There was great grassroots enthusiasm when the GOP of Texas finally made its Republican primary proportional so that every candidate would get a fair shot at our delegates and candidates would come and campaign in our state despite how late our primary is scheduled.

Now a group of party insiders want to reverse this popular decision and make the primary winner-take-all so that an establishment candidate – likely Santorum or Romney – can shut out all other candidates and snatch up all of our delegates. So if you wanted to go to the convention as a delegate for the candidate of your choice, you’d be out of luck and our whole state, despite the diversity of its Republican party would all be locked into supporting one candidate of dubious merit who comes from a far off state and has little in common with Texas Republicans.

This could mean giving Rick Santorum a chance at winning the primary – despite the fact that he is an ideological extremist and a big spender and cannot beat Obama. Or it could mean that Mitt Romney ends the primary with a sudden win in Texas and there’s no chance of a brokered convention or any concessions to the grassroots who are crying out for change and reform in the party. This change in policy in Texas could shut Ron Paul out of the process completely not only as a candidate, but as a voice for smaller government and more liberty as part of the Republican platform.

Changing the Texas GOP primary to winner-take-all would be a slap in the face of grassroots Republicans and it would be bad for the party in Texas and nationwide. This proposal by some SREC members would help Santorum and hurt Paul and the other candidates. Or alternatively it would end the election right there if Romney won. It’s a very, very bad idea for Texas and for the GOP and it is NOT what the grassroots of the party wants.

For more information see this article straight from the horse’s mouth. And note the name David Barton at the bottom of the article. Look him up if you don’t know who he is. He embodies the worst elements of the religious right which want to dominate the GOP and take it away from the grassroots.

Please customize the content of the letter below to represent your concerns in your own words and make sure to check off all of the SREC representatives. If you’re from outside the state rewrite the letter to stress the concerns which all Republicans have with keeping the primary open and the desirability of having a brokered convention.

There seems to be a determined chorus coming from Republican party leaders and insiders pushing the idea that it’s time for Rick Santorum to get out of the primary race and arguing the inevitability of a Romney victory. The strategy now seems to be to just discourage Republican voters, telling them Romney is going to win so there’s no point in even looking for alternatives. It’s a desperate kind of strategy which might lead to many Republicans staying home in November..

The lead cheerleader for throwing in the towel and giving it all to Romney seems to be Karl Rove who is likely to be acting as a flak for the establishment, describing Santorum as a desperate, fading candidate.

Rove may be right about the hopelessness of Santorum’s campaign. The latest poll shows him losing his own home state of Pennsylvania to Romney, and prospects are not good for him in many of the major remaining states. But the inevitability of a Santorum defeat is not the inevitability of a Romney win, no matter how much the insiders climbing on his bandwagon want it to be.

The problem is that despite the hopeful claims Rove is making, the delegate math just doesn’t support his theory of inevitability, and the ongoing chorus of big name endorsements doesn’t seem to be helping Romney much either, since the same concerns which have alienated much of the party from Romney also make them unresponsive to establishment leaders.

Take a look at the numbers. There are 1089 delegates to be assigned in the remaining primaries. To reach the magic number of 1144 Romney needs 588 more delegates. That’s 53.9% of the remaining delegates. That seems achievable. By the accepted estimates Romney has averaged 60% of the delegates so far. In theory, if that trend continues, he will eventually end up with 653 more delegates for a total of 1231, 42 more than he needs.

The problem with this theory is that it assumes that delegate estimates largely based on the initial popular vote in past primaries are accurate. Yet in most of those states there is only a very rough relationship between the popular vote and how delegates are assigned. Delegates are actually chosen through arcane hierarchies of caucuses and conventions which give an advantage to candidates with strong grassroots support, which is Romney’s weak point.

While most media estimates put Ron Paul’s delegate count at around 30-50 delegates, there are reliable reports from a number of states that Paul has far more delegates than most estimates give him – by as many as 70 or more at this point. Despite shameful attempts to manipulate the system it appears that states whose delegates were credited to Romney are actually going in part or total to Paul. Not enough to win Paul the nomination, but enough to deny Romney the inevitability of his victory.

In fact, the actual delegate totals from most of the states where the elections ended months ago, won’t actually be final until later this summer, and in the meantime only Paul has people on the ground working in every state to advance his interests and increase his delegate count. They are chipping away at the other candidates and when real, final delegate numbers are revealed it seems quite likely that Romney will be much shorter of the mark than anyone realizes.

To a large extent the goal of all of the players except for Romney is to avoid a first-ballot win. If they can get to the convention with no clear winner, then deals can be made and votes can be changed on later ballots and there will be concessions to be won by someone. Romney may indeed end up being the nominee, but no one wants him to get there too easily. And in the end it’s quite likely that the big payoff will be to Ron Paul, because if he has enough delegates to get Romney to 1144, then a deal with him would be much more attractive and require fewer hard to swallow concessions than a deal with one of the other candidates.

The purpose of the “inevitability strategy” is to avoid the outcome of a convention where deals have to be made. Deals benefit the grassroots. They mean safeguards and accountability and concessions to groups which don’t like the party establishment much at all. It’s a strategy which might give Obama the win in November, but those who are pushing it would rather keep control of a losing minority party than make concessions and give up some of their control to what they see as barbarians pounding at the gate, though others may see them as a hopeful future for an aging and increasingly irrelevant party.

This article appeared in somewhat different form in Blogcritics Magazine.

In the struggle for the Republican presidential nomination candidates are searching for every advantage they can find, desperate to reach constituencies which can help them gain an advantage over their rivals. Some of them are getting more desperate and more manipulative as they fall behind, even resorting to some pretty blatant lying about their records, their beliefs and their intentions.

Listen to this audio clip without looking at the image attached to it, the way you would hear it on the radio:

Sure sounds like just what we need, a champion of the grassroots of the Republican Party ready to stand up for the little people against big governmnet, political insiders and the party establishment. Sounds like my kind of candidate.

Then go to the website which goes with this stirring radio ad, timetochoose.com. Bet it wasn’t what you expected to see. I know I was surprised. After the ad I assumed it was a powerful new pitch for Ron Paul. I sure wasn’t expecting something so far from the ad’s description as Newt Gingrich.

Newt is many things, but a grassroots alternative to the party leadership is not one of them. I’m not even convinced he’s the conservative he claims to be. Despite having served in public office, it’s arguable that Romney with his background in business and state government experience is far more distant from the corrupt leadership in DC, while Gingrich was at the pinnacle of that leadership when he served as Speaker of the House.

The real target of this campaign is the growing number of “soft” Ron Paul voters – mainstream Republicans who are so fed up with the party leadership and political insiders that they are being drawn to Paul despite some of his more radical positions. These primary voters see Paul as the only candidate really looking at the issues which concern them, and while they may be uncomfortable with his foreign policy and a few other positions, they do recognize him as a genuine conservative and a political outsider. The efforts of the party to throw roadblocks in his way has validated his claim to that status.

The Gingrich campaign has a problem. There is one too many candidates in the primary and Gingrich seems to be the odd man out. Santorum has staked out the religious right constituency. Romney has the moderate, corporatist vote. Ron Paul is sewing up the fiscal conservatives and libertarians. Those three broad groups pretty much make up the party and there’s not really anyone left over for Gingrich.

Gingrich has been left trying to pick up the leftovers from all three groups and it’s just not working for him. The other candidates are just better at appealing to their particular niche audiences and Gingrich can’t win any of those groups based on his record or an honest presentation of his positions. He’s too personally immoral for Santorum’s supporters, too unpredictable for Romney’s followers and too much of a big government insider for Paul’s supporters.

Gingrich’s handlers did figure one thing out right. They know that Republican voters are unhappy with the party leadership and just about anyone who already has a job in Washington DC. The “anyone but Romney vote” extends beyond that to “anything but the status quo” and that’s a real constituency if you can define yourself as the authentic outsider.

The problem is that Gingrich in no way qualifies as a political outsider. The anti-establishment crowd is just not his constituency. To anyone who knows his record and background advertisements like this one which try to redefine him just seem bizarre and mendacious. In his desperation he’s trying to dislodge a small segment of Ron Paul’s support base, but it is not his constituency and he’ll never really be the outsider they want. I hope primary voters won’t be fooled by this slick but deeply deceptive ad campaign. It’s time for Gingrich to go.

A slightly different version of this article appeared previously on Blogcritics

As you may have heard, last week actor Sean Penn visited his buddy Hugo Chavez in Venezuela once again. Associated Press reported his comments on the 2012 presidential election as

“It’s never predictable what can happen in an American election, but we certainly believe at this point that it’s becoming increasingly clear to the American people that the policies of the far right are the policies of the rich, and that they are to the exclusion of the middle class and the poor, and that no society has a future on that basis.”

This is far from the most outrageous comments attributed to Sean Penn during visits to the socialist police state that is Venezuela. Furthermore, these are exactly the kind of statements conservatives and libertarians should expect to hear from Hollywood liberals during President Obama’s reelection campaign. Being unable to run on a record of great success, the president will have no choice but to turn to this divisive rhetoric to get reelected. Unless his opponent is Rick Santorum, whose rigid social conservatism will hurt him greatly in swing states like Ohio and Florida, and whose record on big spending is most outstanding when compared to his three competitors–an ex-Governor who balanced budgets, a former house speaker who oversaw a government shutdown shortly followed by nearly-balanced budgets (national debt went up during the Clinton “surpluses”), and a Texas Congressman who has never voted for an unbalanced budget or a tax increase–the President will have to actually debate the merits of his economic policy. And it is a debate he will likely lose.

Organizing for America, the Democratic National Committee under the offensive demagogue of a new chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, and various mainstream media personalities have been attempting to capitalize on the greed and anger of the Occutards and have been running on a “Republicans are the party of the rich!” message–in spite of President Obama’s backing of and expansion of the bailout and stimulus policies of his predecessor George W. Bush.

No doubt at the front of Mr. Obama’s campaign will be the entertainment industry that helped him get elected in the 2008 primary and general election against seemingly impossible odds. This will include Sean Penn.

It baffles me how Sean Penn and his ilk have any credibility with the American people. I’ll admit that I even find a personal degree of disappointment in myself when I share articles on Facebook about celebrities endorsing my choice for 2012–Ron Paul. I do it because sadly enough, Americans care more about what these people think than say, what the veterans and members of the military think, or what the people out of work think, or what the successful small-to-medium sized business owners think. I don’t like the idea about taking advice from celebrities on anything. Most of them have zero understanding of individual liberty, economics or how the business sector operates, a minimal understanding of international affairs, and a hypocritical view on the fair share the 1% which they are a part of is allegedly not paying. Sean Penn is one such actor.

What I am also baffled by is that those of us on the other side of the political spectrum rarely fight back against these celebutards. We often take a “who cares what Hollywood thinks mentality”, failing to understand the power they have over influencing everything the average American says and does. Middle America doesn’t understand the lack of credibility these people have and we fail miserably to expose them for their hypocrisy. Reason is on our side, and we need to prove it, and we can do show by exposing the words of these people for their inaccuracies and logical inconsistencies. Will everyone listen? Of course not. But we don’t need every American to listen to us, we just need to get a few people at a time to wake up. Eventually, enough will do so that Hollyweird loses is significance in election cycles.

In 2010 I was working on a satirical book, entitled Mass Media Mindnumb, on what I had perceived to be the denigration of American pop culture. I have since lost interest in the subject and focused on more important things in my professional and personal life, but I kept the unfinished manuscript and sometimes reference it if I need some ammunition to fight back against Hollywood hypocrisy. My generation has proven to be the strongest victim of the cult of celebrity. I fear greatly what subsequent generations will look like as they come of age. America today faces a dichotomy. We will go down one of two roads. A road of European style socialism all the way to bankruptcy, or a restoration of the long forgotten free-market principles that made America great in the first place. There will be a generational shift that will soon show up in the political spectrum. My generation will either choose this European socialism, or adopt a libertarian-leaning conservatism. The dominionist [religious] right stands in the way of them adopting the latter, while the entertainment industry beckons them to the former.

I’ve spent enough time recently demagoguing the dominionists, so I’m gonna go after Hollywood, and I’ll start with Sean Penn.

In Mass Media Mindnumb I had written a scathing rant about Sean Penn’s hypocrisy. I’m going to release the contents of that rant in this article, while making some minor editorial revisions to reflect current events. Here is what I had written:

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I Am Sean

Sean Penn is one of several celebrities who has made enough an ass of himself that he gets his own subsection in this chapter. You probably think he’s a good actor. Really I can’t remember him outside of any movies other than Fast Times at Ridgemont High—where he played a disruptive stoner and I Am Sam—where he played the mentally challenged title character. Both decent movies; the actor is a different story.

Deceitful, left-wing, but most importantly the ultimate hypocrite—Sean Penn routinely criticized George W. Bush for taking away civil liberties during the beginning of the war on terror, but recently came out suggesting that people lose their right to free speech!

Let me break it down for you.

In 2002, he placed a $56,000 ad in The Washington Post out of concern for the upcoming war in Iraq and the PATRIOT Act. This letter was surprisingly eloquent, making some interesting analogies. He particularly wanted Bush to reconsider invading Iraq and the expansion of his federal power, to not “[diminish U.S. citizens] through loss of civil liberties [or] dangerously heightened presidential autonomy through acts of Congress.” His criticism of Bush would soon turn into anger, going so far as to call for Bush’s impeachment.

The criticisms—well, the early ones at least–were not entirely unfair, but what completely destroys Penn’s credibility as a political voice (pay attention here) is his ultimate hypocrisy. Some time in spring 2010, Sean Penn appeared on Bill Maher’s show Real Time. On the show, Penn made comments that completely destroyed his credibility for all his criticisms of George W. Bush’s infringements on our civil liberties.

I mentioned briefly the socialist leader of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, a man who has partially usurped control of the media in his country, all but guaranteeing political insuperability. Well, Penn is chummy with this guy and doesn’t exactly like people who bash him. The mainstream media, according to Penn, constantly lies about Hugo Chavez.

In reality, the mainstream media tells a lot of lies and skews many of their stories. But portrayal of Hugo Chavez as a socialist dictator isn’t one of their misleading notions—its cold hard fact. Penn’s allegations of this as a lie aren’t what make him a hypocrite. What makes him a hypocrite is the fact that he suggested a law which would outright violate the First Amendment—both violating freedom of the press and of speech.

“Every day, this elected leader [Chavez] is called a dictator here, and we just accept it, and accept it. And this is mainstream media. There should be a bar by which one goes to prison for these kinds of lies.” — Sean Penn in 2010 on Real Time with Bill Maher

Excuse me? You want a bar that would send people to prison for speaking their mind? Even if they were lying about Chavez’s oppression and socialist policies, and they certainly are not, the media has a constitutionally protected freedom to say whatever they want and it is the responsibility of ‘we the people’ to do our homework and find out the truth. As a matter of fact, two of the earliest media outlets in this country were created for campaigning purposes when John Adams and Thomas Jefferson battled each other for the presidency. They each had their own outlet to demagogue each other, and it was up to the citizens to separate fact from fallacy.

If anyone is going to be locked up for false allegations by this bar that Penn wants to create, consider this scenario where the law becomes international and then subsequently be used to lock up Chavez.

According to a Feb 2006 piece from Reuters, Chavez was quoted as saying the following of then-President Bush:

“The imperialist, genocidal, fascist attitude of the U.S. president has no limits. I think Hitler would be like a suckling baby next to George W. Bush.”

Hugo Chavez compared a man who removed an oppressive dictator and kept his country safe, despite wasting lots of money and using questionable policing tactics in the process, to a man who systematically murdered 6 million Jews and invaded multiple countries not with the goal of liberating them but with the goal of ethnically cleansing and then occupying them. Under Penn’s proposed law, Chavez would be behind bars.

See what I did there, Seanny? Apparently free speech is okay for Sean Penn only if you agree with him. When George W. Bush tapped phone and email communications in an attempt to secure our country—albeit with potential to violate our 4th amendment rights—it’s oppressive and fascist; but a man who controls his country’s media to consolidate his own power is a democratically elected and transparent leader, and anyone who disagrees with that should be locked up!?

Pot-calling-the-kettle-black much? You can’t yell about someone infringing on the First Amendment, then subsequently suggest people lose their First Amendment rights because they disagree with you, and expect to have any credibility left can you? I would hope not. And I would hope you the reader make note of this and don’t take political advice from this guy. Ironic enough that his own proposed law of course would probably ensure his buddies Chavez and Ahmedinejad be locked up for their lies—Ahmedinejad especially for calling the Holocaust a myth. But what’s even more ironic is that Sean Penn wants to make laws that oppress people who disagree with him politically, when his own father suffered the same oppression.

Sean must have forgotten that his father, the late actor Leo Penn, was an actor during the Red Scare. He was a communist sympathizer, a supporter of Hollywood trade unions and refused to accuse his communist friends to the House Un-American Activities Committee and as a result was blacklisted—i.e. nobody would hire him because of his political leanings! But in Sean Penn’s hypocrisy, he suggests people should be jailed for their opinions (or FACTS) that Hugo Chavez is a power hungry socialist tyrant.

Sean Penn is a true celebutard; a politically inept hypocrite who should just stick to acting and stay out of politics! But as much as I detest him, I would never suggest he be locked up for his lies. I would most likely never suggest he be blacklisted. But I will suggest a boycott of him. I don’t think I’ll be watching his upcoming films.

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My views on Sean Penn’s hypocrisy remain the same to this day. I hope the readers of this article take these facts to heart and share them with others, particularly the ones regarding Leo Penn. The Hollywood left is losing its credibility but I can only hope it will lose it in time stop my generation from accepting this entitlement mentality present among Occupy Wall Street. The last thing I want is to wake up in 10 years to a repeat of the recent London riots: a bunch of spoiled 14 year olds throwing rocks and molotov cocktails at shops because mommy and daddy didn’t buy them that iPad they are “entitled” to. And if you believe for one second this hypothetical will never happen, I’ll refer you to the even more recent riots in malls all across the country over the new Nike Air Jordans. I don’t think you get a more accurate example than that of combining the “entitlement” mentality with the peer-pressure driven cult of celebrity, not to mention the general wussification of the American male when a bunch of guys in their teens and early-to-mid twenties are fighting over shoes as if they were the Sex and the City girls.

Its not too late to stop this from happening. Just as we managed to do with the temporary stoppage of the so-called Stop Online Piracy Act, libertarians and libertarian-leaning conservatives will have to take up arms against Big Hollyweird once again; this time over their lies, distortions, and political influence. Don’t be afraid to spend a little extra time attacking their hypocrisy and their logical fallicies and eventually they’ll lose credibility with some of the electorate.

As for Sean Penn, the characters of Spicoli—the dumb stoner, and Sam—the mentally challenged man—may actually be smarter than their portrayer, Sean Penn. Sean PWNED!

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Aaron Alghawi is finishing his B.S. in Economics at Texas A&M University; he is a board member and Director of Student Outreach for the Republican Liberty Caucus.

The Republican Liberty Caucus National Board issued this press release on Saturday the 18th:

Conventional wisdom hinted at high levels of Republican turnout in this year’s nominating contests. Building on relatively light 2008 turnout seemed a lock, and this appeared all the more likely considering the lack of a Democratic primary fight this time around.

Taking into account the electorate’s present angst and 2010’s Tea Party primary successes, most observers would have penciled in massive turnout increases in this year’s Republican primary and caucus states. But with results from seven states in thus far (the state of Missouri does not make for a valid comparison due to 2012’s lack of attached delegates) the picture is shaping up quite differently.

Of the four caucus states to vote so far, Iowa’s 16% rise in turnout was the only increase. Turnout declined by 26% in Nevada, 20% in Minnesota, and 3% in Colorado. When one considers these caucus states disproportionally represent the energized party faithful, moderate to substantial dip in turnout is reason enough to concern Republicans. The raw numbers are more symptomatic of an underlying problem when population inflation is taken into account; the raw numbers show more of a percentage drop when increased population numbers are considered.

Of the three primary states, only South Carolina saw a substantial jump in turnout. It rose 33%–an impressive uptick but huge outlier. Turnout in New Hampshire was essentially flat (up 2%), and Florida turnout was down 16 percentage points when contrasted to 2008. Once again, population gains cause these numbers to understate just how much Republican turnout has fallen.

Taking a look at the states with closed primaries flags an even more deleterious trend for Republicans. All three states that bar independents and members of other political parties from voting in their primaries or caucuses have seen a drop in turnout. In some cases the fall has been substantial.

Florida, Nevada, and Colorado have hosted closed primaries—two of these three states saw a double digit drop in participation. This means registered Republican voters are casting less ballots in an atmosphere where they should hypothetically be chomping at the bit to have their voices heard.

Roughly 155,000 fewer ballots have been cast in 2012 through the same seven contests. Republican operatives and strategists are no doubt aware of this, and some of the blame can certainly be pinned on the toxic campaign atmosphere engendered so far. But such a steep drop in a year when the party’s base was not thought apathetic is worthy of more than a raised eyebrow; the Republican Party has little choice but to confront the reasons behind depressed enthusiasm.

Exit poll data have not shown much, if any, increased minority or under 40 turnout. The electorate is skewing older and almost exclusively Caucasian (the latter being understandable in an Iowa and New Hampshire, but demonstrative of outreach problems in diverse states like South Carolina, Florida, and Nevada.)

Leaving aside the impact of this year’s seesaw polling on the Republican brand, these raw numbers alone show the party’s decreasing appeal. The closed primary states starkly illustrate the passionless support levels being enjoyed by the Republican Party in its current manifestation.

Too many more election cycles of this and Republicans will become a substantial minority party; they must find a way to begin reaching young and minority voters if this fate is to be avoided. The numbers can be twisted and attempts made to explain them away, but in the end they shed light on a situation in need of addressing.

Last night’s State of the Union address had a more positive tone than I had originally expected. But it still carried a hypocritical juxtaposition of calling on Americans to come together and adopt reforms that create jobs and lift the burden on businesses, improve our children’s educational opportunities, and achieve energy independence while also touting the divisive rhetoric that drives us against each other and drives us to blame the wrong causes for our current situation.

Much of what President Obama said tonight was true. It is true that mortgages were lent to those who could not afford them. It is true that companies are shipping jobs overseas and at the same time receiving tax breaks. It is true that with the death of Osama Bin Laden and numerous Al Qaeda leaders, America is much safer. And it is true that millions of new jobs have been created since he took office.

The positives may sound good when you phrase them as such. But the grim reality is that the problems America faces are so significant, that the good things that have happened under this administration are eclipsed. While these jobs were being created, millions of jobs were being eliminated. We still have fewer jobs than when the president took office. And whether he likes to admit it or not, his own policies have played a part in this anemic growth.

EPA regulations piled on by this administration have cost us over 5% of our GDP, and that’s just one federal department of many. The Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill will cost $30 billion that we don’t have. The Small Business Administration estimates that the compliance cost of our current regulatory environment is $1.75 trillion per year. President Obama alone cannot be blamed for this, as his predecessors and those in Congress passed many of these regulations prior to 2009.

The president failed to mention that government programs incentivized lending of mortgages to those who could not afford them. Federal laws demanded banks loosen their restrictions or face legal action. The Federal Reserve further incentivized banks to comply by offering them easy credit. They lowered interest rates causing investors to put their money into long term projects and many focused on residential construction.

With his re-appointment of Ben Bernanke to chair the Federal Reserve System, this inflationary policy of unnaturally and artificially low interest rates has continued. The Fed has injected trillions of dollars into our economy under this administration, money which is not backed by matching economic growth or a significant demand for US dollars. This has caused the value of our currency to drop, and commodities such as gasoline have jumped in price as a result of a speculative bubble.

President Obama could have partially alleviated this problem by promoting domestic drilling for oil and the construction of new refineries, while we wait for science to develop inexpensive renewable energy. Instead, he has chosen to stand in the way of domestic oil production, while we continue to send billions of dollars to the Saudi elite, and turn a blind eye as they send that money to violent, theocratic institutions all over the world. He turned down the Keystone oil pipeline which would run from our largest supplier of oil—Canada—to the world’s most high-tech refineries in Houston.

It would have created tens of thousands of new jobs, including many for union workers that support Obama enthusiastically. They have been denied this opportunity in favor of capitulating to a lobby of environmental zealots known for its dishonesty in promoting its agenda.

The president covered a topic that I have focused much of my attention on in recent years: education. While he briefly touted the importance of returning control to local communities and schools, the other solutions he proposed are not only wrong, but they would further damage a K-12 system that is already a miserable failure at meeting the needs of the 21st century economy.

The president proposed forcing students to stay in school until they are 18 and claimed this would improve overall education. With all due respect, this is dead wrong. We have to get out of this ‘everyone gets a trophy’ mentality and realize that some children just will not learn. By forcing them to stay in school they hold back those of our children who have the drive to succeed. It is sad and politically incorrect to mention this, but it is true.

It has been mentioned in the writings of Jim Blockey, a reform school teacher from Las Vegas, I’ve discussed it with Robert Mansfield of Pennsylvania; a man born to a drug-addicted mother who grew up on the streets of Philadelphia with nothing and who rose to success when he returned to school, got his GED and joined the Army where he rose to the rank of Sergeant.I have heard even more examples from my friends who attended failing government schools in the inner cities of Ohio.

Although early childhood education in this country is world class, by the time our children reach high school, students in European countries like Belgium beat us on a number of metrics. Students in Japan, South Korea and Singapore blow us out of the water. China isn’t messing around either. They are targeting their most skilled students and placing them into advanced programs. When those students come to our universities they trounce their American peers in mathematics and natural sciences, and then our broken immigration system forces them to return to China and use the skills that we taught them against us in the global economy. A better system would incentivize and enable them to become Americans, and grow our economy instead.

The Belgians and the Japanese emphasize on the importance of school choice and privatization of education. And the British and the Japanese both emphasize on the important of the individual. Their programs are customized to fit the abilities of each student. In Japan, education is mandatory till around 15 years of age, at which they get their equivalent of our GED. Their upper-tier secondary schools are optional, and yet over 95% of Japanese students continue their education beyond the mandatory requirements. These programs are customized as either vocational education or preparation for university.

And one third of these schools are private!

In Great Britain, when you are 16, you can stay in the system, go to a trade school, or if you are smart enough go straight to college. Some states have adopted similar programs right here in America, where gifted students can achieve associates degrees upon graduating. I propose that we don’t waste their time teaching things they don’t need in the career they want.

We need to take heed to what the Belgians, the British and especially our Japanese friends have done. We shouldn’t mandate education to 18; we should eliminate the high school diploma and require a GED at the end of what is currently 9th grade as they do in Japan. Then make tenth through twelfth grade a customizable and optional program. Let students have choices of vocational programs, college preparatory programs, and if they are skilled enough, let them go straight to college. Provide a system that can ensure our 18 year olds truly are adults by giving them the marketable skills they need to make a living wage instead of mooching off of mom and dad into their twenties.

The status quo is unacceptable! And it fosters this sort of environment. To those who are worried about the students who wouldn’t go to school beyond their GED, they can always take the unskilled labor jobs and then work their way up the ladder or choose to continue their education at a later time in life. What makes such a system work so well is that the market will determine what skills are needed and relevant programs will be supplied.

This one-size-fits-all everyone-needs-to-go-to-college mentality is causing us to fall behind the competition. It is creating an education bubble that will inevitably burst. Many of these college degrees are becoming useless, rendering starting salaries that are not significantly higher than a high school diploma. The focus must be on marketable skills. General education is never a bad thing and should be viewed as a virtue, but it can only go so far.

The best possible system we can provide for our children is a system of individual choice, with a supply of curriculum determined by the market economy’s demand. A system that empowers parents, rewards the best students, and the best teachers, and yes—a system that discourages and reprimands failure.

The president went on to claim that college tuition is too high, and if it continues to rise he will pull subsidies from those universities. He’s right to acknowledge the avarice of our university system: costing its students thousands in waste on unnecessary programs and fees that should either be privately funded or purchased a la carte at the individual level.

Yet, he fails to understand the prime reason why tuition has risen at twice the rate of inflation and four times the wage rate. The federal government’s guarantee of all student loans has given greedy academics and administrators an opportunity that they would not have in a free market. They have constantly jacked up their prices, knowing that the government would credit the money to them no matter what, and the students would get stuck with the bill.

In the state of today’s economy, no one between the ages of 18 and 22 with the exception of military, civil service and a few lucky kids who invested from their teen years would be able to apply for a loan at a bank to pay over $10,000 a year for full-time tuition and living expense financing unless they had either a parent or credit-worthy friend co-sign for them. I know because I borrow primarily from a credit union to finance my education. Without a co-signer I likely would not have been approved, and if I was approved, my interest rate would be over 10%.

But the government federally guarantees many financial options for students who have little to no credit history. This has allowed the universities to set their tuition and fees well above a true market rate. In a free market where the finance was out of pocket or credit-based, they could not do this. Their classrooms would sit empty at those prices, and they would go bankrupt. Ending the federal department of education would quickly slash tuition prices in half, and prices would finally begin to increase in conjunction with wages and inflation.

When my father went to college in the 1970s, you borrowed directly from the school. A full-time summer job was enough to cover a year’s tuition and much of your living expenses at a state university. My father came here a poor immigrant, went to a small private college, and worked part time as a manual laborer. He graduated on time and with two years of debt.

My generation has not been so lucky.

This achievement by my father is the American Dream that we should want for all of our children, and it is morally wrong to deny them the benefits of a free market where they have the power to control their own destinies.

The message of class envy is dividing us and acting against the interests of that dream. Claiming that a job creating class is not paying their fair share when the top 1% of earners pay nearly 40% of the income taxes and the top 10% pay 70% of income taxes is ludicrous. But loopholes favoring one business over another certainly must go.

Our country needs a fairer, flatter tax. We need low rates for all, but we need few to no deductions. Compliance with our current tax laws cost American businesses nearly half a trillion dollars every year. Corporate taxes only make up 9% of our federal revenue yet their punitive nature begs the question: are they really worth it? What if the economic growth that was unleashed as a result of their elimination put so many people back to work, that the income tax revenue increased not only to offset that 9%, but to surpass it?

President Obama mentioned that companies are receiving tax breaks while they offshore jobs, and he mentioned the importance of incentivizing them with tax breaks to bring those jobs back here. There are over one trillion American dollars sitting overseas because investors don’t want it to be taxed by both the foreign country and the United States upon its return. Presidential candidate Ron Paul, former candidate Herman Cain, and myself all support a common sense solution to this problem.

I call upon President Obama to eliminate taxes on all foreign money repatriated into the U.S. economy. Let these corporations and businesspeople know that if they use that money to create American jobs, they can bring it back tax free! This is something that everyone should get behind! One trillion dollars is a lot of money with the potential to create millions of new jobs. If the president and both parties in congress are serious about restoring this economy to greatness, then a bill will be brought up and soon eliminating the repatriation tax, and President Obama will not hesitate to sign it.

There is too much at stake here to play class warfare politics. If government stole the entire net worth of every billionaire on the planet, not just in the U.S., it would total up to $4.5 trillion. Under this administration, the national debt has increased by over $5 trillion . We have debt because we spend too much, not because we tax too little. Both parties are to blame. We cannot afford our so-called entitlement system as is and we cannot afford a foreign policy of being the world’s policeman.

Now that we are out of Iraq President Obama said he wants to take that money, spend half of it to pay down the debt and half to build our own infrastructure. What he failed to mention was that there are no actual savings from the end of the Iraq War. We borrowed and printed money to finance our operations there and continue to do so in Afghanistan. There is no sudden influx of revenue we can use to pay down the debt, there is only a smaller deficit.

The President must realize that this is a Now or Never moment to prevent our country from going the way of many great empires in history, destroying itself under massive debt from an affluent society at home and a thinly spread militarism.

Do not give up on bipartisanship, Mr. President. Despite the differences between you and the Republicans, you can still get started on these things. Take a look at the recommendations of the Erskine-Bowles commission. Find the things in there that you and the Republicans can agree on, and immediately pass them. It will not be the end-all-be-all solution, but it is far better than doing nothing.

We owe it to future generations to actually build them a future. I understand the pressures of an election cycle, Mr. President. But the best way to get reelected is to do right by the American people. Embracing the free-market, ending corporatism, foreign nation building, and unsustainable benefit programs is the only way to save the American Dream.

Thank you, and God Bless America!

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Aaron Alghawi is finishing his B.S. in Economics at Texas A&M University; he is a board member and Director of Student Outreach for the Republican Liberty Caucus.

Last month, the Republican Liberty Caucus endorsed Texas Congressman Ron Paul for president – a historic endorsement considering the organization had not endorsed a presidential candidate since 1996, when it endorsed Steve Forbes. As we made our endorsement for Paul public, I wondered what current Republican Liberty Caucus members would make of the 1996 Forbes endorsement: would our ‘tent’ be wide enough for Forbes?

As National Vice Chairman of our organization, I voted to support the recommendation our state chapters made to endorse Paul though I personally support and sit on Jon Huntsman for President’s New Hampshire State Steering Committee: two weeks before our Board voted to endorse Paul I made a “Libertarian Case for Jon Huntsman.” In some respects, what I write here is a direct follow-up to that opinion piece: I want to speak of the case for a larger Republican Liberty Caucus ‘tent’ and how candidates like Governor Jon Huntsman fit the ambitious mission of the Republican Liberty Caucus.

The purpose of the Republican Liberty Caucus is to promote “the ideals of individual rights, limited government and free enterprise within the Republican Party of the United States of America by… promoting these ideals among Party officials and its various organizations; identifying and supporting candidates sympathetic with these ideals; developing Caucus membership among Party registrants, officials, and office-holders.”

In a way, membership in the Republican Liberty Caucus, (which requires membership in the Republican Party), is an acknowledgement of a fundamental difference between us and members of the Libertarian Party: we recognize we belong to a larger entity that is more diverse. It is the vehicle we have chosen to advance our views more effectively, and by virtue of this we recognize that we will not always be in full agreement with our Republican family but that we will always strive to find common ground where possible and, when fertile, to nourish it in order to establish an aggressive, tactical, and strategic approach toward bringing the Republican Party back to the principles that initially made it the political party of free-market ideals and individual liberty.

We acknowledge our political universe is currently dominated by a two-party system and we have chosen which of these two parties is most receptive to our beliefs.

>We also recognize the Republican family has not always excelled in advancing our principles, but that the values we hold are the true heart and soul – the glue – that keeps the Party moving forward, and that without this glue the Party and the principles we believe in might not advance as quickly or as broadly as we wish. The Libertarian Party has never been in a position to do this – and this is, most likely, the reason a standard-bearer of libertarian ideals like Paul is seeking the Republican nomination rather than pursuing the Libertarian nomination for president again, as he did in 1988.

In the “Libertarian Case for Jon Huntsman” I make it clear that Huntsman is not strictly a libertarian, but a Republican whose platform and ideas are a manifestation of a movement within the Republican Party toward more libertarian principles. As the title implies, it’s a libertarian argument for Huntsman, not a solicitation to cast Huntsman as a libertarian.

One reason I personally support Huntsman is that I believe he is, simply stated, a ‘Huntsman Republican’: he has never exhibited a particularly partisan streak but an ideological paradigm that has enabled him to govern and serve our country usefully and in ways many factions of the Republican Party can appreciate – those who lean libertarian included.

Among those positions we have in common with this candidate: his views that the Federal Reserve ought to be audited, that the issue of medicinal marijuana should be left for states to decide, that our Party and government should allow civil unions for all consenting adults, that our right to bear arms must be protected, and that our foreign entanglements are costing not only our reputation in the world but resources we need to make the United States a stronger nation. Governor Huntsman’s credentials on fiscal policy have been endorsed by Pew Center (rated Utah as best-manage state), Cato Institute (‘A’ grade on tax policy), and Forbes (best for state for business). His economic plan as a presidential candidate has been endorsed by the Wall Street Journal.  I point this out not to engage in a ‘my-candidate-is-more-libertarian-than-yours’ banter but to clarify that support among libertarian-leaning Republicans for Huntsman is not arbitrary.

From an organizational standpoint (Republican Liberty Caucus), I believe it is only fair that we look at all candidates carefully, as our Candidate Review Committee did over the last few months before issuing a recommendation to our state chapters on potential candidates to endorse. Even if a candidate doesn’t quite fit our paradigm, it’s worth keeping an open mind with respect to supporters who might consider some of that candidate’s positions reasonably libertarian – even if we disagree with that candidate’s supporter.

A ‘Libertarian Case for Romney’ has been made, for example, on LDS Liberty (a forum for libertarian Latter-day Saints): Greg Peterson, an associate of the Romney family and supporter of Governor Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign acknowledges Paul’s popularity among libertarian Republicans. But Peterson makes his case to our constituency at LDS Liberty. I listen respectfully, and think – even if I disagree with him – that his desire to bridge the gap between libertarian Republicans and his presidential candidate says something about the GOP’s libertarian movement and about the inroads the Republican Liberty Caucus is poised to make as more presidential candidates find themselves surrounded by advisors and supporters who seek to broaden each candidate’s interest in our constituency and the issues we are most passionate about. Even if I personally disagree with Peterson and our organization has endorsed Paul, there is no harm in maintaining an open dialog with someone who acknowledges the importance of our constituency in the process.

In the end, our Candidate Review Committee and Board agreed on a handful of candidates that we felt were reasonably aligned with our views before chartered states voted (by a sufficient majority) to extend the national endorsement to Paul.

In Huntsman’s case, a focus on fiscal issues and foreign policy over domestic issues was the first clear indication of priorities that are most similar to mine, (personally), as a libertarian-leaning Republican.

As a former member of the Armed Forces I place great weight on a candidate’s ability to manage our foreign policy and their commitment to reducing troop levels abroad. I wanted to support a candidate with an interest in a more surgical approach to intelligence gathering and work – in order to reduce our investment overseas at a time when we are in such dire need of greater investment at home. Huntsman fit this mold and has, in my view, the strongest foreign policy credentials on the table.

One of the arguments used to dismiss Representative Ron Paul’s viability as a presidential candidate is that he is a libertarian masquerading as a Republican who appeals to a limited but high intensity audience, a popularity which will not translate into victory in most states. This argument is being used by pundits and media spokespeople to explain his impending victory in the Iowa Caucus.

It’s a reasonable argument based on his small but loyal following in the 2008 election, but despite its basis in fact it is not sufficient to explain Paul’s current success. The problem is that Iowa is anything but a state dominated by libertarian-leaning Republicans. In fact, Iowa’s Republicans are 54% evangelical Christians who are strongly socially conservative and have very little in common with more libertarian Republicans. If Paul’s only appeal were to Liberty Republicans then Paul would be doing poorly in Iowa where voters are anything but pro-liberty.

One measure of how libertarian Republicans in a state are is how active the Republican Liberty Caucus, which represents libertarian Republicans, is in that state. Iowa is an extremely weak state for RLC membership and involvement. Unlike most states, especially Republican dominated states, it has no active RLC chapter and it offered a single endorsee for office in 2010 and he did not win election. Compare that to New Hampshire where the RLC offered over 100 candidates for office in 2010 and has 81 members in the state House of Representatives.

New Hampshire Republicans lean libertarian and those in Iowa clearly do not. If his appeal was solely to libertarian voters then Paul would be dominating New Hampshire and bombing in Iowa where a libertarian message is not terribly welcome. Yet Paul is likely to do even better in Iowa than in New Hampshire, finishing in first or second in both states. He may also go on to pass Gingrich and take second in South Carolina which has a balance of libertarian Republicans and more socially conservative Republicans.

All of this suggests that contrary to the conventional wisdom, Paul is not a single-constituency voter, but rather a double-threat with two bases of support. He appears to appeal not only to the expecte pro-liberty demographic, but also to more traditional conservatives including a lot of religious conservatives. Paul’s balance of libertarian policies and personal inclinations towards social conservatism seems to resonate with both groups, giving him a much broader base than just the high-intensity ideologues most commonly associated with him.

In fact, based on the combination of his personal views and policy positions, Paul may not be the marginal candidate many assume him to be. With the exception of hardcore neoconservatives for whom an aggressive foreign policy is paramount – a viewpoint in disrepute after the failures of the Bush era – Paul has something to offer most of the other constituencies within the Republican party. His hands-off policies appeal to many social conservatives as well as libertarians. His clear personal religious faith attracts religious conservatives. His fiscally conservative policies appeal to both those who want government reform and to pro-business Republicans. In addition, the latest FoxNews poll shows asked voters who was the “true conservative” in the race and 40% answered Paul while 34% answered Santorum. Clearly Paul has created a larger niche as both the most Conservative and most Libertarian candidate in the race.

As the returns come in from Iowa it seems likely that Senator Rick Santorum will hold a strong third or maybe even win second in Iowa, sharing the conservative vote with Paul. But unlike Paul, Santorum has very little money and even less appeal to voters outside of that hardcore conservative base. Santorum polls very poorly in New Hampshire and without money he lacks the legs to catch up with other candidates. As Santorum’s Iowa surge fades it’s quite likely that many of his supporters – who may be “anyone but Mitt” voters – will move to Paul with whom he shares conservative common ground.

If it proves to be true that Paul has two bases of support within the Republican Party, winning over both serious conservatives and libertarians, that puts him in position to be the preeminent challenger to Romney’s broad but lukewarm appeal. Though the media may continue to argue that Paul is unelectable, with this clear evidence that his base of support is much broader than originally believed, this may come down to a very close two-man race between Romney and Paul.

A slightly different version of this article appeared previously on Blogcritics Magazine.

After polling all of our state chapters and receiving their votes determined from the preferences of their members, on Wednesday the Republican Liberty Caucus national board held a special meeting at which we certified the decision of our members to endorse Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX). The following press release was sent to national media in coordination with the Ron Paul campaign and we hope that our input will give Paul a little extra push going into the Iowa primary.