Meyers: A Paul/Buchanan candidate for Congress

General Lucid Idiocy policy: Get criticized for poor media management, get interviewed by a blog with a dumb name. Five questions for Valerie Meyers, who recently announced a run for U.S. Rep. Jim Marshall's seat here in the 8th District:

Tell me a little bit about yourself.
I'm a mother of two and I am a business professional here in Warner Robins. I work for a computer science corporation as a technical writer and a business analyst. Lived in Warner Robins for about 5 years and have always been interested in politics and been active in the Georgia Republican party over the last two years and did some campaign work with Ron Paul over the past two years as well.

Why are you running for Congress?
This campaign is about giving people an opportunity to vote for someone who is very strong about returning power to state governments and local governments and decentralizing the way that we send all of our tax money to the federal government and then they send it back to us conditionally. We want to just keep our money here in Georgia and we think we know best what to do with it here.

What are some of the first things you'd change?
My goal is to go up there and shrink the size of the federal government. ... I think we have too many programs. I think we need to limit the sphere of influence of the federal government. ... That means reducing some things like the Department of Education, energy, those kinds of big-government, wasteful-spending areas in Washington. Those are the kinds of things I want to see dismantled and taken down and returned back to the states.

How would education function without the Department of Education?
That's a good question. Back before the federal government became so involved it was state run. everything was local. ... I think mostly what the federal government does right now is send down testing, standardized testing for students of each state. ... Those kinds of things are what I think are not helpful. Each community has the right to decide how to educate its children.

What figure that maybe people have heard of would you say you are most similar to politically?
Like I said, I worked for Ron Paul's political campaign for quite a while. So I would say more in line with him and his principles. I also had a good respect for Pat Buchanan back in the 90's. But I think he's a little more isolationist than I am. I'm more of a free trader. But those two figures I would be proud to say have influenced me politically.

Ms. Meyers (campaign Web site) makes four in the GOP primary for this seat. The other three:

Ken DeLoach (site) is a Houston County preacher.

Angela Hicks (site) is an attorney here in Bibb County. She lists her height, weight and lack of illegal drug use on her campaign Web site.

Paul Rish (site) has been head of the Bibb County GOP.