I’ve been invited to speak at the Lee LIBERTY Forum this Thursday (Sep. 6) at 7:00 PM (with dinner starting at 6:00 PM) at McAlister’s Deli in Fort Myers (13300 S. Cleveland Av at Cypress Lake Dr).  I’m looking forward to it, and hope to see you there.

If you can’t make it, we’ll be videotaping my time there, and we’ll post both the raw video and a edit together a highlights video.

This monthly event is hosted by the the Lee County Libertarian Party and so I’m sure the subject of libertarianism is sure to come up!  I also plan to discuss the FairTax which is fascinating proposal that I think has some real potential.

As it turns out, this will be my first public speaking event as a candidate, which I think is appropriate because a strong libertarian streak defines much of the political climate here in Southwest Florida. Since the 80s, the Republican party has successfully courted this impulse, but in the past few years there seems to be a growing dissatisfaction among libertarian minded voters that the GOP has been taken over by a “base” of Neoconservatives and evangelical extremists.

This is a big part of the reason why the presidential candidacy of Ron Paul has generated so much excitement both here locally and also in the online community. Among the Republicans I know and respect, I think no one better represents what they stand for than Ron Paul, and if the media coverage of elections was based more on issues and platforms instead of money and the horse race, he would be the GOP nominee for President in 2008.