movement that grows out of his campaign will need to include a great number of people who have been wrong, sometimes stunningly wrong, on major policy issues in the past or who have had professional backgrounds that make them suspect to opponents of expansive and intrusive government.  The current Libertarian nominee for President, Bob Barr, or Rep. Walter Jones are perfect examples of those who mistakenly supported the war in Iraq and the PATRIOT Act and have now come to oppose one or both of these.  Presumably, we on the antiwar and constitutionalist right should welcome those who have come to agree with us, if we would like to have any sort of influence on the government that is not trivial.

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