Friday, March 29, 2024

“Live Free or Die!” Will Ted Cruz Inherit the Rand (and Ron) Paul Voters?

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) (photo credit: Gage Skidmore)
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) (photo credit: Gage Skidmore)

Time Magazine reports on Ted Cruz’s embrace of the Paul “liberty voters” in New Hampshire. Subhead: “The Iowa Republican winner appeals by trumpeting the gold standard, privacy rights and limits on eminent domain.”

Time‘s Alex Altman reports from Salem, NH:

In the hours after Sen. Rand Paul dropped out of the presidential race Wednesday, the libertarian state representative and passionate Paul supporter [Eric Eastman] says he fielded a personal phone call from Jeb Bush and an offer from Donald Trump’s campaign promising VIP treatment. Even an aide to Chris Christie reached out. But as he processed his grief over Paul’s exit, Eastman already had a new candidate in mind.

On the night of Paul’s exit, Eastman went to see Ted Cruz in Nashua, N.H. …. By Friday night, Eastman was onstage at a jam-packed Cruz town hall … offering his endorsement and telling the crowd that the Tea Party Texan and the Kentucky libertarian were “close cousins” philosophically. “Chapter and verse, the two guys are aligned in many ways,” Eastman explained in an interview.

This has been Cruz’s argument from the beginning, and it could come in handy next Tuesday in New Hampshire, where libertarian Ron Paul got 23% of the Republican primary vote in 2012.

[…]

On cornerstone libertarian issues—privacy, civil liberties, gun rights and others—the two freshman senators are largely in step. It’s why big libertarian donors like Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley billionaire, have written big checks to Cruz four years after funneling more than $2.5 million to Ron Paul.

And let’s not overlook the official New Hampshire state motto, emblazoned on its license plates: “Live Free or Die!”

Meanwhile:

In recent weeks, a pro-Cruz 527 group … (has been running a) … 60-second radio ad in New Hampshire that touts his grasp of sound monetary principles and his support for a return to the gold standard. “Ted Cruz knows that if we tie the value of the dollar to gold, we can be assured of having future economic growth without inflation and without having huge deficits,” the ad says.

Sen. Cruz has not materially been contesting the New Hampshire primary. He has chosen to focus his energies instead on Iowa, South Carolina, and the suite of delegate-rich March 1 primaries. That said, it is noteworthy that Rep. Eastman, a bellwether libertarian thought leader, as well as world thought leaders like Peter Thiel, are recognizing Cruz’s fierce commitment to the suite of liberty issues.

Whether or not Rand Paul’s departure from the race serves to give Ted Cruz an updraft in New Hampshire, liberty is a core Constitutional, and Republican, value. It is good to read in Time Magazine how Ted Cruz is “Chapter and verse … aligned” with the great Ron Paul and with Rand Paul, “the most interesting man in politics,” as a champion of liberty.

Ralph Benko, internationally published weekly columnist, co-author of The 21st Century Gold Standard, lead co-editor of the Gerald Malsbary translation from Latin to English of Copernicus’s Essay on Money, is American Principles Project’s Senior Advisor, Economics.

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