"I follow a set of principles, I follow the Constitution. And that's what I base my votes on. Limited government, economic freedom and individual liberty."
- Justin Amash
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The future of the Republican Party hangs in a precarious balance.
There are two routes; one that follows the libertarian route or the route they are on.
The way of Rand Paul, Justin Amash, and Thomas Massie, defenders of liberty and the Constitution. We can see epic 13-hour filibusters of unconstitutional drone strikes, showing to the job you are supposed to do, and railing against the debt while also going through with being against the debt. To be restrained in foreign adventures and not spy on every American. The Republican Party will return to its founding principles; individual liberty, free-market capitalism, and following the Constitution.
Or they can go through the route they are on. Continue to massively expand the debt. To pay lip service to the Constitution (which in reality is just the Second Amendment) and continue to violate it by spying on every American and imprisoning them through the war on drugs. To continue to attack various countries around the Earth in a misguided sense of patriotism and desire for democracy abroad. To continue to look, as John Quincy Adams put it, for monsters to slay abroad.
The Republican Party is on a crossroads. The old guard is dying out. People like John McCain are on their way out.
But what about the new breed of neo-conservatives? People like Chris Christie and Marco Rubio? The candidates who campaign on bombing more countries than before, expanding the United States' role in the Middle East and hellbent on confronting the Iranians and the Russians. To rip up the Iranian deal. To spy on all Americans via unconstitutional spying programs.
Even John Kasich, a moderate, said it is time to 'punch the Russians in the nose.'
Or will it adopt the more restrained voice of Ted Cruz? A man who said it wasn't right to dispose the tyrants of Libya and Iraq. A man who sees himself as a pragmatic voice, the in between of the non-interventionist of Rand Paul and the neo-conservatism of Marco Rubio.
However, he promises to carpet bomb the Middle East to see if 'sand glows in the dark.' He also brags of the USA Freedom Act, an act he said expands the government's ability to collect all phone records. The senator has also promised to rip up the Iranian deal on day one. And he has criticized the Cuba Thaw as well. A man who has praised a man who called gay marriage evil.
Justin Amash, Thomas Massie, Rand Paul, Mike Lee should have been the future of our party.
We should have been the party to recognize that we don't need to intervene in every single conflict in the Middle East, to spy on every American, to have an unfair criminal justice system, to have corporate welfare and to have unlimited military spending. The Republican Party had to stand for limited government, free-market capitalism, and individual rights. To recognize that there should be a separation of powers instead of granting them to a president regardless of their political party.
Instead the Republican Party has descended into a civil war between a man who promises who to violate conservatism and the Constitution and the establishment who wishes to continue to violate our constitutional rights and expand government. It continues to ignore the future of the party, which is what Rand Paul represents.
I have low hopes for the Republican Party. I believe the future lies in the balance. The question remains for the eventual Republican nominee.
Do we burn the Constitution?
Or do we follow it?
