I’m sure most Dopers know who he is, but for those who don’t, he’s a libertarian Republican who the establishment tried really hard to beat and failed. The article explores why they failed and why he’s so popular in his district.
Unlike most Tea Partiers, who Republicans attacked as extreme, Amash has actually amassed a fairly liberal voting record for a Republican, due to being a more consistent libertarian than say, Ron Paul was.
Americans for Democratic Action gave him a 65% rating for the 2012 term. The American COnservative Union gave him an 84% rating. I’d say there’s no secret to his popularity: how many candidates manage to actually please both ideological liberals and ideological conservatives well over half the time? Problem is, that’s going to make him very unpopular with the two parties’ corporate wings. So the Chamber of Commerce and Karl Rove spent big to defeat him.
I’m intrigued by him after reading about the horrible smears his primary opponent tried to use against him. Good luck to him - he’s a sort of Republican I can live with.
Nut? The ADA gave him a 65% rating. Sounds to me like he’s the very definition of someone who can reach across the aisle. Plus the article mentions he worked with John Conyers.
If he’s a nut, what does it say about the Democrats he works with?
I know little about the guy’s politics except what i’ve read in the last five minutes, and i didn’t know too much about the race either. I’m not really interested in commenting on adaher’s increasingly desperate search for a reasonable GOP candidate.
But i’ve got to say, if his primary opponent described Amash, an Arab-American, as “al-Qaeda’s best friend in Congress,” then i’ve got no problem with what Amash said about him in the speech. Smiling, shaking hands, and making nice after a hard-fought bout is all well and good if the other guy has played by the rules. But if he’s been trying to punch you in the balls and bite your ear off for the whole match, you don’t owe him a handshake.
Sounds to me like he’s someone the GOP’s controlling faction can denounce and isolate as a RINO, then. Your guys’ entire current organizing philosophical structure is to *oppose *reaching across the aisle.
I think that the appeal of libertarianism (especially with the idea that it’s the future of the Republican party) is the contemporary version of the bygone illusion that most people were fiscal conservatives and social liberals: it was cool to say, but most people’s beliefs never actually measured up to the catchphrase.
Perfect example: Social Security. Both libertarians and fiscal conservatives would like to see it privatized. Well, guess what: that’s actually a fringe idea that most people strongly oppose. So while it may be cool to be a libertarian-leaning person today, that doesn’t mean that their positions are actually popular.
Another example: there’s a small number of people who are impressed by how far Ron Paul got in two Republican presidential primaries. Well, guess what: just because he continued his campaign far longer than he should have, doesn’t mean he was popular. On various measures, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum were far more successful candidates than Ron Paul, but it’s just simply a cool thing to say that Ron Paul and his small band of followers are changing the party or whatever.
So Amash may continue to win his seat, but he will have no effect on the Republican Party, just like Ron Paul did well in his Texas district and almost nobody really supports him nationally.
The difference is that Ron Paul was alone. His son is not. Granted, it’s the smallest faction of the Republican Party, but it’s the faction young people like best, which means it will grow in power.
And sure, on Social Security, the public is liberal. Until you try to raise payroll taxes. Or try to make young workers today pay for the shortfall caused by the Baby Boomers.
And also, the reason Amash scored well on the ADA voting record is that he went so far around the bend in his positions that he voted the way Dems did for completely different reasons. For example, Dems voted against the Ryan budget because it gutted social programs. Amash voted against it because it didn’t go far enough in gutting social programs. Therefore, Amash is a liberal? Yeah, right.
Also, he voted against several appropriations bills because he things the Federal government ought to be slashed in size; but ADA urged votes against those bills because they cut things like ACORN and family planning programs, or they supported insane Sheriff Joe in Maricopa County. But his no vote still counts on ADA’s scorecard.
This isn’t building bridges with Democrats, adaher, its just called being more extreme than Republicans on several issues.
Yeah, Rand Paul is really gathering up support from all quarters for his “we should cut foreign aid to Israel” statements he’s trying to backtrack on. He’ll ride that support all the way to the White House; adaher guarantees it!
Depends on who you raise 'em on, don’t it? FICA is as regressive as a real-world tax can get - fixing or even reducing that isn’t an issue for anyone but the no-tax-anywhere-on-anybody crowd.
You really don’t know how it works, do you? SS is a transfer system by which workers *today *pay for retirees today. What you describe as a hypothetical is how it’s worked since its creation.