Posted on 07/26/2013 9:22:18 AM PDT by drewh
Republican rivals Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky are escalating their feud over national security policy and liberty.
In comments at a forum of Republican governors in Aspen, Col. Thursday, Mr. Christie said the libertarian strain championed by Mr. Paul currently coursing through the veins of political parties — as evidenced by broad, although ultimately unsuccessful, lobbying in the House of Representatives against NSA surveillance programs this week — is dangerous.
“This strain of libertarianism that’s going through parties right now and making big headlines I think is a very dangerous thought,” Mr. Christie said Thursday in Aspen, Colo. on at a forum of Republican governors. “You can name any number of people and [Mr. Paul is] one of them.”
Mr. Christie, like Mr. Paul considered a possible 2016 presidential contender, criticized what he called “esoteric, intellectual debates” that Mr. Paul and fellow conservatives such as Sen. Mike Lee of Utah have been conducting over the constitutional limits on unreasonable search and seizure and warrantless government surveillance.
A top aide to Mr. Paul immediately fired back, telling The Washington Times the senator’s opposition to government drone policies and surveillance programs are designed to “protect the freedoms that make America exceptional.”
“If Gov. Christie believe the constitutional rights and the privacy of all Americans are ‘esoteric,’ he either needs a new dictionary or he needs to talk to more Americans, because a great number of them are concerned about the dramatic overreach of our government in recent times,” Paul senior advisor Doug Stafford said.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Fat boy should talk to some Freepers. They’d set him straight.
While I understand your point Rand, I’m thinking perhaps it’s time Christie be retired and lose his ability to talk to the real Americans from a position of power.
I’m waiting for the FR cult of Ann followers to come on and defend Christie and Ann over these remarks.......cricket’s........
I don’t care much what Christie says, he isn’t on my list of people I would vote for anyway.
I agree. He needs to shut up.
Yes, he does.
Oh hell, he’s pandering to be on the ticket with hitlery.
Even a fat fool can see all the free money falling off the tables around nobama and the klintoons.
Yes, hopefully Christie will get out and talk to more real Americans, about this. At least, one might hope, he will actually read the Declaration--very few do, although it is often quoted out of context by those who have not, and do not understand its function or philosophy.
Let us stand fast, in the meantime, and still hold out the olive branch to those who now insult us, in the hope that they will eventually join us in that stand. (It is not a bad thing to try to redeem those who have gone astray.)
William Flax
I hope that he will read the list of grievances, which are the heart of the Declaration. Our government more and more resembles that of King George.
This is a false statement. Obama has gone out of his way to grant known terrorist the same constitutional protection as American Citizens. While at the same time, done nothing to curtail, and in some cases enhance, surveillance to law abiding US citizens.
But Obama is too cowardly to actually do what he says: pursue Terrorists; bring them to US soil; try them in US Court. Instead, he sends drones and kills them. Ironically this means that OBAMA 100% support any person, anywhere, US constitutional protection, unless of course, he first decides to kill you. This Monarchical approach has made us less safe because the we do not get intel from terrorist because we either kill them or in the off chance we actually capture one, we give them a lawyer.
So under Obama we are more watched and violated but less sage.
Christie is a Redcoat Republican who thinks shredding the Constitution and spying on Americans somehow honors 9/11 victims.
I would love to hear what his message to 9/11 victims is, ya know, since he likes to stand on them to bash others. What say you Christie!
Well as a conservative I’ll take Rand Paul over Christie any day. Now Ron Paul is an entirely different matter.
Christie needs to stay in New Joisey along with the rest of the Yankee RINO crowd.
He’s a Dutch Boy. You can tell a Dutch Boy, you just can’t tell him much!
“This strain of libertarianism that’s going through parties right now and making big headlines I think is a very dangerous thought,”
He couldn’t have given conservatives a better gift. We can live with liber(al)tarians. I think the people who lean liber(al)tarian and conservatives could build a majority coalition. Christie’s comment draws the distinction between Republicans, whose brand is tainted, and conservatives, who have more in common with Pot-smoking, OWS types than with the country club GOP.
“...he will actually read the Declaration—very few do”
If they did, liberals would win fewer elections.
I’ll never vote for a candidate who admits the belief that an inward focused surveillance state enhances my security in any way.
Kobach has a better plan than Paul or Christie to protect America.
“..“This strain of libertarianism that’s going through parties right now and making big headlines I think is a very dangerous thought,” Mr. Christie said Thursday in ...”
So now this fat f*** RINO is telling us what we can and can’t think...
Evidently his bromance with Sock Puppet really influenced him.
I’m not even a libertarian, but go get ‘im, RAND.
Christie’s fallen in a Democrat ditch and can’t get up.
You may be right!
The time has come for conservatives to realize that the Republican Party does not represent conservatives and have no interest in restoring America back to greatness, but it's all good because by the end of this decade the party will cease to exist thanks to amnesty and the remaining conservatives staying home.
...shoe bomber, underwear bomber. They were failures, but still got through.
So you would rather US troops go to a foreign country, capture a terrorist, fly him here, give him a lawyer and a day in court? A nice prison cell with three meals a day?
You think that is better than a drone? BOOM! Terrorist dead. No US soldier in harm’s way. No long trial and housing at taxpayers expense. You don’t like that system?
Sometimes Christie says the right things, sometimes does the right things, but he is still mostly an opportunist.
We need to cleanse ourselves of opportunists!
No they wouldn’t - he’d just buckle down and argue his points, not agreeing to disagree. I’ve never met him, and haven’t watched or read much about him, but that’s what I gather about his personality.
You're not doing much for coalition building with your insulting addition to the word "libertarian."
Welcome to ObaMao's America: where every citizen gets treated like a potential terrorist and every terrorist gets treated like a potential citizen.
It is what it is.
Now, now. They use it as an underhand jab at the (L) all the time.
Myself, I’ve taken it as a badge of honor. Liberal = Liberty. The only stigma it has received is from the co-opting of the Left/DEMs.
I find it most ironic that some of those of the ‘Conservative’ bent (whatever they may be trying to conserve, I still don’t know) routinely begin their screeds using those same co-opted words/ideas:
- Shouting Fire in a theater = unconstitutional
- S.S/Medicare being ‘paid into’ = obligation
- Patriot Act under Bush = OK, O = bad
Christie is a perfect example of those types of (R).
Too true.
The same people who claim to be for “limited government” and then support government control over the things they don’t personally like, whether it actually affects them or not.
I think I’ll start calling them “HOA Conservatives.” They give lip service to ideals like freedom and liberty, so long as everyone acts and thinks exactly the same as they do. Their idea of America is to be like a giant subdivision of perfectly spaced little tan suburban homes that are completely indistinguishable from the next.
lol...that’s the best analogy I’ve come across. I may steal it.
I should note, that my link to it, also contains a study guide, to make it very clear how it has been abused by Leftwing Propagandists: Declaration Of Independence--With Study Guide.
Part of the present unfolding tragedy is that the Founding Fathers had valid and coherent answers for all of the absurd arguments, with which we are being assailed today; but so few Americans bother to really understand their own history, that they go largely unanswered in our political "debates."
God spare us, what I fear we may have come to deserve, in not adequately defending the profound Blessings we have virtually squandered.
William Flax
The Fort Hood traitor may die of old age, before he is ever brought to Justice! The feds are too busy with other projects, apparently.
“...where both parties work vigorously to defend the government from the people, rather than the people from the government. ...”
Spot on. Worth repeating.
1. You make prison sound like a bed and breakfast. It’s not. Especially the federal ones where terrorists go. 23 hour lockdown; never see the sun. Most of these folks go insane before long.
2. Drones are a cowardly way of waging war. There is no honor in it. You’ve got someone sitting on their butt in an air conditioned room in Langley, VA or some such place not knowing or caring if the drone actually kills a “made” jihadi or his wife and kids. These drone strikes are a wonderful recruiting tool for Al Qaeda.
Obama knows that if Major Nidal Hasan is tried, he'll be convicted (there are dozens of eye-witnesses to the shooting) and receive the death penalty. Obama won't let a Muslim be executed on his watch so he'll make sure the trial is postponed indefinitely. Hasan isn't going to complain. If Hasan is finally tried and convicted, he'll appeal and drag the process out even longer, at least until Obama is out of office (if he ever is). Then the Muslims will make a big stink and try to use our laws and our constitution to spare Hasan from execution. That will fail. His crime was too horrific to be justified or explained away and Hasan has shown he won't play the remorse game so he'll finally be executed, probably around 2018.
Your analysis of Christie is right on!
Rand Paul thinks we should have a great military primarily geared for defense, that we should quit sending money to ations that hate us, we should help defend our allies, and nation building through war (Iraq) is not the right thing to do. Rand Paul thinks that if we have to go to war, we strike hard, using our power to defeat quickly rather than have a war designed to make defense contractors rich.
>>>I think that the way to handle him is by making it very clear that Liberty is more important than safety in the American context.
In the American context, there is no safety without liberty. That’s actually what needs to be made clear to him.
Apparently you missed the point of the utter hypocrisy of Obama. And the to your question, in some case it is better to capture terrorist for intel and not, they don’t get the same rights as US citizens.
Said well!
I don’t think Christie is going anywhere and the GOPe knows it, but they are happy to have a loudmouth slob talk bad about the GOPe’s biggest danger.
Paul is not a libertarian either. Libertarians’ are pro choice, pro homosexual agenda and open borders. Paul is none of those things.
If you ever want to win a national election again then you had better stop insulting conservatives that lean libertarian. There is a huge difference real Libertarians and those of us that want a small constitutional government that protects individual liberty.
Don’t worry- large government agencies, the the IRS, or NSA, would NEVER use their power, and vast information, for domestic political purposes, or to harass conservatives....
Inconceivable!
You don’t know much about Libertarians, do you?
Joke’s on you. I am a libertarian-leaning conservative.
I am also registered as an Independent.
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