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So who is this Libertarian trying to crash the party in Indiana's 9th House District?


In Indiana's 9th Congressional District, Dr. Michael Schansberg is doing something unprecedented: he's appearing statistically in polling for a US House race.

Current polling gives Schansberg 4% in what is an admittedly safe Democratic district, with Dem Baron Hill at 51-40 over GOP candidate Mike Sodrel.

So skeptics can, I suppose, dismiss Schansberg as a fairly meaningless protest vote totaling only about 40% of the margin separating the Demopublican candidates.

On the other hand, Dr Schansberg isn't a lightweight, either. He's Professor of Economics at Indiana University at New Albany and an anti-abortion Evangelical Christian candidate all at the same time.

This leaves him pretty far to the right of me, at least on social issues, but it appears that he's making his stand on basic economic issues, and he does it with some rare humor:

Baron Hill is a fiscal conservative — for a Democrat. (But that’s like saying that he’s among the best students who earned a D or F in a course.) Mike Sodrel is a fiscal moderate among Republicans (compared, for example, to fiscal conservatives like Mike Pence). That’s like going 7–9 in Big Ten basketball— and from what I understand, that's not good enough.


One might believe that we should have more police on the streets. How should we solve this? We could take your money; send it to Washington; have them take a cut of it and attach some strings; and then send it back to us— so we can hire more police. Or we could just hire our own police!


Hill is in a tough spot here since he argued that Sodrel should be blamed for the higher gas prices that occurred while he was in Congress. Of course, gas prices have increased much more since Hill returned to Congress and so he’s stuck with the silly argument he made two years ago.


On balance, I'd personally find it tough to become a real Schansberg partisan since I disagree with many of his social views, but I truly like his integrity (he doesn't mince words; I know where he stands), and he's got a lot to offer on economic issues.

Check him out.
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Comments

Eric Schansberg said…
Thanks for bringing more attention to my candidacy!

Grace and peace to you, eric
July 20, 2008 at 6:49 PM
Steven H. Newton said…
I'm trying, as much as possible, to raise the attention level for any seriously campaigning Libertarian candidate around the country. We certainly can't count on the MSM to do it.
July 21, 2008 at 1:12 AM
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