Put the P in GDP

The President’s argument goes like this: since the economy has turned around and unemployment is dropping, he deserves another term.  There are only three things wrong with his line of reasoning: 1) it hasn’t, 2) it isn’t, and 3) he doesn’t.  

Last year’s economic growth rate was a dismal 1.6%, less than half of the growth forecasted by President Obama in his last budget, and much worse than the 3.2% growth reported in 2010.  Inflation was reported by the government at 2.5%, up sharply from 1.4% the year before.  And according to the data published by Shadow Government Statistics – the place to go to find unvarnished economic data - real inflation was 11.2% last year, meaning that the true GDP actually declined by 5.6%. 

And most people by now have figured out that the recent drop in the unemployment rate was a statistical “improvement” brought about by BLS adjusting the labor force baseline. Most independent analysts put the true rate of unemployment and underemployment at over 15%; and even government statistics show a lower percentage of Americans are working today than at any time in the modern era. 

So even using the most favorable numbers to the President, we had less people working, 64% more inflation, and 50% slower economic growth last year than the year before.  Where is my Jim Mora voice, “…second term…did you say, second term?  Playoffs?”  

Coming out of a recession, we would expect growth rates of 5-6%; we need 3.5% growth just to tread water – to create the number of new jobs needed to keep pace with population growth and immigration in this country.  1.6% doesn’t cut it (to say nothing of -5.6%) and blaming Bush or Reagan or Coolidge or Augustus Caesar doesn’t cut it, either.    

The problem with the President’s economic policy isn’t what some previous President did; it is that his economic agenda is based on the faulty premise that debt is productive.  GDP is basically a measure of spending, not a measure of production or productive effort, as its name might suggest.  And all spending is not equal.   

If I borrow $10,000 to dig a hole and then go borrow another $10,000 to fill it back up, I will have added $20,000 to GDP, even though nothing productive was accomplished and I am now saddled with $20,000 of debt.  If the government does it, of course, that hole will cost ten or twenty times more, but you get the concept. 

It is an article of faith to liberals like President Obama that government spending is the key to producing economic growth - I suppose it makes them feel like they are doing something.  The difference between Presidents Obama and Clinton is that President Clinton learned from the mistakes of his first term in time to salvage a chance at a second one.  President Obama has not been so nimble. 

Last year, the federal government’s deficit was nearly 9% of GDP, and yet that enormous amount of fiscal stimulus only produced a 1.7% growth rate.  As I said of the previous year’s deficit, we could have gotten a 9% GDP bounce by just giving the $1.3 trillion to a bunch of monkeys and aiming them towards the banana bin at the Pick-N-Save.  Spending 9 to get less than 2 is more than 7 worse than doing nothing.    

The President said in 2009 that we needed a $1.3 trillion deficit as a fiscal stimulus to revive the economy by 2011.  He has just delivered his 2013 budget request, which contains his fourth consecutive $1.3 trillion deficit.  Now, wait a minute; either the economy has recovered, in which case we don’t need another stimulus, or deficit spending does not work, in which case we do not need another stimulus.      

There are those in government and academia who assure us that government deficits and debt are irrelevant because we enjoy monetary sovereignty, the ability to print as much money as we want.  No, these are not Valley Girls, they are grown ups, and many of them have doctorate degrees and tenure.   

The argument of the monetarists is that until the market rejects our currency or inflation appears, we can – and should - keep running up debt.  The markets, we are told, will signal to us when we have borrowed too much – the dollar will fall, demand for Treasury debt will dry up, interest rates will rise, and so will inflation.  Sounds comforting, but then so does every other bedtime story. 

The problem with their theory is that there is no market, not in any real sense, for U.S. sovereign debt.  The Federal Reserve can print money without repercussion because the Federal Reserve can also buy as much US Treasury debt as necessary to mask said repercussion – the drop in demand for treasuries.  And it is the Federal Reserve that sets interest rates and establishes the official inflation rate – the two things that are supposed to impose “market discipline” on the system. 

The theory of monetary sovereignty is not a good argument for deficits, but it is very good argument against the Federal Reserve.  Yes, I am one of those; and yes, I know we are all wing-nuts.  Go back and read the last paragraph again and tell me we are the loopy ones.       

Speaking of spending some serious amounts of borrowed money…  Last week President Obama and his security detail came to Milwaukee to celebrate a local company bringing 100 jobs back from China.  Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker was on hand to greet the President and add a touch of schizophrenia to the occasion – apparently the key to job creation is to get government in and out of the way at the very same time. 

But while he was here, I wish someone would have asked the President if his “green” agenda would lead him to support iron mining in Wisconsin.  It will take a lot of that new Brazilian deep-water oil to lug ore all the way from Argentina to Korea to make steel which then has to be hauled back over here to make one of those locks in Milwaukee that the President came to see.  Those big ships and trains don’t run on Solyndra solar panels, you know.  Check that…nothing runs on Solyndra solar panels.   

If we drilled here, we mined here, and we made things here, all of that activity would be increasing GDP here, increasing tax revenues here, and adding jobs here – right here in America, instead of in Argentina, Brazil, Korea, China, and anywhere-else-but-here.  We need to be our own most-favored nation when it comes to trade. 

The key to fixing our economy is to put the “P” back in GDP, and the way to do that is to let our capitalists save us from our politicians.  Mr. Obama doesn’t seem to get that, but the next guy just might.   
 

 “Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment and order Tim’s new book, “BRING IT!”       

Mine It

I grew up there - Ironwood, Michigan.  When we moved into town, the neighbor kids all came around on their bikes and wondered why we were moving in when everyone else was moving out.  We didn’t understand the question; we were just little boys.  

My Dad was a pastor – he had two churches that merged into one as the population of the town dwindled.  In the beginning, the churches were filled and there were lots of dads in the pews.  And then there were less dads and then even less, finally it was mostly grandpas left and just a few dads; a few months after the dads disappeared their families left to join them.  We didn’t understand that either.  

My paper route dropped from 43 customers to 32 in less than a year.  The kid with the adjacent route lost his in consolidation, and I picked up two of his blocks just to keep a critical mass of volume in my business.  The kids who kept our routes were the ones willing to pedal farther for less.  I have three graduate degrees in business that didn’t teach me anything half as valuable.   

The houses across the street were first vacated and then torn town.  I asked my Dad why all my friends were leaving.  He said, “it’s complicated.”  So I asked one of the other dads, and he said, “the unions did it.”   I suppose if I had asked some different dad I would be President of the Steelworkers Union today instead of a libertarian Right To Work guy.  It didn’t seem complicated to me then, and it still doesn’t – unions kill jobs.       

A lot of the dads with skills hit the road when the mines shut down; a lot of those without skills hit the bottle or hit their kids, or hit the missus.  Each successive graduation emptied the town of some more of its young – off to Detroit, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, college, or Viet Nam.  Some came back to raise their families, or later to retire. The tough birds stuck it out - hard times conquered by even harder men.  And women.  I admire their perseverance and courage.   

Some of the guys found jobs at the new ski hills, making a few bucks holding chairlifts all day for rich people from the cities and kicking back brandy in the warm-up shack on break.  We locals used to hit them up for a snort and a Camel; we skied better with a package on than the snotty kids did with their new equipment and matching outfits who laughed at our accent.  I couldn’t stand those city kids’ attitude back then, still don’t.    

I think my class of ‘72 had about 240 kids in it; today there are only 218 in the whole high school.  Ironwood kids still go to schools that the mines built almost 100 years ago.  Many live in houses the mines originally built for their employees.  I went to see Dr. Gallo at the mine clinic in Newport Location.  I’ll bet that 99% of the opponents of mining don’t even know what a location is.

Ashland, Anvil. Aurora, Bonnie, Cary, Jessieville, Newport, Norrie, Pabst, Puritan, Yale, Castile, Wico, and the Resettlement – when you asked where something was, people told you the mine location, not the town or address.  “Scoop’s Bar is in Jessieville” means you head for that headshaft and start to look around – Yooper GPS.  There are men in their 90’s in Ironwood that are still “Norrie boys”.  

The neighboring town of Hurley had 102 licensed taverns and a couple dozen off-book joints in its prime and its main street is only 3 blocks long – prosperity is fun.  Today’s wild-oat-sowers have only a couple dozen to choose from, and they think they found Sin City.  In Iron County, Wisconsin, the population has declined by 80% since the mines closed.  I’d like to see Dane county manage through something actually difficult like that; that would knock some of that smug off ‘em.     

At its peak, nearly 19,000 people lived across the river in the tamer city of Ironwood; today less than 16,000 live in all of Gogebic County.  17.6% of them live below the poverty line.  The boom and bust cycle of mining has been smoothed out at bust for almost 50 years.  18 building permits were issued in 2010 - eighteen. 

Mining did not devastate the Gogebic Range; it was the cessation of mining that devastated the Gogebic Range.  If you were there, you know.  Griff was, and Ken, and Lynn, John(s), Paula, Marianne, Frank, JD, Brad, and all my MOC fans from our little mining town who love it as much as I do.  You know.

Half a century later, a proposed new mine in Iron County has met with vitriolic opposition, mostly from white-collar city liberals and largely over the irrational fears of environmental devastation.  It is indeed beautiful in Iron County; anyone who would not be concerned about protecting nature’s magnificence there would be a fool.  But it is precisely that pristine beauty that defeats the extremists’ argument. 

Because that pristine wilderness, the one that we are told will be ruined forever if mining ever returns, is located over the same deposit where 1/3 of the nation’s iron was produced for over seven decades.  255 million tons have been taken from that ground and I would drink from any stream on the range today, just like I did when I was a kid and the mines were running full bore.  We didn’t have bottled water; we had cupped hands.  We didn’t wear helmets, either; and we ate our mom's sandwiches for lunch, and said the pledge of allegiance every single day.  Still standing.     

If mining really will ruin the environment forever, it would already be ruined many times over.  The 80-mile Penokee-Gogebic range was home to 337 mines that operated during the 75 years that they mined iron like it would spoil if we left it in the ground.  Three hundred and thirty seven.        

And now a mining company wants to invest $1.5 billion of its own money to develop one mine – one - on its own land at the southwest end of the Range, creating thousands of jobs in a community which has been economically blighted for decades.  Mine-site construction alone will employ skilled laborers and machinery operators from across the state and the region; we will all learn what a real stimulus feels like.

I know a little about the mining business, although our company does not stand to gain with this particular project. I have indeed seen landscapes around the world that have been ruined forever, and I can tell you that the safest and cleanest mine on the planet is the next one. 

Blocking development of the Gogebic Taconite project will not save our planet; it will merely insure that the tons of ore left in the ground in Wisconsin will be replaced by increased production somewhere much less safe and much less clean.  Little brown people in faraway places will die – that is the victory that mine blockers can celebrate if they succeed in stopping the Iron County mine.     

Eventually, a new iron mine will open, but in some other town.  And the people in that town will prosper, probably people with Chinese names you will find hard to pronounce.  They will get the new schools, new roads, new water treatment plants, new businesses, new churches, and new hospitals that could have come to Iron County, just like they did a century ago. Someone else’s children will get braces, fashion, corrective surgery, or the chance to go to college.  It will not be our children; it will be their children.  We will be jealous of them. 

So I say let’s mine it - let those kids be our kids.  But my opinion about mining iron in Iron County is irrelevant, as is likely yours.  There are only two groups of people who should have any say in the matter: the owners of the property and its mineral rights, and the owners of adjacent properties. 

It is a local issue for a community to decide without interference from lawyers, Madison politicians, and professional obstacles.  The only thing that government can do to bring prosperity to Iron County is to get out of the way and then stay there. 

Everything is made out of something that was either grown or mined.  It all has to come out of the ground somewhere.  It would be a good thing for some of it to come out of the ground in Iron County, Wisconsin. 


“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment and order Tim’s new book, “BRING IT!”     
 

Liberty 101

It starts and ends with one question:  "who owns you?"

If you believe that you are owned by your society, that others are entitled to your person, your property, and your compliance with their beliefs, then your demand of the law is that it limits freedom in order to maximize equality.  

Conversely, if you believe that you own yourself, that you alone are entitled to your person, your property, and your compliance, then your demand of the law is that it protects your rights from those who would limit your freedom.  

This is why we do not get along anymore.  We want different things from the law, from our leaders, from our government, and from each other.  In the first case, the owned person seeks to negotiate the terms of his existence through the passage of laws which bind individuals. In the second case, the free person seeks to keep his liberty non-negotiable through the passage of laws which bind government.   

We call the owned person “socialist” and the self-owned “libertarian”; both are better adjectives than nouns.  One turns to government reflexively to solve all his problems, the other turns against government reflexively, the cause of all of our problems.  Right or left has lost all meaning; up or down, more or less, bigger or smaller – this is the choice we must make regarding government. 

We are a nation divided because the two things are mutually exclusive - liberty and government.  One cannot expand unless the other necessarily contracts; we can be free or we can be governed, but we can not be both at once.  Our government is approaching smothering mass; we must either constrain it or lose ourselves in it.         

In Wisconsin, the socialists are attempting to recall a Governor for passing a law that binds government.  In Washington D.C. an incumbent President faces an uphill re-election bid after passing a law that binds individual choice.  One race is about collective bargaining, and the other collective medicine; two referendums on coercion that will set the trajectory of our liberties for decades.     

In a nation of free people, liberty would defeat government by a crushing margin; coercion is toxic to the self-owned.  But in our nation, polls show both races too close to call - such is the sad state of liberty in 21st century America.  A century of drift away from the Liberty Principle has left the idea of true self-ownership unimaginable to most people.  We have relied on the force of government so long we need to remind ourselves how to live as free people. 

Free people do not engage in coercion; they interact with each other through voluntary exchange. Labor is exchanged for wage, risk is exchanged for profit, property is exchanged for property, compliance is exchanged for reciprocal obligation, and charity is exchanged for self-satisfaction.  Our associations are voluntary, our purchases are voluntary, and our commitments to each other are voluntary.  Our strongest bonds are those freely formed – family, faith, friends, patriotism, civic pride, shared interest, volunteerism – not those codified into law.

The social contract between free persons is based upon value, and the self-owned person values his fellow citizen too highly to take their person or property by force or fraud.  He cherishes his own liberty too much to restrict the liberty of others.  He loves his freedom too much to hate it in others. 

The free person does not take, does not coerce, does not compel by force of law; he persuades, he offers, he cooperates, he engages in reciprocal exchange that can only take place when the transaction benefits both parties. We rely on the law to record our agreements, not to impose upon us the agreements made by others. 

Mandates, prohibitions, subsidies, licenses, and preferences distort the proper workings of free markets, and free enterprise is the only kind that is sustainable.  It is hard to imagine that these fundamental principles upon which our nation was founded – self-ownership, individual liberty, free markets - could now be so misunderstood, so feared and so mistrusted.  But that is where we find ourselves.     

Freedom is hard, and we have become soft.  Living as free persons demands a measure of independence that few willingly undertake; and it demands a measure of tolerance that few of us are willing to give.      

Living free means respecting the freedom of others, and the self-owned must tolerate choices we find morally reprehensible.   We need not approve, endorse, accept, or subsidize reprehensible choices of others, we must simply tolerate them. 

This is a small price to pay, considering the alternative. The state-owned must not only tolerate the morally reprehensible, but must pay for it and be subjugated to it by the force of law.  Every mandate of government violates some citizen’s moral code.  Every penny spent is a penny taken; every prohibition is the denial of choice; every ban is a violation of the right to pursue happiness – a right once viewed as so fundamental it was simply declared without need for justification. 

And yet how do our politicians measure their legacy?  They count the number of laws they passed, the quantity of things they banned, the amount of money they spent, the size of fines they imposed, the level of subsidy they provided, the scope of mandates they imposed.  Those are not the accomplishments of statesmen; they are the meager boasts of common scoundrels. 

This year’s elections are shaping up to be a nationwide referendum on the fundamental question of ownership.  The names will differ, but the choice – liberty or government - will be same.  The important question is not the one you might ask of each candidate but the one you ask of yourself – who owns you?  

From there, the right choice is easy.        


“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment and order Tim’s new book, “BRING IT!”     

Let Lying Dogs Sleep

Do you remember Michigan Congressman Bart Stupak?  He was the rarest of rare birds, a pro-life, pro-gun Democrat who had the stones to stage a Custer’s last stand against the Pelosi/Obama health care bill in 2009.    

And for his trouble, former-Congressman Stupak got himself Custered.  He objected to language in the Patient Protection and Affordability Act – ObamaCare – that would permit abortion funding and force religious charities to fund contraceptive services in contradiction to their beliefs.           

Nancy Pelosi refused to amend the bill’s language to explicitly ban abortion funding and to protect the freedom of religious charities from government mandates.  She mocked opponents’ interpretation of the bill’s language, insisting they were hysterical demagogues too stupid to understand proper legislative phrasing.  

Then-Speaker Pelosi and President Obama assured us that the abortion truce - don’t fund it, don’t ban it, and don’t mandate it – which had held for three decades would not be affected by their health care reform bill.  Let sleeping dogs lie. Problem is, letting sleeping dogs lie only works if lying dogs sleep.  Last week, they woke up. 

If you recall, then-congressman Stupak’s rebellion was put down when President Obama personally assured him that an Executive Order would be issued which would disallow government abortion funding and mandates on religious organizations.  Mr. Stupak returned to the floor of the House from his meeting with the President to vote for the bill, reading a note explaining his flip-flop with all the conviction of a POW apologizing for war crimes while the out-of-frame guns are pointed at his head.

The President’s word of honor did not even make it to the end of Stupak’s successor’s first term; he managed to offend the Church, trample the Constitution, and sully his own character in one single act of stupidity when he broke his promise to Bart and ordered Catholic charities to buy contraceptive services for their employees. 

The most serious problem with the President ordering Catholic hospitals and clinics around is not the abortion part, or the separation of church and state part, or the freedom of religion part, although those are all very serious matters.  No, the danger to the nation arises from the lying part, the arrogance part, the petty emperor part.

It is now clear to all that the language giving the President authority to order a religious charity to act against its own beliefs was in that bill all along; the Democrat leadership lied to us the whole time they said it wasn’t.  They were not afraid of being exposed; they just didn’t care.  They stopped caring about us a long time ago.

It is clear to anyone with a hint of objectivity left in them that the Democratic Party’s liberal elites believe they are smarter than the Founding Fathers, morally superior to the Church, above the law, beyond the Constitution, better than the people they represent, and infallible in their judgments.  In fact, they are none of these things.

They believe a promise to us commoners is non-binding, a petition signature is just ink, and the rules of civil discourse and due process apply to someone else.  They think the ends justify any means when it is their ends in question, that contrary opinion is to be crushed at all costs, that those who still value freedom are the enemies of the state.  They are wrong about all of that, too. 

The Catholic Church should go on strike for a week.  Every poor person that comes to their inner-city hospitals should be sent over the offices of the Democratic Party or the unions that bankroll them. 

There you go, Debbie Wassermann-Shultz and Lena Taylor and Kathleen Falk - you fix ‘em for free this week.  Take that money you have skimmed off the top to rig your elections and use it instead to mend one of those broken persons you claim to speak for.  Shut up and pull a shift yourself instead of just telling someone else what to do. 

Let DNC or one of its ward bosses put the injured kids back together again, since they have all the answers on how to run a charitable clinic.  Or better yet, send the sick and injured over to Planned Parenthood - since they care so much about women’s health and all - and let them tend to women with fevers, or stab wounds, or festering boils.   

Let the SEIU and AFSCME spend their loot patching up the gunshot victims and rat bites for a week; and give the Catholic Church a turn riding in the stretch limos while it buys Rick Santorum ads and pays people to sign recall petitions for Tammy Baldwin. 

Let the Church fill its coffers through automatic payroll withdrawal and direct deposit while the unions have to pass the plate for cash in their hiring halls and teachers’ lounges.  Let the nuns find out how easy it is to be compassionate with someone else’s money in the self-congratulating, arms-length world of liberal do-goodery.    

For a smart guy, President Obama did a really dumb thing picking a fight with a nation of faith over freedom of religion in an election year.  And don’t kid yourself; he poked the whole nation in the eye this time – you don’t have to like religion to love freedom.  

It was dumb to try and sneak abortion funding into the health care reform bill in the first place, dumber yet to pull the pin before his re-election, and dumber still to try to con us with this absurd statement supposed to convey a change of policy on his part after the stuff hit the fan:     

    
“The change would allow religious organizations to refuse to cover contraceptive care. It would also require insurers to offer a plan that does not include contraceptive care in their contracts with nonprofit religious groups. But the insurers would be required to make contraception available free of charge to women anyway.”

What does that even mean?  Did his kids write that in separate rooms?  And is there a single human being on the planet gullible enough to read that and pretend that the President had changed his policy?  Apparently, there is one – Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who said, "We think this is a very workable solution.” 

To what?  

It is a very workable solution to problem of advancing a lying dog agenda, if that’s what she is talking about. Beyond that, the President’s word-juggling means nothing because his word means nothing – just ask Bart Stupak.  

“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment and order Tim’s new book, “BRING IT!”     

Unbeatable

Let’s cut to the chase. 

Gingrich is dropping faster than Bill Clinton’s drawers at an intern convention.  After six years hard at it, Romney has not inspired one single Mitt-bot.  Santorum is everyone’s second choice – he’s the guy that the girl in your home town settled for when the dude that gave her the tingles hopped on his Harley and disappeared out west.  And of course there is my man Ron Paul - interloper from the Peace and Freedom Party, fighting the hate since ’88.  

It would behoove the GOP’s final four to quit field-gutting each other, because the only way that President Obama wins re-election is if disgruntled libertarians, or social conservatives, or establishment republicans, or tea partiers or single-issue activists boycott the winner of the Republican primary contests. 

That five-part coalition of the willing is the unbeatable team; so the answer to Obama is to give each anti-Obama faction the chance to vote for someone who shares their values - on the same ticket.  Which ever faction’s favorite son wins should pick a running mate that the losing factions absolutely adore. 

And my suggestion for that unbeatable ticket is President Ron Paul and Vice President Allen West.  Stop laughing.   

Think about it.  What voter anywhere to the right of Hugo Chavez can't find a good reason to punch the Paul/West chad all the way through with gusto?  To all my conservative friends who say they like Ron Paul on most things but can’t bring themselves to vote for him because of this or that, I say ok, don't vote for him then - vote for his Vice President instead. 

What’s your problem with Ron Paul – that he’s supposedly racist?  Hello, Allen West.  Anti-Israel?  Shalom, Allen West.  Soft on Defense?  Make that Col. West, pal.  Too old?  Allen West, youngster.  Meandering answers? Allen-get-the-hell-out-West.  Appeaser?  Allen-obliterate-them-West.  Too Muslim-tolerant?  Allen-pee-on-‘em-twice-West.  You get the picture.

And to all my libertarian friends who are still breathing into a bag at the thought of Col. West standing next to our icon, I say that I, too, could list a dozen policy disagreements with the conservative Rep. West.  But if conservative Vice President Allen West is what it takes to elect libertarian President Ron Paul, then the Colonel overcomes my lesser objections by the score of 1-12.  As an MOC reader comment recently reminded us – politics isn’t religion, and compromise is not a mortal sin.   

Every poll shows that independents and Democrats will come over to Ron Paul in numbers that no other Republican can match.  Young people, who will set voting patterns for life, flock to the old geezer in droves - and they bring enthusiasm with them.  A Paul-West ticket does not simply motivate a conservative/libertarian base; it pulls voters away from key demographic blocks ceded to Obama by the professional vote-herders.

Seriously, a Paul/West pairing is a 60-40 hammering waiting to happen.  Throw in the re-election Wisconsin of Governor Scott Walker and the taking of the U.S. Senate and the Government Party may never recover.  

Let’s face it - there will be no defeat of President Obama this fall without some serious nose-holding.  This is the reality that is settling in upon all of us who understand that losing the battle for the lesser of two evils this time will mean a lot more evil than normal. 

In Barack Obama’s post-Constitutional America, the idea of a second term without the restraint of a re-election bid drops a Paul/West ticket down to a distant second place in the rankings of the unthinkable.  

What are the alternatives?  A Romney/Gingrich ticket seems less likely with each kick to the groin.  A Ron Paul/Gary Johnson pairing would thrill libertarians but alienate the much larger voting block of conservatives.  Romney/Huntsman locks up the Mormon millionaire vote, but Axlerod wasn’t going to waste a stamp on them anyway.  And Paul/Paul runs the American Chopper risk – waycool junior might upstage the original badass daddy.    

But either Paul or Romney could instantly assemble the unbeatable coalition by adding a rock-star running mate from the losing faction to the ticket.  If the mere thought of Paul/West triggers your vertigo, think about Romney selecting Rand Paul and you will achieve a similar, if far less entertaining, result.  The only purpose of choosing a running mate is to win, and winning back rivals' supporters alienated in this primary fight is the most important decision the GOP nominee will make.  

Conservatives and libertarians agree on the most fundamental of binary political choices – government or liberty – and we need each other to defeat the Government Party, and I mean both its Democrat and Republican franchises.   

The only reason we know what an unlikely pairing Ron Paul and Allen West would be is that they are quite likely the two most honest, straight-talking, principled politicians in the nation.  That alone is the margin of victory when 1/3 of the voters self-identify as independents.  An independent voter is a Republican or Democrat who got tired of playing sucker; honesty is a pretty big deal with us.   

And just imagine the sound bites generated by these two; they would dominate the news every single day of the campaign, neutralizing the President’s single most important advantage – a cheerleading mainstream media.  And the schooling of both incumbents in the fall debates would be simply awesome.  Biden: “I’ve been to Iraq 6 times and…”  West interrupts, “shoot any of ‘em, Joe?  No? Wuss.”   Chris Matthews would pass out and Wolf Blitzer would hurl.  Television worth watching. 

Well, that’s my Dream Team – got a better one?  That’s what the comment section is for, so let’s hear it.


“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment and order Tim’s new book, “BRING IT!”