Rand Is Right and Jeb Bush Must Want Government Forced Vaccinations

The vaccine debate is one of the most troubling of our time. The Republican bashing from the media and from fellow Republicans is more troubling than the health questions.

The core issue that Senator Paul espoused and that is lost in all of the vaccine hot air is the critical principle of individual and parental liberty. It is repugnant that anyone outside of the duplicitous political progressives would undermine the Senator for the "sin" of expressing such a bedrock Republican view but that is exactly what is happening. Those who do this are behaving in the cagiest anti-family manner while promoting truly dangerous policy.

We expect statist hate-mongers like the petty school boy impressionist Rachael Maddow to work to spin sentiment in favor of liberty trampling Big Government, but what was especially loathsome was the way would be Presidential nominee Jeb Bush took his shot. With the controversy of the entirely made up measles outbreak pandemic raging (the last US death was 2003), and Rand Paul being forced to "defend" his honest position,

Bush used the timing of s speech in Detroit to throw one of his Iowa opponents under the Big Pharma bus. Taking a page from Hillary Clinton (expect two years of that from the conjoined candidates soon to be separated at the birth of the 2016 campaign) he echoed the type of woefully uninspired vacuous rhetoric we have come to expect from Establishment candidates boldly proclaiming, "Parents should vaccinate their kids".

Really? How about giving us a real position on real policy? The only conclusion from anyone who would distance themselves from Senator Paul's (and to be fair Governor Chris Christie's) absolutely clear statement that parents should control the matter, is that you must hold the opposite view. So when Hillary and Jeb say that parents ought to vaccinate their kids, the only conclusion in context is that they would subvert parental control for government control. I witnessed the tyranny of the Big Pharma oligarchy first hand when I tried to make a simple change in the law. My cautionary note to Republicans and anyone left or right who claims to care about liberty and the Bill of Rights is that our rights are worthless if we do not understand and assert them. Wherever you fall on the vaccine issue, the devil as always,is in the details and the vaccine details hold incredible treachery when you examine two things: !. Who gets to mandate the vaccines on the list? 2. What force is behind the mandate, from a ban from "public, private, parochial or parish schools" (Missouri), from military service, etc)

In Missouri, I was surprised when the chicken pox vaccine was added to the list of mandates vaccines. As I opened the State Statutes to review the relevant vaccine mandate section, I noticed that the varicella vaccine is not on the list passed by lawmakers and no bill had been passed to add it. That is when I learned that the power to add vaccines to the list rests not with elected lawmakers but is 100% in the hands of the appointed Director of the Missouri Department of Health. When I attempted to take back the power and put it with the people, I was shut down by both political parties and the Republican Governor. Virtually every lobbyist related to doctors, hospitals and leftist social service groups opposed me, while Big Pharma hid. My liberty-loving colleagues saw the writing on the wall and hid as well. As I sat there contemplating my own fully vaccinated children and surveyed the sorry state of liberty in the Heartland, my

biggest fear was not vaccine dangers, but the power of corporate America to get politicians to do their bidding. It should be hard to add to the list of mandated vaccines. All Big Pharma needs to do in Missouri to gain a huge new market for a product is to win the support of one appointed Department Director. That is a massive moral hazard. I was then truly dismayed and disgusted when Republican Governor Rick Perry added Gardasil (to prevent a sexually transmitted disease) to the Texas list.

Any debate that centers on whether vaccines are good or bad misses the point. The issue is about whether children should be forced by any government over the protests of their parents, to ingest a for profit product at all, especially in light of the fact that Federal Courts have allowed almost 4000 families to share over $3 billion in awards for vaccine injuries and/or deaths since the Vaccine Injury program was launched in 1988.

Another Reason For Tea Party November Enthusiasm - Ligies

No matter what happens on November 2nd, 2010 will be year for that conservatives won. Patriotic conservatives of all flavors, have risen up in extraordinary ways, in every corner of the country. It appears all but certain that Speaker Nancy Pelosi will be dethroned. Dick Morris even predicts as many as 100 new Republican Congressmen giving many people really high expectations for the new Congress. Others fear that for all their trouble from organizing to holding rallies to knocking on doors, they will only replace the leftist Democrats with RINO Republicans who will squander the victory. Will we get Speaker Boehner, or a fresh new conservative leader who will truly take a big stick to big government. A closer look at the numbers should give conservatives reason to be really excited and also a cause for continued resolve.

If you want a conservative Congress, you have to ask yourself just what kind of conservative are you after. Drew Kurlowski, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Missouri who studies voting behavior and partisanship, referred me to a dataset popular with political science academics called DW-Nominate. It is a tremendous resource that meticulously compiles the voting records of the Congress going back to the1st Congress. If you want to know who George Washington’s favorite conservative was, this is your site. Moreover, they settled on a definition of “conservative” that is tremendously useful. Move over “fiscal conservative” and “social conservative” and make room for (limited) "government intervention in the economy”. Let’s call it L’GIE. So who are the ligies?

That most potent army of political groupies has one more reason to crow about Congressman Ron Paul. He sets the bar as champion of limited government. No one is close. For the rest of the nation, imagine what a force his son, Senate candidate Rand Paul will be in the Senate. "Senator Paul" is just the beginning.

By sorting the Senate in order of most conservative to least, it is no surprise that the fiscal champion, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma gets the award. Conservative darling, Jim DeMint is close behind. Which one of them will run from President? Hint: I asked Coburn’s office already, someone needs to call DeMint.

Another trend is fun to see but stands as no great surprise. The sisters from Maine, Senators Snowe and Collins compete for dead last among Republicans but still destroy every single Democrat.

Here is where it gets fun for conservatives. There are five Republican House members making strong bids for the Senate. None of them ranks lower than the Senator being challenged. In Missouri, Roy Blunt is running extremely hard and looks almost a shoe in to replace Kit Bond. Bond ranks a surprisingly low 35 out of 40 on the conservative scale. By contrast, Roy Blunt would join the Senate as the 6th most conservative on the L’IGGE scale. Illinoisans may finally be so fed up with infamous Chicago Democrat corruption that they will elect Republican Congressman Mark Kirk. While the Illinois Tea Party activists preferred Patrick Hughes, it may be a nice consolation prize to hear that Mark Kirk at 23, is eight points to the right of Bond. It is important to note, that Kirk is pro-choice while Bond is pro-life. Also, because the House and Senate members do not take the identical votes, comparisons are imperfect yet illustrative.

This data will surprise a lot of patriotic Tea Party activists who are disappointed by Mssrs Blunt and Kirk for support for the high profile TARP and “cash for clunkers” votes. High profile votes however, often overshadow the facts in balance. According to Kurlowski, “I think it is a fair assessment to say that Blunt has compiled a more conservative record in the House, than Bond has in the Senate. The DW-Nominate scores show it, and ideological rankings from major interest groups on both sides of the aisle confirm the data.” The same surprisingly, applies to Kirk. So the Illinoisans who suffered under liberals Durbin (10th), Burris (97th) and Obama, for many years left casting an occasional jealous gaze across the Mighty Mississippi River upon Missourians who enjoyed 18 years of Kit Bond’s leadership, now have the opportunity to install a centrist technically more conservative than Bond! Happy Day!

All told, taking the House and vastly improving the Senate, conservatives have a lot to be excited about. The next vote will be for a Republican Speaker, and quite possibly, Republican Senate Majority Leader. The next task for patriots is to challenge their delegates to vote for conservative leadership. You rose up and elected them, now tell them what you want.