Something of a political wunderkind, John C. Marsden was 18 years old when he was elected as an alternate delegate to the 2000 Republican National Convention by Fifth District GOP members, two years before he was graduated from Hampden-Sydney College.
Until April, Marsden was unit chairman of the Prince Edward County Republican Committee, when he was defeated for reelection by 18-year-old Daniel Bradshaw. He retains his post as legislative chairman for the 59th House of Delegates district.
Marsden is now an attorney, practicing in Appomattox County while living in Prince Edward County. He served as temporary chairman of the Fifth District Republican Convention near Farmville on May 1. After the convention was adjourned, Marsden spoke briefly with the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner, giving his assessment of the convention (“It went really well,” he said.) and what comes next.
Anticipating a general election contest in which Fifth District Republicans will be seeking to unseat incumbent Representative Tom Perriello (D-Ivy), Marsden addressed the question of how to unite various elements within the Republican party – social conservatives, libertarians, fiscal conservatives, Club for Growth types, and others – and move in a common direction.
“Wow,” he exclaimed. “I tell you, that’s a very tough question. How do long do you have for me to answer that?”
Taking a breath, Marsden continued.
“It’s a diverse group of people. It is obviously a coalition like any political party is. I think, fundamentally, though, they can all get together behind the idea [of] ‘more individual, less government.’”
That formulation is not as simple as it appears, however. Marsden reflected on the different groups and ideas within the conservative movement and added, “Now, what part of people’s lives they want the less government and the more individual freedoms, that sometimes comes into play and that’s why we have these factions.”
He posed these questions: “Aare we going to be a country that primarily focuses on the government or primarily focuses on the citizens? Who has the responsibilities and who enjoys the privileges in the country?”
Marsden suggested that “any right-of-center party in this country, or even in other countries, is fundamentally bound together by something like that,” a focus on individual liberty and smaller government.
Noting that the seven candidates for the GOP congressional nomination had just spoken at the convention, Marsden said he thought that all of them “echoed different pieces of different coalitions.”
The various groups are not completely set apart from each other, he said.
“You can belong to many of them, all of them, some of them,” he suggested. “I don’t think that any of them are so mutually exclusive from one another that you can’t consider yourself a part of different groups.”
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Comments
That suit!!!! Is he like a love child of Frank Zappa or something???
You should have seen him in high school, he had an Afro that early Ti berlake would have died for.
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