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Peter Schiff For Senate!

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brian0918

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The 2 candidates he's against sound exactly like the Conservative Party up here in Canada.

I was thinking the same thing. Simmons was especially prolific in spouting meaningless bromides such as "support our men and women in uniform" and "public service is a trust." His points seemed very much along the lines of the Bush/McCain manner. For the most part everything he said could have been spouted by one of the more senior Red Tories in Ottawa.

Peter Schiff was the only one of the three who spoke of the fundamental issues of government involvement in the economy. He was the only man in that debate who spoke of capitalism. Actually, he was the only man on that stage.

Edited for spelling.

Edited by flatlander
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When asked recently what he thought he could do to accomplish his goals in the Senate, Peter had an interesting response:

"I know what I'm going to do when I get there. I'm not going to try to get re-elected, I'm not going to raise any money. I've just got to educate enough people to give them the confidence to do what they need to do. I could use the filibuster. I could speak on CSPAN every day. If you guys think I can speak here, just wait until you see me in the Senate. I could do this for hours! ... I will get these guys one at a time and convince them what they need to do, and do it."

He says he believes the economy is going to take a severe turn for the worse in the next Senate term and wants to be there when it happens. If Schiff actually gets elected and filibusters the Senate with Austrian economics, that would be something else.

Thus far the only criticism raised of him by the Republicans are that he is "soft" on illegal immigration (one article actually quoted some Republican who said he wouldn't support Schiff because "We should lock our friggin' borders"), he's pro-choice, he doesn't believe we have "an obligation" to die for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan as Mrs. McMahon seems to think, and Simmons was the first of his two opponents to attack him recently by saying he was essentially kooky because he tells people to buy gold and keep it from the US government and leveled an ad hominem attack regarding his father Irwin Schiff, who is in federal prison for refusing to pay taxes. Of course, taxation = patriotism. You hate America if you don't want to pay.

http://www.ctmirror.org/story/schiff-serve...on-and-politics

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The "debate" linked to earlier in the thread was pretty boring. "1 minute for rebuttal" my ass. There really wasn't any back-and-forth, it was just 3 campaign speeches broken up and woven together like a bad Kanye remix. Schiff did come off stronger and more to the point than the rest, though.

At one of the CT tea parties Schiff was asked what he would do to handle the debt problem. His answer was that he would try to convince 40 senators to filibuster any vote to raise the debt limit, legally forcing congress to stop spending more. He said this wouldn't be possible in the first two years, but after 2012 with a few more incumbents voted out it could be a reality. I'll try to post a link to the video if I remember later tonight.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Pretty vague, and definitely not as stirring as most of his other videos. :/

Well, it's a campaign ad. You must admit it's a rather professional job. For a candidate like Peter, it's impressive enough that his commercials can easily rival his much wealthier (and much more mainstream-supported) opponents in the race.

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McMahon 44

Simmons 34

Schiff 9

Matchups against probable democratic nominee Blumenthal:

Blumenthal vs. McMahon was 61 to 28 percent in the poll, down from 64 to 23 in January.

Blumenthal vs. Simmons was 62 to 26 percent, compared to 64 to 21 percent over Schiff.

source: http://www.newstimes.com/local/article/McM...1714.php#page-1

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Most of that is from lack of name recognition.

•Alpert: 93 percent don't know enough about him to form an opinion;

•McMahon: 36 - 26 percent with 36 percent who don't know enough about her;

•Simmons: 38 - 21 percent with 40 percent who don't know enough about him;

•Schiff: 85 percent don't know enough about him.

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There was a series of articles on Yahoo Finance recently, of some debate with Schiff versus two Fed guys.

They can't answer Schiff's question "name one thing that Bernanke has gotten right," except that Bernanke is doing the best he can, and we should just support him.

As for his campaign, he apparently has a plan to get noticed and is confident about it:

Check out his new add:

http://schiffforsenate.com/?q=media

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According to Schiff, 60% of the Republicans who KNOW him are going to vote for him. So he has to get the message out, and he need more donations.

It is not valid to assume that the voters who follow politics from the very early primary stages are similar to the voters who make up their mind in the last month before the vote. Nevertheless, this has to be a good, or at least better, season for principled candidates. He has a chance of success.

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Schiff has done a few videos refuting Greenspan and Bernanke in the past, calling Alan "The worst American ever" and stating that the phrase "Benedict Arnold" should be replaced with Greenspan's name to mean traitor.

Greenspan recently did an interview with Jake Tapper on ABC, and Tapper naturally couldn't resist bringing up Ayn Rand, saying that everyone knows that Randianism and capitalism were the cause of the problems and her philosophy is now discredited.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/20...d-theories.html

Greenspan also mentioned that there were only a few people in the world who saw the crisis coming. Schiff apparently didn't take too kindly to that, so he has issued a challenge to Greenspan to debate him on ABC, saying he will pay Greenspan $100,000 if he accepts the debate. He also mentions Ayn Rand in the video, saying she is rolling over in her grave.

Edited by 2046
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A new Rasmussen poll puts Schiff at 32% against Blumenthal at 58% and McMahon at 35%.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_con...te_april_7_2010

Schiff still has the highest "not sure" rating at 24%.

Unfortunately though, looking at Schiff's new issues page, he seems to have moderated his views or become more like a Ron Paul candidate, even calling himself a "conservative" in his new ad.

http://schiffforsenate.com/?q=issues

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A new Rasmussen poll puts Schiff at 32% against Blumenthal at 58% and McMahon at 35%.

That's a somewhat misleading presentation of the data. Blumenthal is the Democratic nominee. The 3 candidates for the Republican nomination are Simmons, McMahon and Schiff. The poll tests matchups of each of the GOP candidates against the Democrat. In those matchups Blumenthal beats Simmons 52-38, he beats McMahon 55-35, and he beats Schiff by 58-32.

There are really two hurdles Schiff would have to pass to make it into the Senate. He would need to win the GOP primary, and he would need to win the general election. The old polling I've seen shows him getting stomped by Simmons and McMahon in the primary, and this poll shows him getting stomped by Blumenthal in the general. Honestly I don't see how he wins this one. (Does anybody have a poll that shows Schiff even breaking out of single digits in the primary?)

Realistically this seat became a Democratic hold the moment Dodd decided not to run for reelection.

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Unfortunately though, looking at Schiff's new issues page, he seems to have moderated his views or become more like a Ron Paul candidate, even calling himself a "conservative" in his new ad.

http://schiffforsenate.com/?q=issues

What aspects of the issues page indicates to you that he is a Ron Paul candidate now?

By the way, I should mention that Yaron Brook appears to be supporting Mr. Schiff's candidacy, as he is a friend on Peter Schiff's Facebook page.

Edited by Andrew Grathwohl
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What aspects of the issues page indicates to you that he is a Ron Paul candidate now?

By the way, I should mention that Yaron Brook appears to be supporting Mr. Schiff's candidacy, as he is a friend on Peter Schiff's Facebook page.

Oh I don't know. I guess I was just thinking very cynically when I wrote that. I do think he is telling the truth on economic matters, and he has other decent views and is principled, but other than that, he just lacks a real strong sense of overall consistency. He wants to "crack down" on illegal immigration, he called himself "the most socially conservative candidate" because he strongly supports state's rights, he supports a consumption tax as opposed to the income tax when he knows damn well (or should know) that all taxes are taxes on income. And he now doesn't want to "End the Fed" but just reign it in a little (although I understand the fears that the Left wants to nationalize it, or take over its duties with the Congress, or otherwise make the situation worse, but he could state that and articulate laissez-faire instead of saying that he "wants a responsible" central bank.)

Certainly would be better than anyone else in the Senate right now, not that it will do anything, but better than paying another crook for 6 years.

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I recommend listening to

with Peter Schiff. He talks about the economy, and his views on foreign policy. It's abundantly clear that he's no Ron Paul, as he supports pre-emptive nuclear strikes against Iran ("If they don't let our inspectors in there, let's just blow the place up").
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Oh I don't know. I guess I was just thinking very cynically when I wrote that. I do think he is telling the truth on economic matters, and he has other decent views and is principled, but other than that, he just lacks a real strong sense of overall consistency. He wants to "crack down" on illegal immigration, he called himself "the most socially conservative candidate" because he strongly supports state's rights, he supports a consumption tax as opposed to the income tax when he knows damn well (or should know) that all taxes are taxes on income. And he now doesn't want to "End the Fed" but just reign it in a little (although I understand the fears that the Left wants to nationalize it, or take over its duties with the Congress, or otherwise make the situation worse, but he could state that and articulate laissez-faire instead of saying that he "wants a responsible" central bank.)

From his campaign page:

Immigration

We should strengthen our borders to crack down on illegal immigration and streamline the process to make legal immigration more accessible. Immigrants must respect our laws and not be given amnesty.

The Fed

Reform the Federal Reserve so that it no longer enables deficit spending, inflates asset bubbles, or creates inflation. Its original independence must be restored, including strict limits on the types of securities it can buy. Interest rates should be set by the market, not the Federal Reserve. The Fed’s main responsibility should be providing our nation with a sound currency, backed by quality commercial paper and gold.

On Taxes:

Why not just abolish it completely? How about a flat-tax of zero. Why don’t we shrink government and have a much smaller national tax. It’s far less destructive to our economy and people don’t have to surrender their individual rights to privacy in order to comply with tax law?
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  • 3 weeks later...
Oh I don't know. I guess I was just thinking very cynically when I wrote that. I do think he is telling the truth on economic matters, and he has other decent views and is principled, but other than that, he just lacks a real strong sense of overall consistency. He wants to "crack down" on illegal immigration, he called himself "the most socially conservative candidate" because he strongly supports state's rights, he supports a consumption tax as opposed to the income tax when he knows damn well (or should know) that all taxes are taxes on income. And he now doesn't want to "End the Fed" but just reign it in a little (although I understand the fears that the Left wants to nationalize it, or take over its duties with the Congress, or otherwise make the situation worse, but he could state that and articulate laissez-faire instead of saying that he "wants a responsible" central bank.)

Certainly would be better than anyone else in the Senate right now, not that it will do anything, but better than paying another crook for 6 years.

Schiff's support of the consumption tax is verified by context. It's pretty clear that Peter thinks taxes are immoral, but he also appears to understand that there is an unfortunate discrepancy between what we ought to do (morally) and what we are currently limited to (politically). Peter's support of the consumption tax is contingent on the current US economic system and the debt crisis we are going to face. If Peter has his way in the senate, then there's a chance that he could filibuster the raising of the debt ceiling and try to curb our problems. But, as he always says: "You can't cut taxes until you cut spending." Indeed, if we were to have a "flat tax of zero," tomorrow, that would cause a whole other string of problems. We have to remove any reason to tax before we can remove taxes themselves.

Our Constitution gives the federal government powers in setting currency value, so I suppose if Peter wanted to return the fed to its original goals as it was established in 1913, then he would be following a Constitutionalist position. Is this a modification of his original position for political reasons? Most definitely. But that doesn't mean that this modification comes without benefit. The benefit of having Peter in the senate far outweighs the negativity of modifying a position for stronger talking points. Besides, Peter already receives enough flack for all of the Ron Paul morons that are supporting his candidacy out-of-state (which he obviously can't help) - tacking on the fact that Peter Schiff wants to end the federal reserve system would be a devastating blow to his chances of winning the GOP nomination.

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This race has taken a strange turn. Schiff's main Democrat opponent Connecticut AG Blumenthal likes to rebutt criticism with the Maximusian "I was fighting for your freedoms back in the 'Nam" line, only he wasn't ever in the 'Nam as the NYT just revealed. He got several deferments on his draft, and eventually went to work in the White House of a different lying crook, until he joined the reserves to keep from having to go die in a foreign land. Which, of course, wouldn't be so bad, except that he has been lying about it repeatedly.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/nyregion/18blumenthal.html

Will this transform into anything positive for Schiff? Who knows. Blumenthal himself had a press conference at a VFW hall, which I observed on CNN, as he trotted out a parade of Marines and Vietnam veterans who all cheered at every other sentence and even yelled "No!" at reporters with the gall to ask tough questions. Blumenthal says he didn't know that he "misspoke" and didn't realize that he meant what he said, and even said it's the media's fault for writing down what he said at face value! Judging from some of the comments, most of the Connecticut left-liberals are actually only complaining about the NYT for having the nerve to report such a thing! It's their fault for reporting it! Wow.

Oh well, Go Schiff, I guess.

Edited by 2046
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