The Free State Takeover of the Republican Party

By on April 10, 2011 in

The damage done to New Hampshire over the past three months by elected Free Staters – masquerading as Republicans on the ballot – and their like minded Koch Bros’ AFP, Tea People, “Liberty” allies has been extraordinary to behold.

But despite the biggest public rally in a quarter century to protest their goal of dismantling government, the march to take over this state goes on:

Democrats feel they have a chance to recapture the New Hampshire House seat vacated by Republican Martin Harty, who resigned after making comments supporting eugenics.

Democrats Janet Kalar of Middleton, Dennis Malloy of Barrington, Bob Perry of Strafford and Richard Stanley of Farmington will compete in a June 7 primary. Kalar, Perry and Stanley all ran for the seat in November and lost to a full slate of Republicans. Perry is a former state representative.

Republican Honey Puterbaugh of Barrington, who moved to New Hampshire with the Free State Project and has been active with the Strafford County Republicans, is the only Republican in the race.

The “only Republican in the race” is a Free Stater. That pretty much says it all about how both the Porcupine and the Elephant are gone. The new Free State-Republican hybrid species is complete.

And if you click the link to read the other Free Staters mentioned in office, it says more by what it doesn’t say.  Rep. Jenn Coffey, a Free Stater herself, is not mentioned, perhaps because she has already burrowed so deeply into GOP House leadership at this point no one even remembers or cares about this history.

How many other elected “Republicans” fit this description, either with the official Free State designation or else simply, and more typically, a like-minded, like-voting mentality?

Needless to say this will be an incredibly symbolic special election.

(birched; on Twitter @deanbarker)

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  • hannah

    Basically, they’re of a predatory or exploitative mind set and don’t believe in “give and take.”  On the other hand, it’s possible that the reason they don’t give and just take is because they don’t know how.
    Giving, as opposed to just getting rid or dumping something you don’t want, implies an awareness of the recipient’s interests and needs. Absent that awareness, it’s really impossible to give.  Indeed, any effort to simply mimic the behavior — to give gifts like other people do — are likely to backfire or be unappreciated simply because the “personal touch” was missing. Gifts that aren’t properly appreciated, as unsuitable gifts often are, then validate the feeling that giving is a waste of time or, worse, grossly disappointing.

    Oddly enough, in German, the word “Gift” means poison. You know, like that apple from the step-mother.

    One of the good things about Democracy for America is that it encouraged citizens to ask people to be candidates, presumably on the basis of recognized skills and attributes.  Chambers of commerce recruit candidates, but they do it either to promote some local commercial interest or to “place” someone who’s otherwise dispensable.

  • Mike Hoefer

    The NH Republican Party, no longer able to find any NH Republicans, rely on temporary labor to fill in gaps in their labor requirements.

    • Lucy Edwards

      to find NH Republicans who will agree to do what out-of-state interests tell them to do.  Our previous Republicans were pretty damn independent, but that’s not the new lock-step variety they have been morphed into since the Tea Party mindset took over.  

  • xteeth

    Once again I am hearing excuses here. I don’t care if they call themselves the party of the livid, these folks are running and ruling as Republicants. The Republicant party is responsible for them. All those “old style Republican moderates” are just as responsible for these reich wingers as are any other members of their party. If you didn’t realize that their purpose was to mostly run for any open office,  shame on you. They have training meetings to plan the disruption of town meetings and have for years. There are many many at the local level filling in uncontested positions. Just waiting till they were in a position to promote their reich wing programs. Free Staters have been proclaiming their message in everything they said and describe how they plan to accomplish it. There are a huge number of sleepers in the Democratic Party as well. Their purpose was to get elected as whatever would get them elected. In a Republicant district they run as Republicants. In Democratic ones, the opposite. There is a whopper in the Concord Democratic ranks now that used to live in Deerfield. They only blow their dog whistles to each other.  

    • Will May

      that there are fewer than, say, 30 Free Staters/sympathetic libertarians working closely with the Democratic Party. Just based on my discussion with a few other libertarian-ish Democrats.

      It’s completely possible that there are more, and I simply don’t know about it.

      And if you count anyone who is a registered Democrat, there are probably more.

  • vparmele

    Have been doing a lot of thinking about how the Free State Project has been able to get this far in NH. Certainly from the beginning, they set out to create a viable political structure, through the NH Liberty Alliance and the Republican Liberty Caucus of NH. They have also exploited political vacuums wherever they’ve seen them at the local level, and there has been much to exploit, as more people each year are running around too busy and distracted to be involved politically.

    The FSP has also been able to exploit the backlash of outraged citizen as a result of the recession and the Obama administration, – and seems to have easily and strategically gathered momentum by joining forces with Ron Paul/Tea Party people.

    I believe the FSP has also exploited a social/ cultural vacuum in America – in encouraging people to gather together in NH to build some kind of simpler, safer, personal responsibility based nirvana. People coming here do get support of various kinds from each other, as they try to live out a dream of a different kind of America. The next thing you know, some of them are running for office, with a ready made support system in place.

    Their dream is of course an unsustainable one, if one connects all of the dots. Having lived in NH for 30 years, and realizing how hard it is to truly have a sustainable local economy and local support systems, I understand this. But the FSP people either are too new to NH, too naive, – or they are the puppeteers who are playing with the others.

    • Lucy Edwards

      multiple layers of puppets and puppeteers going on.  I also agree with you that the economic policies foisted on the American people by the corporations and their bought politicians have left all too many of us so stressed by the constant insults to our ability to survive to think about being part of our communities, never mind running for office at any level.  We have been co-opted.

  • elwood

    In order to move up in Republican ranks, libertarians have had to put aside any qualms they had about government interfering with health decisions, or discriminating against gays, or suppressing voter rights.

    • Will May

      once I took a step back from it all (“it all” being libertarianism), I started to find areas where it seems like libertarian philosophy has been corrupted by the long political coalition with the right.

      Unions are a good example. Generally, the nicest thing you’ll hear about unions is that “they’re bad for the economy, but I don’t want the government to stop them,” meaning they don’t want the police to drag people away for unionizing.

      Yet when you look at it, right-to-work laws, which most of these people would support, call for the government to prevent two parties from voluntarily entering into a contract. And in fact, this has been the Libertarian Party’s official position in the past– more pro-union than almost all self-described libertarians.

      I was pretty shocked when I discovered this, despite being a libertarian for years.

      I’ve also noticed that, since I’ve gotten involved with local Democratic Party and progressive politics, I’m much more tempted to adopt liberal beliefs– because it just makes things so much easier for me. It’s something I’ve been very aware of, and I’ve had to be very careful to make sure I don’t simply replace one irrational position with another.

      So there’s probably some truth to the reverse-takeover theory.

      • StraffordDem

        as I see it, is the Libertarian worship of rationality.  When reason is reduced to the rational we lose the underlying spirit of our collective experiment.  Positions and opinions based only on verifiable fact quickly become fundamentalist positions with no room for compromise, or allowances for persuasion.

        There are limits to reason that’s based on rationality – it seems to me that there’s just a short step from such a reason to self-absorption and possessive individualism.  Using Rawl’s Veil of Ignorance, I think we would all do well to balance our rational selves with transrational allowances – which I think helps to create a much stronger culture and healthier communities.

        I find it interesting, Will, and a bit admirable, that you can still find yourself “awakened” by new information, and more so that you can speak about it.  That truly is progressive.

        • Andrew Carroll

          Most libertarians are more rational than empirical.  Indeed, I would call them hyper-rational.  This is another reason why they typically support the Austrian school: it’s very axiomatic, with small truths being deduced, logically, from “higher” principles.

          I say hyper because, once you get involved in the moral heirarchies conducive to rational epistemology, you begin to question very little of your own dogma, and those who disagree with you become “ignorant” or “evil”, as opposed to just being different.

          I consider it one of my purposes in NH, and Will and Thom would likely agree, to counter, from the “inside” so to speak, the inevitable elitist tendencies of hyper-rational group think.

          There’s a lot of group think amongst Free Staters.  Will and I broke free of that by getting out and working with liberals.  You could all do a lot by reaching out to Free Staters and letting them know why our current House agenda is not pro-liberty.

          Stronger dialogue = stronger democracy.

          • Tully Fitzsimmons

            …Many of the GroupThink, RightLibertarian FSPers see personal autonomy from all rules as the overriding goal in and of itself. Ergo, any government rule that requires or prohibits their personal action is opposed, without any further discussion or analysis.

            For those who have distanced themselves from the FSP and rightists, and have adopted a ‘renegade’ Leftist approach (either outright Liberal-Progressive, or Leftist-Libertarian), the overriding goal is the of the individuals in the society.well-being  

            For this latter group (which is where I land), government regulation is opposed generally when it has a propensity to run counter to those goals…and, perhaps more importantly, the actions of Private entities (corporations, employers, landlords, financiers) are OPPOSED when the exercise of their so-called ‘freedoms’ runs counter to the goal of the individual’s well-being…and SUPPORT for government regulation that enhances that well-being comes much more easily than among rightists.

    • Douglas E. Lindner

      It’s coming up with new names for itself.

  • tchair

    A DEMOCRAT

    • cblodg
  • JonnyBBad
  • archmac

    http://www.ronpaulforums.com/e…

    He is mistaking a battle for the war.