The Libertarian Party

Saturday in Sedalia, Sen. Chuck Purgason (R-Caulfield) and Rep. Jim Guest (R-King City) spoke to a regional meeting of the Campaign for Liberty -- folks who "stand for free markets, low taxes and a non interventionist foreign policy."  At the event, Purgason delivered his now-familiar critique of Washington Republicans' record of deficit spending. 

Senator Purgason...stated that the Republican Party has lost their way.  "In 2002 Congress under Republican control had a 30 billion dollar deficit.  I could live with that given the downturn in the economy and the 9/11 tragedy, but in the next 2 year the budget deficit grew to $792 billion dollars under Republican control of Congress... "People wanted change in 2008,  I believe the change they wanted was for elected Republicans to vote along the Republican Party Platform." "In 2008, a bad election year for Republicans nationwide, the Missouri Senate gained 3 Republican seats because we stood on conservative Republican principles." 

Peter Kinder, Mike Ferguson and Speaker Catherine Hanaway in 2004

The Missouri GOP is very excited today about the decision of former Libertarian Lt. Governor candidate Mike Ferguson to join the Republican Party and endorse Roy Blunt's candidacy for the US Senate.

Astute Fired Up! readers may remember Ferguson from the stories about Roy Blunt's recent comments about the horrors of government health care.  It was in a radio interview with Ferguson two weeks ago that Blunt's stated it would have been "best" if the government never created Medicare or Medicaid. Perhaps Blunt's libertarian views on health care helped seal the deal; Ferguson is now serving as an "informal advisor" to the Blunt campaign.

It's hard to feel bad about this when Peter Kinder worked so hard to stoke the flames on the MIAC report:

The Missouri Libertarian Party asks how Mr. Kinder expects to lead our state when he cannot lead his own party to honor his call for an investigation into the now-defunct “strategic memo” that outraged Missourians...

If Peter Kinder cannot lead his own party on something with overwhelming public support, how does he expect to lead Missouri as governor?

Too weeks ago, the Libertarian Party was lauding a "peaceful resolution" to the MIAC controversy.  Now they're "fuming" over the lack of legislative hearings on the matter. (They also think that Kinder "said the right things" in his MIAC editorial series -- I think there's a pretty strong case that he did not.)

Desperate for some relevance in the public sphere, the Libertarian Party needs to keep this controversy going. But with a more complete understanding of how and when the controversial report was created, legislative hearings seem unlikely.

An odd turn of events for Kinder.