Why Conservatives Should Contain Their Excitement About Barney Frank’s Retirement

Barney Frank’s exit from the political stage shouldn’t make conservatives happy. Frank has more in common with conservatives, especially free marketeers like Ron Paul, than they’ll admit.

Those who agree with the founders that Congress, not unaccountable Fed bureaucrats, should be in charge of the value of the dollar may find themselves missing Frank. Paul’s “audit” of the Federal Reserve, shepherded into the final Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation by Frank, is one of that bill’s few redeeming features.

Another area in which libertarians such as Paul and liberals such as Frank found themselves working together was reform of marijuana laws. Frank and Paul co-sponsored a bill decriminalizing pot at the national level and leaving it up to states to regulate it.

Frank wanted to legalize and tax Internet gambling.

Finally, Frank has joined with Republican senators and congressmen in fighting environmentalist bureaucrats at the Commerce Department, whose thoughtless regulations are killing fishing jobs in his congressional district, which includes parts of coastal southern Massachusetts.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.