Prominent right-wing blogger (and apparent closet Bircher) Eric Odom has decided to spend a lot of his time covering the controversial special election for New York’s 23rd Congressional District, in which liberal Republican Dede Scozzafava has received the backing of the GOP establishment, and her Conservative Party opponent Doug Hoffman has attracted the support of a lot of the more outspoken pundits on the right and a number of religiously extreme anti-liberty groups like Eagle Forum.
In his latest article Odom makes the peculiar observation:
The race represents a clear message being sent to the RNC. And the message is simple… the liberty movement is not going to tolerate liberal Republicans anymore.
Now, I’m not sure who appointed Odom the spokesman for the liberty movement, but he seems to have forgotten that an essential component of that movement is, oddly enough, support for liberty. In all its forms. Not just the economic liberty of lower taxes, but also the other liberties guaranteed in the Bill of Rights and granted to all people under natural law; liberties like freedom of association, of religion, of speech and of privacy.
I don’t know all that much about Doug Hoffman’s politics. He manages to avoid mentioning most of the tough issues on his website. But I can guess what some of them are by his list of endorsements, which includes a number of groups which can only be considered strongly anti-liberty and even among the greatest enemies of liberty on the political right.
Eagle Forum is certainly the worst of the lot. This group of bigoted biddies is headed up by Phyllis Schlafly. They are in favor of war, torture, abstinence and creationism. They are strongly anti-gay, not only opposing gay marriage, but also actively homophobic and supportive of gay reeducation programs. They’re also against gambling, divorce, pornography, immigration, birth-control, marijuana and vaccines. In my opinion no candidate endorsed by Eagle Forum could ever be considered a “liberty” candidate. Eagle Forum would basically like to turn the country into a totalitarian theocracy. Any candidate who loves liberty should publicly reject their endorsement.
Some of the other groups endorsing Hoffman are nearly as bad: GING-PAC is an extreme religious right group which promotes “family values” and “biblical government” which seems pretty ominous. The National Organization for Marriage is an anti-gay group claiming to be “the preeminent organization dedicated to preventing the legalization of same-sex marriage,” which makes them strongly anti-liberty. Many of the other groups endorsing him are pro-life groups; in itself not a problem, but many of them also promote a religious agenda which includes opposition to gay rights and birth control, and even support for school prayer.
Now, I’m by no means a fan of Dede Scozzafava, but she does at least have a reasonable record on many issues of individual liberty. She’s too supportive of unions and too tied into the New York leftist establishment, but she is relatively fiscally conservative, in favor of gun rights and for cutting taxes. I would never pick Scozzafava as a candidate or encourage a group I was part of to endorse her. But that said, she’s still less anti-liberty than Hoffman is. If his endorsements represent his views, Hoffman is actively opposed to a great many of our basic liberties, while Scozzafava is just another opportunistic moderate-to-liberal Republican who will vote with other Republicans more often than most Democrats will, and certainly more than any Democrat far enough to the left to get elected in her district.
There are some Republicans who claim to be part of or even speak for the “liberty movement” within the party who are not really part of it. They’re just religious fanatics and single-issue social conservatives who pay lip service to the idea of smaller government and want to cash in on the momentum they see growing. Their dirty secret is that they oppose Scozzafava not because of her level of commitment to liberty, but because she’s pro-choice and pro-gay. Nothing else matters to them. They are one of the groups which got us in the mess the GOP is in today, as bad as the neocons and big-business Republicans. They’re statists on too many issues and that makes them enemies of liberty. They must not be allowed to hijack the liberty movement and drive the party in the wrong direction.
The truth is that liberal Republicans still have more in common with the liberty movement than Democrats or even most socially conservative Republicans, and while that doesn’t mean you should support an uninspiring candidate like Scozzafava, don’t let anyone get away with a big lie like claiming that a candidate like Doug Hoffman, who is endorsed and funded by Eagle Forum and other groups of bigots, extremists and theocrats, is in any way a candidate who supports liberty.
Hoffman may be a conservative, but he’s not a liberty conservative. He’s just another statist who wants to use the power of government to dictate how people live. He’s not that different from Scozzafava, he’s just bad in different ways. Don’t waste your time and effort on this pointless contest between two bad choices. Spend your money and enthusiasm to support the many Republican candidates in other campaigns who are authentic advocates for individual liberty, free enterprise and limited government.
On October 27th, 2009 at 11:42 am
I’m a dues paying member of the RLC. And the perspective of this article troubles me. If this represents the ideology of the RLC, then count me out. I’m a libertarian Republican of the Ron Paul variety, not one of the diametrically opposite Giuliani/Dondero variety. I’m not a Bircher, but I have an overall rather favorable impression of JBS. Birchers made up a huge portion of Ron Paul’s support in 2008, and there continues to be a great deal of overlap between them and the Campaign for Liberty and the RLC. The term “theocrat” often gets thrown around at anyone who is a social conservative, often, as in this article, as a way of painting them as anti-liberty. The litany of religious convictions that Nalle complains about the Eagle Forum espousing are not necessarily anti-liberty, nor are they necessarily things that need to involve government at all. Their support for gay reeducation programs, for example, is clearly not something that they advocate being done by the government, rather something that they want to protect from government attacks. In other words, on at least that issue, their position is the pro-liberty one, and Nalle’s is the anti-liberty one. The push for official state involvement in and sanction of gay marriage is also hardly a push for less government. And what exactly is the Eagle Forums position on vaccines? Is it that they want to ban them? Or is it that they oppose the big government corporatist system that now artificially pumps up their use beyond what it would be in a free market? And in that light, what is Nalle’s position in contrast? What is the Eagle Forum’s position on divorce? Is it that they want to ban it by the force of the state and jail divorcees? Or is it that they seek to use other means outside government coercion to keep marriages together? Altogether, the litany of anti-liberty allegations Nalle is able to make against the Eagle Forum, when he’s trying his best to pick the worst possible endorsement of Hoffman as a way of condemning him and to paint that endorsement in the worst possible light, he still can’t come up with anything worse than a few items that add up to very little in the grand scheme of the fight for greater liberty and smaller government. On the other hand, the Eagle Forum is also ardently against the UN and all other organizations and treaties that pose threats against US sovereignty and liberty in much bigger ways than the few minor items Nalle listed. They also take quite strong stands against the federal government engaging in activities beyond those enumerated in the constitution, such as education. I’m not a member of the Eagle Forum or necessarily much of a fan of them. Nor do I agree with them on everything. Nor am I a supporter of Hoffman (or Scozzafava). But I would hardly say that anyone endorsed by the Eagle Forum is automatically not a friend of liberty. And quite frankly, if someone were to ask, who is the greater enemy of liberty, Philis Schafly or Dave Nalle, after what I just read, I’d have to say the latter.
On October 27th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Eric, read the disclaimer at the end of the article. This is not an official RLC statement.
And note that I do not endorse Scozzafava in this article. I’m just pointing out that neither candidate is a real supporter of liberty and I suggest spending your time worrying about elections with really worthy candidates you can support – and there are a number of them.
And if you don’t think Eagle Forum is fundamentally anti-liberty then you aren’t famiiar enough with their positions. I won’t argue that they aren’t on the right side of a couple of issues, but the direction in which they want to take the GOP is the directiojn of a moralistic, statist authoritarianism which is as bad (and very similar to) what the left would like to impose on us.
The RLC is big enough for a diversity of opinions and we can work together in those areas where we agree. But I would hope that when any group comes to tell us how to live our lives and what we can read and what we can say and who we can associate with — be it Eagle Forum or the UN — we can agree to oppose them.
I do like the freudian slip in your last sentence, though.
Dave
On October 27th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
The Hoffman vs. Scozzafava controversy has become highly politicized and propagandized. Many special interests with hidden agendas are jumping in with their opinions. It is very possible that neither of these candidates is particularly “liberty” oriented, and that the whole controversy is being used to create the illusion of real differences. It would be a mistake to put too much emphasis on this cloudy House race, other than the fact that having Party bosses select a candidate instead of having a Primary is bound to cause conflicts.
On October 27th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
There is an emerging silver lining for libertarian Republicans in the whole Hoffman candidacy: Conservatives will never again be able to say, “We’re opposed to 3rd party candidacies,” with a straight face.
Not saying we need to urge them to support the Libertarian Party when there’s a decent Republican in a race. But once in a while with special circumstances, we can point to Hoffman and say, “hey, you did it in NY CD 23 in 2009.”
There are some people supporting Hoffman now, like RedState’s Erick Erickson, and even Rush Limbaugh, who before Hoffman absolutely hated 3rd parties. They’re now appearing a bit hypocritical.
On October 27th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
The whole situation is made even more peculiar now that many of us have seen Hoffman in his interview on Glenn Beck and realize that he’s just as much of a nitwit as his goofy publicity photo suggests. He’s remarkably uninspiring as a candidate and I’m glad I don’t have to vote in his district.
Dave
On October 27th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
//But I would hope that when any group comes to tell us how to live our lives and what we can read and what we can say and who we can associate with — be it Eagle Forum or the UN — we can agree to oppose them.//
The only way I would agree that having views about how people should live, what they should read, what they should say, or with whom they should associate entail reasons for the RLC to oppose them would be if they additionally see government as a tool for coercing others to live by those ideals. Without that important element, then simply upholding those moral standards doesn’t make any group anti-liberty. And in order to be able to say that their endorsement of a congressional candidate indicates that the candidate is anti-liberty, it must additionally be the case that, not only do they want government to coerce people to live by those morals, but the also want to do that at the federal level. I have looked over The Eagle Forums stances as they express them in the timely topics section of their website, and I see no indication that they want to have federal laws dictating how people can live, what they can read, or with whom they can associate. The only federal level legislation I see that they put much emphasis on that runs contrary to a civil libertarian as well as a free market position is in immigration and trade. But on other things, in issue after issue, I see positions that are decidedly more pro-liberty than what is typical among mainstream Republicans. They even include a section called privacy/databases that looks very libertarian, and surprisingly so, given the caricature you tried to paint of them.
On November 2nd, 2009 at 12:35 pm
The coronation of Hoffman in this race is something so bizarre that Lewis Carroll couldn’t have conceived of it after falling through the looking glass.
Dede was elected multiple times by Republicans, and had a voting record more conservative than the average Republican Assemblyman. She was chosen by ELEVEN different County GOP leaders in NY. Her “crime” was to favor abortion rights and marriage equality..certainly positions consistent with liberty.
Enter the Alaskans, and Minnesotans, and Donations from the Washington-based NOM, to a Conservative candidate who doesnt even live in the district.
Using semantic gymnastics that boggle the mind, the Conservatives turned the facts on their head and stated over and over that Dede was ‘imposed’ on the local republicans, and that Hoffman represented a grass-roots movement.
No. What Hoffman represents is the scorched-earth policy that Conservative Purists use – and will use- to purge the party of anyone who believes that liberty extends to social and personal issues.