Well folks, it became official with Ted Cruz’s  official announcement of his long rumored Presidential  aspirations at Liberty University earlier this week-2016’s Presidential Open Season is upon us. Usually, the Politi-Geek in me just eats this stuff up but with the split in the GOP having opened up wide enough to swallow any hopes we had at gaining representation for Republicans in the Pacific Northwest, I worry that the same may be about to play out at the national level. Before you read on, please note that the opinons expressed are mine alone.

As John Adams once said of the colonies, it is time for Republicans to “Join or Die”, but I don’t know if that is possible anymore. On one side, we have the Evangelical Christians who became a force to be reckoned with in the GOP in the past thirty years, most notably during the Reagan presidency. Then we have the more recent Tea Party conservatives who started with the simple message of fiscal responsibility  in government, and then morphed into a less fiscal and more comprehensive conservative platform with opinions on things ranging from same sex marriage to taxation.

Lastly we have the more Libertarian leaning group, most notably known for supporting Ron Paul and his son Rand. It is, surprisingly, this last group that I find myself more aligned with at least on social issues at this point in my political life. At this point in my life I would love it if the government stayed the hell out of everyone’s bedroom (and by extension love life), returned to performing its original Constitutionally outlined purposes, at their most bare:

“(1) To provide for the common defense and general welfare.

(2) To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the laws, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions.[16]

(3) To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the Militia.

(4) To prescribe the times, places and manner of holding elections for members of Congress, except the places for electing senators.

(5) To conduct a census every ten years.”

Now I do take exceptions to certain areas of Libertarian belief-I do not favor the legalization of drugs (have you been to Amsterdam?), nor the more isolationist views on foreign policy (although I confess telling more countries to take care of their own messes is sounding more attractive). With that said I also find the simplicity of many of their positions refreshing.

Now please dear reader, do not take this to mean that I have issues with people of faith. I do not. I am a person of faith myself, but I am someone who tends to view spirituality and religion as private matters that I do not tend to discuss with people unless I am close with them. I am deeply uncomfortable with those who use faith as a bludgeon or who cast loud judgement on others as “the will of God”.

Unfortunately, now the leading Libertarian leaning “candidate”-I use quotes since he has not yet announced officially-Rand Paul has just gone and done something that I find objectionable by stating that he thinks that Gay Marriage is the result of “a moral crisis“. I can only support the speculation of others that due to Ted Cruz’s heavily Christian weighted announcement speech, Paul feels that he has to address and therefore court the same target group at the outset of his “campaign”. However, when you read more deeply, I agree with the spirit of his comment-not about gay marriage but about government not being a one size fits all remedy.

“Don’t always look to Washington to solve anything,” he said. “In fact, the moral crisis we have in our country, there is a role for us trying to figure out things like marriage, there’s also a moral crisis that allows people to think that there would be some sort of other marriage.”

All I can hope for at this point is that the Republican National Committee does some math to figure out who the true base of the party is, which will lead us to why our messaging has been falling flat at the national level for years. Without knowing who the consumer of that message is, always the Evangelical’s for instance, then the GOP brand will continue to falter.

Or, better yet, if we simply removed the social issues from the Democrats and just addressed the most important one (“its the economy stupid“) perhaps we could win in 2016.