United Liberty

Republican voters have finally figured out what Republican politicians over the last decade or so haven’t been able to grasp: we have a spending problem in Washington.

This year we have an opportunity to reject the big spending ways of Obama and embrace a strong fiscal conservative, to find a man who practices what he preaches when it comes to handling money.

Enter Ron Paul.

Paul’s campaign hasn’t really been in the frontrunner position in the presidential race (according to the media), nor is he the presumed nominee for the GOP. His strategy of grabbing delegates continues, though, funded by people who believe in his message.

As for campaign debt, there is none. That fact shouldn’t come as much of a shock to anyone; Paul has been preaching fiscal conservatism for decades, so one would expect his presidential campaign to adhere to common sense practices like keeping expenses lower than revenues and not running up debt.

In addition, Paul refuses Secret Service protection because he sees it as a form of welfare: “You’re having the taxpayers pay to take care of somebody and I’m an ordinary citizen and I would think I should pay for my own protection and it costs, I think, more than $50,000 a day to protect those individuals. It’s a lot of money.”

Then there’s Newt Gingrich.

Gingrich’s campaign also hasn’t really been in the frontrunner position (except for a brief time late last year), nor is he the presumed nominee for the GOP. He continues campaigning as a fiscal conservative, but when you look at his campaign’s finance reports, he doesn’t look like much of a fiscal conservative at all.

While Paul carries no campaign debt, Gingrich spent March taking on $3 million in new debt, ending the first quarter of the year with a staggering $4.3 million dollar debt. Newt has also been under Secret Service protection since March 6 and in the 49 days since then, he has cost the American taxpayers almost $2.5 million.

The continued argument that Newt is the last conservative standing is outright insanity. Fiscal conservatives act like fiscal conservatives. Big spenders act like big spenders. The campaign reports are released quarterly. This isn’t rocket science.

You Newt folks can argue all day long that Ron Paul will never win the nomination and that he’s just wasting his time on the campaign trail. You can rehash whatever drivel you received in Newt’s latest email blast all you want, but there are a few things you can’t refute:

1. Newt Gingrich is not a fiscal conservative. His spending habits prove otherwise. Running up debt while posing as a conservative falls somewhere between deceit and insanity.
2. Newt’s chances to win the nomination are, at best, no better than Ron Paul’s. Newt admits he needs a brokered convention to win, but he hasn’t been dedicated to finding delegates like the Paul campaign has been.
3. Ron Paul isn’t spending money he doesn’t have. What’s the difference between zero campaign debt and $4 million in campaign debt? Character.
4. Ron Paul isn’t relying on taxpayers for his security detail. Every day Newt stays in the race, it’s another $50,000 contributed to our federal deficit.

I’d like to encourage my Newt-supporting friends to consider the possibility that it’s time to support somebody else. You can latch onto the Romney campaign, but he is, as you’ve said for some time now, not really any better than Obama. Or you can come join forces behind an actual fiscal conservative who isn’t running up debt (for himself or for the government) to remain in the race.

There’s something to be said for sticking with a candidate to the end of his campaign. We saw a lot of people jumping between candidates early in the campaign, and those of you who have stuck with Newt to this point are to be commended. I say that very sincerely.

Not running off and leaving your candidate’s campaign is admirable, but when your candidate shows he isn’t the true conservative you once believed him to be, you haven’t left him: he’s left you.

Such is the case for the Gingrich campaign, which may well be over after last night. It’s time to stop pretending that Newt is a conservative and either get behind Ron Paul or embrace the liberal record of Mitt Romney.