Ron Paul’s Third Party Weapon
Because of my known support for Ron Paul combined with my national Libertarian Party background and work on presidential campaigns, it’s a rare day that I’m not inundated with telephone calls and e-mails inquiring about a possible Ron Paul third party bid.
To begin, Paul has repeatedly stated that he has no intention to run as a third party candidate. However, he hasn’t absolutely ruled out the possibility. For Paul, this is the smart move right now. He’s got to concentrate on winning a Republican primary at the moment and talking about a third party run could cost him some crucial GOP support and media coverage.
However, Paul has an incredible amount of support in both the Libertarian and Constitution Party. He could be nominated by either party, or both parties, even if he doesn’t show at their conventions or indicates an intent to run under a third party banner. Of course, party bylaws would have to change and such, but there is probably enough support for this to happen.
When asked the third party question by Wolf Blitzer, Paul brought up ballot access difficulties. However, with one or more of the more organized alternative political parties cooperating on the issue, getting on the ballot in every state but Oklahoma shouldn’t be that much of an issue.
Right now, National Review is talking about a Rasmussen study that shows a non-specific pro-life third party candidate running against Hillary and Rudy would draw 14 percent of the vote. Paul’s ultimate reach as a third party candidate could be much higher than the pro-life crowd will provide, though.
Perhaps Scott Rasmussen missed the news, but abortion isn’t as hot a political item as it historically has been. Currently, the Iraq War and immigration are leading public issues and Ron Paul can certainly compete with Hillary on anti-war votes or with Rudy on immigration votes.
In addition to being well positioned on the issues, Dr. Paul now has a large enough base of supporters and donors backed with a both a professional and grassroots organization to mount an effective third party campaign, should he choose to do so before sore loser laws in states like Texas kick in.
Ron Paul already has the ability to determine the next president of the United States by selecting to run to the right, or to the left, in the general election as a third party candidate. That’s a powerful political weapon the other candidates don’t have at their disposal.
Even if Paul doesn’t run as a third party candidate (and I’d guess, at this moment, that he won’t), he may receive the nominations of several parties, anyway. Should he receive the GOP nomination and the support of (as opposed to competition from) one or more alternative parties, this would also increase his chance of winning the general election. Republicans should be aware this when considering who they will ultimately support, by the way.
I’ve been asked to do everything from starting a major “Draft Ron Paul” as an LP candidate campaign to working on bylaws changes to enable the LP to support Paul to creating a NOTA campaign for the Libertarian National Convention to talking Ron Paul into running as a LP candidate. For the moment, I’m doing none-of-the-above, but am listening to input and watching with interest as the situation unfolds.
UPDATE: CBS News just weighed in with quotes from Libertarian Party Executive Director Shane Cory and Ron Paul Communications Director Jesse Benton on the topic of an LP run. My opinion is:
Both Benton and Cory are placed in difficult positions when answering this sort of question, but I think they both did their respective jobs well. My recommendation to the Paul campaign is to continue to ignore third party possibilities and focus on placing well in Iowa and New Hampshire.
October 5th, 2007 at 7:38 pm
I could see how the LP and CP might have issues of fighting over support for Ron Paul. What do you think about swarming Unity08 as a method for ballot access instead of going through one or both of the traditional third parties?
People have certain notions about the Constitution Party and Libertarian Party. If the LP and CP both endorsed him, running on a more general sounding ballot line might further boost his appeal.
October 5th, 2007 at 7:43 pm
To some degree, I’ve been underwhelmed with Unity08. I’ve visited their DC office (they are in the Watergate, same as the LP) several times and participated in their initial teleconferences. They didn’t even have the initial acumen to know how they would structure organizationally and had no clue about ballot access issues. I’m also a bit suspect of their motivations.
However, your points about fighting between the CP and LP is valid and public perception issues are indeed valid and Unity08 might be the most credible solution.
October 5th, 2007 at 7:51 pm
It’s also an internet-based convention or primary or whatever you wanna call it. Ron Paul supporters have proven themselves to be quite good at swarming Internet polls thus far.
October 5th, 2007 at 8:02 pm
The thought of Ron Paul supporters taking over the Unity08 online convention has been amusing me for some time. I hadn’t published anything about that so as not to bring it to Unity08’s attention, but I find the concept pretty funny.
October 5th, 2007 at 8:57 pm
I am active in the Libertarian Party and also supporting Ron Paul with my “Libertarians for Ron Paul” website (www.libertariansforpaul.com)
If Ron Paul decides to run as a Libertarian candidate in the general election I will support him, and I think it would be easy for him to get the nomination. But I also see the value of Ron Paul staying in Congress at least a few more years, so I won’t lobby him to run.
If he does run as a Libertarian, he can get support from the other rightist third parties along with antiwar voters across the spectrum. If he does not run, we should concentrate on running candidates for Congress who can point to Ron Paul as a principled member of Congress they can work with.
October 5th, 2007 at 9:19 pm
Congressman Paul has always emphasized his conservative gravitas in the past. But I don’t think the mercantilist, racist CP will want to have anything to do with him once his true positions on immigration, trade, gay rights, and abortion are made 100% clear to them. And I don’t think the Christian Right will be all that thrilled either.
October 5th, 2007 at 10:46 pm
I don’t think Ron Paul positions will cause him much harm with many members of the religious right. At least, much less than they would Rudy Giuliani. In this interview, he does a great job speaking about Christian issues.
October 5th, 2007 at 10:48 pm
I should say issues important to the religious right.
October 5th, 2007 at 11:24 pm
I have been against Ron Paul’s candidacy from the beginning. Most recently in www.lastfreevoice.com comments. I called for libertarians to IMMEDIATELY cease support for Ron Paul. We have an infinitely better strategy than all the permutations Stephen Gordon et al have come up with. The Progressive Alliance strategy. At best hypothetically & this is all but impossible-Ron Paul could get elected president. He would have been under tremendous pressure to select a Rudy McRomneythom for vp. He would get just about no other third party candidate elected on his coattails. He would accomplish very little of what libertarians voted for him for because the rest of the government
Congress & the judiciaryis republican & democrat. Theoretically I predict & have shown the math & reasons, that he will not win even one primary. At best he will get some delegates like Alan Keyes did in 2000. All this time drawing support & attention from the REAL libertarian candidates. No, far better to cease this wasted effort IMMEDIATELY. Support the real libertarian candidates. At the convention adopt the progressive alliance strategy-EITHER a libertarian or green on EVERY ballot. Greens endorse the LP ticket as it will have near 100% ballot access. In 2008, every ballot agreed to be filled on a first come first served basis so as to encourage EITHER lib OR green to get on ALL ballots. The Libertarian Vote, a Cato Institute study, has shown it to be about 13%. This is about what Ron Paul is straw polling. His national polling-which polls republicans-is about 2-3%. An open primary would get Paul about another 7% from leftists=20% maximum Gallup Governance Survey. It looks like the Rasmussen poll is in the same ballpark at about 14%. This CANNOT win in a three party race. He would get a Perot type result. Impressive, remarkable but NO Cigar, Steve. No, rather go for one of the biggest blocks of available votes, the leftist vote which I estimate to be about 27%. 27% + 13%=40% maximum progressive vote. Now THAT is impressive & VERY competitive in what would be in effect a 3 party race. So I’m calling for ALL libertarians & progressives to cease supporting Ron Paul. Support the REAL libertarian candidates IMMEDIATELY who have been neglected while this Ron Paul devolution has been unfolding, patiently waiting for it to end hopefully on super duper Tuesday when the GOP will in effect chose it’s REAL nominee. I also call for a libertariansagainstpaul website. & also a progressive alliance website to help coordinate the progressive vote. I also call for libertarians to not register to vote republican in the primaries. Register libertarian, stay registered libertarian & vote progressive-EITHER lib. or green. NEVER AGAIN vote republican. WE ARE IN TO WIN.October 6th, 2007 at 12:10 am
Robert Milnes comments on blogs because the blogs on which he comments have more traffic than his does.
Milnes, you should probably go buy yourself a clue, providing you have enough money to afford one. If not, get your 0.0000314 supporters to fund it for you.
October 6th, 2007 at 12:21 am
Steve, why don’t you tell everyone the truth. You are misusing your talents to mislead people to support amazed Ron Paul into a devolution & eventually after a lot of first class & limo rides, to nowhere.
October 6th, 2007 at 12:26 am
The longer the MIC and their hired stooge Dick Cheney forces troops to stay in Iraq, and the longer the democrats do nothing, the more likely Paul is to gain traction. I told you the RP was going to splinter 2 years ago, and the Paul candidacy is the fault line. There will come a tipping point where anyone on any side that supported the war will become unelectable. You can just now see the cracks in the popular media, like the NY Times article on the “Justice” Dept. They would have been cowed into submission from reporting the story even a year ago. 6 years of phony patriotism based on whipped up fear and manipulation from the likes of Armitage, Rumsfield, Cheney, and the puppet Bush.
One things for sure – Paul will get more votes in the Republican Primary than any POTUS CP or LP candidate has ever gotten. I gotta laugh my ass off when libertarians call Perot’s 19% popular vote a failure of some kind. There’s no 3rd party in this country that can even get 2%. If Paul gets 4% in the RP, thats still 3% better than Clark in 80, and I’m betting he’ll get close to double digits.
October 6th, 2007 at 12:32 am
BTW and FYI, I haven’t been around because I have been in the hospital for 3 weeks. They came close to sawing my left leg off below the knee due to a massive infection. Someone asked me through email how come I was not around.
October 6th, 2007 at 12:44 am
“But I don’t think the mercantilist, racist CP will want to have anything to do with him once his true positions on immigration, trade, gay rights, and abortion are made 100% clear to them.”
GE,
Its statements like this that remind me of why we so often clash. Mercentilist? Not really, mercantilism often refers to both protectionism and favoritism,whereby corporate lobbiers get “inside jobs” from the government. Protectionist, definetly. But dont confuse the two.
Racist? Please. I’v already stated in many areas why its rediculous to assert that the CP is racist, at least one of those reasons being that at LEAST 3 of the State Party leaders are black, Howard Phillips is Jewish, and several county chairmen in Western states are Asian. We attract a couple of racist voters, but no more than the LP (or GP for that matter).
Everyone is perfectly capable of understanding his positions on Trade, Immigration, Gay Rights, and Abortion.
Gay Rights are the ONLY ones that cause so much as a stir. His pro-life record is SOLID. Immigration is acceptable to the CP because he wants to end the welfare system. Trade, a couple of state leaders agree on—but this is certainly nothing we cant reconcile. Oh,and if you’d like to bring up gambling, drug war, and prostitution—they’re quite aware of that too. At the last NatCom meeting, I spoke with about a dozen state leaders about it.
So stop with the rumor-mongering. We’ve known about, and been familar with Ron Paul, for QUITE a long time.
October 6th, 2007 at 12:53 am
Robert, since you are very high on the word “real”, (but increasingly not the word “reality”), why would you think a “real” green would support a “real” libertarian?
October 6th, 2007 at 1:16 am
Jay Matthews, I do not know for certain. But given the opportunity to possibly win & immediately get several things done which greens & libs agree (e.g end the war) & work on other areas, I think a rational person would choose to do that.
October 6th, 2007 at 1:52 am
To expand upon what Jake Porter posted, I strongly recommend that those Libertarians who believe that supporting Ron Paul is supporting the Libertarian party listen to the radio interview he gave on The American View.
I would pay particular attention to the points regarding IGNORING Supreme Court rulings such as Roe v Wade that in his opinion should never have been heard (18:29 in the radio interview). I would pay particular attention to his agreement with the commentator that the Bible is inerrant (5:09 in the interview) and that any law that contradicts God’s law is not law (18:29 again).
I realize he was playing to the audience for that radio program, but as a Libertarian, I find this particularly disturbing in a candidate for the Presidency of the United States, one who would be sworn to uphold the Constitution.
October 6th, 2007 at 1:52 am
The link is in Jake’s post, above.
October 6th, 2007 at 8:13 am
Jay Matthews, Re: greens voting lib.-cooperation in mutual interest & pragmatic interest in order to win & actually have a seat at the table instead of hanging around the table waiting for crumbs like a dog. A green vote for a green president is a wasted vote. Not enough ballot access for one thing. But to combine the vote by voting for the libertarian vastly increases the chance of winning & other ballots winning on the coattails. Any damage to ballot access could be repaired in the next 4 years. Why not vote libertarian?
October 6th, 2007 at 8:22 am
Especially if the voter is in a state where there is no green p but there is a libertarian p. Write in Ralph Nader?!! Dem. or rep.? Leave ballot blank?
October 6th, 2007 at 9:20 am
“Mercantilism is an economic theory that holds the prosperity of a nation dependable upon its supply of capital… (and) that the ruling government should advance these goals by playing a protectionist role in the economy, by encouraging exports and discouraging imports, especially through the use of tariffs.” Mercantilism, not socialism (which didn’t really exist yet), was the inspiration for The Wealth of Nations (i.e. Smith’s opposition to mercantilism). Mercantilism is NOT capitalism, and the CP platform is NOT capitalist. Sorry. It’s not.
Racist = Well documented. It’s very collectivist to think that just because a handfull of blacks or Jews are members of the party, that the party can’t be overwhelmingly racist. Just look at your most recent presidential nominee, and his affiliation with the League of the South. I suppose you’re going to argue that a thoroughly collectivist and racial-identity organization like the LoS isn’t racist either, huh?
I think you’re wrong about the CP being able to embrace Paul’s comparatively moderate stand on immigration. But you’re probably right about their willingness to accept, in large degree, his stances on gays (which is wrong when it comes to marriage and military, by the way), abortion, etc. But the larger “religious right” is never going to accept him when they find out he did things like vote against the partial-birth abortion ban.
October 6th, 2007 at 12:29 pm
There isn’t a political party in this country, unfortunately, including even the LP, that suffer from some element of racism. The point is how the party conducts itself towards people. The Constitution Party has welcomed people of all races and ethnic groups to participate at its highest levels. We have two state chairmen who are black, as well as many others who are active in their state parties; there are, for example, numerous Jewish people in leadership positions; and many women hold positions of leaderhip and extreme importance and authority within the party.
These things are only brought up because on these pages this person has called our party “racist”—and I am certain that the anti-semitic and sexist labels were only ommitted as an oversight—not because we otherwise bother to classify or separate people on the basis of any of these things. With the kind of misconceptions that are propounded, as exemplified in the proceeding post, I think that it is quite remarkable that we are able to attract the number of minorities into the party that we do. Let me just make it absolutely clear: people of all races, colors, creeds and ethnic origins are most welcome to join and participate at every level of the Constitution Party.
We even have a few people who like to think they are experts on everything, just like the previous poster. See, we don’t even discriminate against those suffering from insufferable arrogance.
October 6th, 2007 at 1:00 pm
To be clear: I’m not accusing any individual member of the party who posts here of racism. Michael Peroutka is a racist. I have associates who were in the CP who admitted that there were racists among them in the Michigan US Taxpayers Party. Racists are tolerated—they’re nominated for president! To be fair, many of these super extremists have been purged from the party. But I still think the radical immigration and trade platforms are epistemologically racist.
As for the mercantilist angle… I believe Trent himself admitted that platform was mercantilist, which is by its nature, anti-capitalist.
October 6th, 2007 at 1:01 pm
Also: If I’m wrong, then great! I hope the CP and like minds continue to support Ron Paul.
October 6th, 2007 at 5:32 pm
Great, because you ARE wrong. The CP does not advocate for white supremacy, nor has there been any hostility to non-white members of the party. Therefore it’s not racist.
It’s your pathedic arguments and stereo-typing which is why I don’t take you seriously.
How about you spend some intimate time with your wife, GE and come back when you’re in the appropriate mood.
October 6th, 2007 at 5:35 pm
“But I still think the radical immigration and trade platforms are epistemologically racist.”
=Obviously the Green Party never left you Jason. How collectivist of you!
October 6th, 2007 at 5:45 pm
People
Every normal Americans have to realized,not one person on earth who is good for everybody. The leadership of the two major party,and almost all of the candidate for president is worth nothing. Now we have Mr. Ron Paul,
he is good for everybody? NO . But he is much better than Mrs.Clinton,or Guliani.What we need before Jan. 2008,all of those doing nothing,going nowhere third and independent parties, the Christien coalition, veteran groups( I hope they realized they don’t fight for our freedom,and let this two party give it away for the NAU), and every freedeom lover true American organisation stand behind him.We all of us must acting as good Americans,not good and blinded Dem. Rep. Const. Libert. or any other party members or supporters. I just get a letter from the republicans,they asking for donation. I return with a few word.I’m sorry but I can’t support the party anymore becouse the leadership wants to give away our nation. I still stand behind some of the members. God Bless.
We all as a freedom lover Americans must stick together behind the only person who is have a chance to represent us. And that person is,Mr. Ron Paul. WE THE PEOPLE must stand behind him. Don’t forget, we don’t have to much time left for arguing. God Bless You All.
October 6th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
Cody: That makes no sense. Saying that a platform is racist doesn’t make me a collectivist. You’re the admitted and proud collectivist on this board.
Racism is more broadly defined than “white supremacy.”
Who or what am I stereotyping? I think you need to look up a few words in the dictionary: 1) Stereotyping, 2) Collectivist. You can’t stereotype a platform.
You guys are like speech police. One little word really got you riled up.
October 6th, 2007 at 7:52 pm
“Congressman Paul has always emphasized his conservative gravitas in the past. But I don’t think the mercantilist, racist CP will want to have anything to do with him once his true positions on immigration, trade, gay rights, and abortion are made 100% clear to them. And I don’t think the Christian Right will be all that thrilled either.”—————————-
I might have agreed with you, but not after both Michael Peroutka and Chuck Baldwin endorsed him, and he came in second at the Values Voter debate….
October 6th, 2007 at 8:01 pm
Paul would still face opposition for the Libertarian Party nomination. In a debate on September 27 George Phillies, Bob Jackson and Robert Milnes all said they would oppose Paul.
Phillies said: “I intend to do my best to make sure he is not our nominee because he has no business, with his modern stands, being the Libertarian Party nominee.”
Read more about this at: http://conservativepresident2008.blogspot.com/2007/09/lp-candidates-paul-not-for-me.html
October 6th, 2007 at 11:13 pm
I intend to do my best to make sure he is not our nominee because he has no business, with his modern stands, being the Libertarian Party nominee
About the only issues where Phillies would be in disagreement with Paul are abortion and monetary policy. Claiming that Paul’s positions are un-Libertarian for either of these issues is idiotic.
Why doesn’t Phillies attack Paul’s un-Libertarian foreign policy? Oh, I forgot. They share the same horrible position.
October 6th, 2007 at 11:31 pm
That makes no sense. Saying that a platform is racist doesn’t make me a collectivist. You’re the admitted and proud collectivist on this board.
=You assume all are the same, that a political party thinks the same- that makes you a collectivist in your attitude towards the CP. Collectivist me? You’re no better then Brianna
Who or what am I stereotyping?
=That the CP is racist you dumb dumb! You minus well say all black people can play basketball very well.
The fact that you accuse a non-racist political party of racism shows you’re politically unreliable.
Go spend some fun-time with your wife, Jason.
October 7th, 2007 at 1:24 am
If Ron Paul were elected president, several hundred documents which would reveal evidence of neocons complicity in 9/11 would surface right out of the gate, and be leaked to the media.
For the neocons this election is not just about who wins, its a matter of life and death.
October 7th, 2007 at 2:30 am
Galileo, interesting your position that Steven Gordon et al want to keep troofers away from Ron Paul. If there are any such documents I’m sure a progressive president would properly deal with them. So it is not Ron Paul or nothing proposition in this matter. Besides, Ron Paul is not going to win Iowa or even one primary. Voting for Ron Paul does not equal freedom. It is a LOT more complicated & difficult that that. Even if a progressive president & Congress gets elected, it will be a long difficult process. The Ron Paul panacea is false, just like a REAL libertarian does not campaign in/through the GOP.
October 7th, 2007 at 11:30 am
Robert, the only point you stand on in regards to RP not being a real libertarian is he’s not on the LP ticket. (Nevermind the fact platform, not party, make one a libertarian.)
That being said if he was on the LP ticket would your tune suddenly change?
October 7th, 2007 at 11:51 am
Jay Matthews, mostly already answered see: 5 posts above. Ben Miller comment. Correct; He is functioning in & through the GOP. But further, I can’t speak for Phillies or Jackson. My main reason for opposing Ron Paul GETTING the LP nomination is that he alienates about 3/4 of the leftist vote. On issues involving religious fervor, abortion etc. i.e. he is a “right” libertarian. However, if he was eventually the LP nominee, I would support him; I would support whoever is eventually the LP nominee. I would try to salvage the progressive alliance strategy by trying to convince him to pursue it, but would be very pessimistic that he would or could. To me, the 2008 campaign would then be a huge catastrophe & lost opportunity.
October 7th, 2007 at 12:04 pm
The 2008 LP presidential campaign, at this point, is already a huge catastrophe. I hold zero hope that anything will happen to salvage it. Like it or not, the only game in town is Ron Paul.
Now, in my mind, a real libertarian would try and regain and protect every bit of liberty possible when the opportunity rises. If a chance to regain even five percent of our liberty comes along, would libertarians take that opportunity, or wait until (or if) a better opportunity comes along?
As for me, I want to grab every shred of liberty back from those bastards whenever possible. That’s why my support is for Ron Paul.
October 7th, 2007 at 2:43 pm
Having candidates like George Phillies advertise the party, and helping state organizations with ballot access is not a catastrophe. In fact, it should be encouraged.
October 7th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
First, I don’t believe Ron Paul will run as a third party candidate. As soon as he declares, 90 percent of his future campaign money will instead stay at home. Second, the “sore loser” laws don’t mean much because George Wallace and John Anderson still got on the 50 state ballots in spite of those laws.
October 7th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
First off,
Cody. Seriously, stop. There is ABSOLUTELY no reason to be referencing GE’s wife here, so back off—-really. I find personal ad hominem attacks quite disgusting and pathetic,and you are exemplifying that even more than GE was.
GE,
Thanks for saying you “hope” your wrong. I believe you are because i’ve spent copious amounts of time with the leadership of this party, as well as on the phone speaking with the various voters and activists. In Louisiana, of the 300-some-odd calls, only one of them was a racist. A guy from Northern Louisiana who claimed he wanted to “Follow in The Duke’s footsteps”. I promptly told him that I was half-irish, and my family had suffered from a lot of racism in the years after they imigrated here. I noted that I had just met the party leadership, and all of them would despise a man like David Duke, particularly the two black state chairmen I met, an then Jewish founder. I told him he was, in no uncertain terms, NEVER welcome to a state party meeting, and that if he showed—we would have the Seargeant at Arms forcefully remove him from the building. And I meant it. I dont tolerate racism, nor does this party. Upon telling Jack McClain (Southern States Chairman) about this run-in and my response, he backed my actions 100%.
GE, have you ever met the party leadership? Have you ever met some of the state chairmen? Because it seems to me that you are either assuming, or being willfully ignorant.
October 7th, 2007 at 8:16 pm
This is true.
However, having George Phillies alienate thousands of activist Ron Paul supporters who would otherwise have a natural home in the LP when/if their candidate loses should not be encouraged. George Phillies would have a tough time bringing even one Ron Paul activist into the LP after his constant bitching about the man. I would considered squandering an obvious opportunity to grow the party to be a catastrophe.
October 7th, 2007 at 8:19 pm
Cody. Seriously, stop. There is ABSOLUTELY no reason to be referencing GE’s wife here, so back off—-really. I find personal ad hominem attacks quite disgusting and pathetic,and you are exemplifying that even more than GE was.
=Remember how GE/Capitalist Dove/Undercover Anarchist was before on TPW, especially about bringing up sexuality and his sexual frustration with his wife? Well if he’s going to act like a stereo-typing whiney b***h, then I will treat him as one here, so back off Trent!
October 7th, 2007 at 8:23 pm
This is not true. I am in contact with many Ron Paul supporters who have said they will be happy to join the LP and support George when Ron Paul is no longer in the race.
October 7th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
Cody,
Key word is, used to be. GE has calmed his language down DRAMATICALLY and has not, in several months, used inflammatory language of that nature. You’re a county chairman—act like one.
October 7th, 2007 at 9:18 pm
Cody – I never brought up sexual frustration. Someone said, “you’re sexually frustrated or something,” and I said, “Yeah, my wife is pregnant” or something of that nature. I was ignorant in the past, and I admit that. I used to get a kick out of getting people riled up. Now I realize that was juvenile and stupid. But back to the matter at hand, I have said numerous times in this thread that I do not believe all CP members to be racist. I’m not stereotyping or collectivizing.
Trent – I knew some Michigan party members, all of whom were not racist, but at least one of whom admitted that there were overt racists in the party. I don’t want to name names, but the people I knew in Michigan were the CP candidate from CD-7 in ‘04 and ‘06, and my across-the-street neighbors, one of whom was an outspoke opponent of including Jesus in the platform and his wife, who ran for some educational board in 2004.
That said, I will admit that I should not have used the word “racist” the first time I used it here, and instead, should have said “nationalist,” which to me is only a minor step up from racism on the collectivist totem pole.
October 7th, 2007 at 9:39 pm
You’re a county chairman—act like one.
=Not anymore, I stepped down.
The new guy in Riverside is David Cheney.
October 7th, 2007 at 9:43 pm
“I used to get a kick out of getting people riled up. Now I realize that was juvenile and stupid.”
=Uhmmm, calling the CP racist is pretty much stupid GE. Now if you said that the CP formally had elements of religious bigotry, then that accusation would’ve been much more justified.
October 7th, 2007 at 9:44 pm
That said, I will admit that I should not have used the word “racist” the first time I used it here, and instead, should have said “nationalist,”
=I agree, that term does describe us.
October 7th, 2007 at 10:15 pm
I meant to ascribe “racism” (should have said “nationalism”) to the platform, not necessarily to every individual in the party. I’ve clarified this at least four times now. I take it back. Let’s move on.
October 7th, 2007 at 10:15 pm
Correction: Describes you.
October 8th, 2007 at 1:23 am
GE,
While I dont consider myself either a racist or a nationalist—it is an important distinction between the the two.
Even with your correction, I take offense. Neither the platform,nor the party as a whole are racist (specifically,we can argue the nationalist point).
Otherwise why would a black man be the front-runner for our nomination?
October 8th, 2007 at 7:48 am
[...] Third Party Watch argues that all the talk about Ron Paul potentially running as a Third Party candidate were he to lose the race for the Republican nomination should be a mark in his favor: Even if Paul doesn’t run as a third party candidate (and I’d guess, at this moment, that he won’t), he may receive the nominations of several parties, anyway. Should he receive the GOP nomination and the support of (as opposed to competition from) one or more alternative parties, this would also increase his chance of winning the general election. Republicans should be aware this when considering who they will ultimately support, by the way. Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]
October 8th, 2007 at 10:26 am
If the LP and CP want to nominate Ron Paul for President, they should troop down to Texas, ask for his permission, then draft him. Party members should, by their own will, change their bylaws and draft him, rather than have any organized camapaign for him to win their nominations.
This is the only way a RP third party candidacy can work. With the blessing of Texas law, RP can still run for his seat in Congress and the LP and CP can fight these silly state laws in court that say your name can only appear on the ballot once. It can also help these parties gain ballot access in their respective states. This is the only way such a run will be productive instead of a another vanity effort that will fall apart by the fall. RP should campaign for his seat in Congress, not run a nation-wide effort that will be futile and put his Congressional set in jepoardy. We need his voice in Congress if he can’t be President.
Right now our focus is on the GOP nomination which is a long shot but is still obtainable.
October 8th, 2007 at 1:09 pm
The line between racism and nationalism is so fine that it barely exists. They are epistemologically the same. Racism = tribalism, and a “nation” is nothing more than a confederation of tribes.
The argument of “I can’t be racist, I have black friends” is well beneath you, Trent. There are plenty of whites and Jews in the Green Party who are racist against white people and are anti-semitic. And it doesn’t have to be “against” anyone. A racist is a racist. Black racists and white racists can be friendly. Look at the alignment of the ultra-hard right with radical Islam, or, even back in the day, with the Black Muslims. I am not comparing the CP to any of these organizations, and I don’t want to argue the “the CP is racist / no it’s not” point, as I’ve already apologized and taken it back. But your defense of the party’s lack of racism is weak on principal.
Take a look at the League of the South. It is clearly a racist organization. Yet there are black members, as well as a vast majority of whites. There was a racist (might still be), predominantly black “religious” organization called the Nation of Gods and Earths, whose adherents were known as 5%ers. There ideology was “the black man is God.” And yet they allowed white members! The rap ground, Young Black Teenagers—who were actually all white!—were members of this organization, and NO, it was not a joke.
October 10th, 2007 at 11:31 am
[...] I’ll continue to stand by my previous opinion: Ron Paul already has the ability to determine the next president of the United States by selecting to run to the right, or to the left, in the general election as a third party candidate. That’s a powerful political weapon the other candidates don’t have at their disposal. [...]
October 10th, 2007 at 11:59 pm
The polls are always a joke, and RP as the LP nom would result in