0 comment Friday, November 7, 2014 | admin
I've been looking at the coverage of the Constitution Party nomination of Chuck Baldwin, and it's much as I expected.
Surprisingly, though, the Fox News coverage (see the video here) was rather fair and even-handed.
But here, the headline seems biased:
Constitution Party chooses talk-show host over Keyes for presidential nomination
Meeting in Kansas City on Saturday, the Constitution Party tapped talk show host Chuck Baldwin over former ambassador Alan Keyes as its 2008 presidential nominee.
The pick was seen as something of an upset, given Keyes� higher national profile. Known for his fiery stemwinders, Keyes is a two-time GOP presidential candidate who abandoned the Republican Party this month to join the Constitution Party, which stands for limited government and is committed to ending abortion and bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq.
But Baldwin�s roots in the Constitution Party run deeper. He was the party�s 2004 vice-presidential candidate, and party members said his stands were more in line with party thinking.
Still, the two waged a fierce battle in the days leading up to the vote, described as the most contentious in the party�s 16-year history. Baldwin wound up winning easily, 384-126. The Missouri and Kansas delegations basically split their votes between the two.
"They just rejected the most qualified man to be president," said Tom Hoefling of Lohrville, Iowa, who is Keyes� national political director. "Chuck Baldwin will have no impact on this election whatsoever."
And Keyes would have an impact?! Keyes, who has already run twice for president, and who couldn't even make a go of his cable TV show, or talk radio?
I see that the Freepers are reacting to this news with their usual knee-jerk responses. About 25 percent on the thread I read are conservative enough to recognize that Baldwin is the real deal, while another 25 percent seem to think Keyes is by far the better man (Keyes has a small cult among Freepers, some of whom are still looking for their personal black conservative hero), while close to 50 percent on the thread are already sneering and jeering.
The Constitution Party can't win; Baldwin, they say, is an unknown (unlike the household name, Keyes, I take it) and the CP is full of 'fruit loops' and losers.
At least reading the discussion over there, I am reminded once again just why I want nothing more to do with the Republican Party.
The mere fact that so many people in both parties, but especially, it seems, on the ''right'' are so quick to declare all third parties as hopeless causes, and as havens for 'nutjobs' and crazies, explains very well why we now have two dysfunctional parties with a strangehold on our political system.
As long as there are so many diehard party loyalists who think that straying from our two divinely-ordained political parties will result in the end of the world, we will never find our way out of the maze we are in.
At what point will these hard-heads and dimwits realize that the system as it is ain't working -- or at least, if it is working, it is not working for the American people? If our present sorry state of things does not break people of their dependency on the two-party system, nothing will.
We all just witnessed a combination of our malevolent media and obtuse citizens reject the candidacy of a good man, Ron Paul. For many months, since Ron Paul first announced his candidacy, we've heard the news media ridicule and dismiss him, on those rare occasions when they deigned to notice him at all, and we've heard every village idiot in the country proclaim 'no third party can win. You're throwing your vote away if you vote third party.' Or this one: ''if you vote third party you are just helping to elect a Democrat, and it will be your fault when [Hillary/Obama] is in the White House''.
This kind of ''thinking'' is what will guarantee that our situation only goes from bad to worse. This stubborn cluelessness is what has allowed our two monopolistic parties to flout the will of their constituents, and to go rogue. The political classes know that they don't even have to pay attention to the will of the people; they know that there are enough docile, knee-jerk loyalists who think they have 'nowhere else to go' who will vote for them and continue contributing to their candidacies and to the Party, regardless of their defiance of us and their open contempt for us.
Is there a chance that we can learn from the experience with Dr. Paul's candidacy and avoid letting the media and the obstructionists among us marginalize Chuck Baldwin's candidacy too? This may well be our last chance to stand up for traditional American principles before the demographic tidal wave washes away the last real vestiges of our political power. There is a lot at stake in this election, and yet I see a state of torpor among many in this country, or a kind of passivity born of resignation and cynicism. I see too many people who are beaten already, who are convinced that nothing we can do will make a difference, so why even try?
There are so many who have been thoroughly convinced that the two-party system is inevitable and forever; we can't change it, so we are foolish to try.
With such defeatist attitudes, of course these lugubrious predictions become self-fulfilling prophecies. We can't change things precisely because people have been convinced that we can't.
Either we try to rekindle the old American can-do spirit and the spirit of independence of mind, or we just give up and shuffle off the stage of history, leaving it to the invading hordes and their multiculturalist collaborators.
We have another chance now; let's make the most of it.
Surprisingly, though, the Fox News coverage (see the video here) was rather fair and even-handed.
But here, the headline seems biased:
Constitution Party chooses talk-show host over Keyes for presidential nomination
Meeting in Kansas City on Saturday, the Constitution Party tapped talk show host Chuck Baldwin over former ambassador Alan Keyes as its 2008 presidential nominee.
The pick was seen as something of an upset, given Keyes� higher national profile. Known for his fiery stemwinders, Keyes is a two-time GOP presidential candidate who abandoned the Republican Party this month to join the Constitution Party, which stands for limited government and is committed to ending abortion and bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq.
But Baldwin�s roots in the Constitution Party run deeper. He was the party�s 2004 vice-presidential candidate, and party members said his stands were more in line with party thinking.
Still, the two waged a fierce battle in the days leading up to the vote, described as the most contentious in the party�s 16-year history. Baldwin wound up winning easily, 384-126. The Missouri and Kansas delegations basically split their votes between the two.
"They just rejected the most qualified man to be president," said Tom Hoefling of Lohrville, Iowa, who is Keyes� national political director. "Chuck Baldwin will have no impact on this election whatsoever."
And Keyes would have an impact?! Keyes, who has already run twice for president, and who couldn't even make a go of his cable TV show, or talk radio?
I see that the Freepers are reacting to this news with their usual knee-jerk responses. About 25 percent on the thread I read are conservative enough to recognize that Baldwin is the real deal, while another 25 percent seem to think Keyes is by far the better man (Keyes has a small cult among Freepers, some of whom are still looking for their personal black conservative hero), while close to 50 percent on the thread are already sneering and jeering.
The Constitution Party can't win; Baldwin, they say, is an unknown (unlike the household name, Keyes, I take it) and the CP is full of 'fruit loops' and losers.
At least reading the discussion over there, I am reminded once again just why I want nothing more to do with the Republican Party.
The mere fact that so many people in both parties, but especially, it seems, on the ''right'' are so quick to declare all third parties as hopeless causes, and as havens for 'nutjobs' and crazies, explains very well why we now have two dysfunctional parties with a strangehold on our political system.
As long as there are so many diehard party loyalists who think that straying from our two divinely-ordained political parties will result in the end of the world, we will never find our way out of the maze we are in.
At what point will these hard-heads and dimwits realize that the system as it is ain't working -- or at least, if it is working, it is not working for the American people? If our present sorry state of things does not break people of their dependency on the two-party system, nothing will.
We all just witnessed a combination of our malevolent media and obtuse citizens reject the candidacy of a good man, Ron Paul. For many months, since Ron Paul first announced his candidacy, we've heard the news media ridicule and dismiss him, on those rare occasions when they deigned to notice him at all, and we've heard every village idiot in the country proclaim 'no third party can win. You're throwing your vote away if you vote third party.' Or this one: ''if you vote third party you are just helping to elect a Democrat, and it will be your fault when [Hillary/Obama] is in the White House''.
This kind of ''thinking'' is what will guarantee that our situation only goes from bad to worse. This stubborn cluelessness is what has allowed our two monopolistic parties to flout the will of their constituents, and to go rogue. The political classes know that they don't even have to pay attention to the will of the people; they know that there are enough docile, knee-jerk loyalists who think they have 'nowhere else to go' who will vote for them and continue contributing to their candidacies and to the Party, regardless of their defiance of us and their open contempt for us.
Is there a chance that we can learn from the experience with Dr. Paul's candidacy and avoid letting the media and the obstructionists among us marginalize Chuck Baldwin's candidacy too? This may well be our last chance to stand up for traditional American principles before the demographic tidal wave washes away the last real vestiges of our political power. There is a lot at stake in this election, and yet I see a state of torpor among many in this country, or a kind of passivity born of resignation and cynicism. I see too many people who are beaten already, who are convinced that nothing we can do will make a difference, so why even try?
There are so many who have been thoroughly convinced that the two-party system is inevitable and forever; we can't change it, so we are foolish to try.
With such defeatist attitudes, of course these lugubrious predictions become self-fulfilling prophecies. We can't change things precisely because people have been convinced that we can't.
Either we try to rekindle the old American can-do spirit and the spirit of independence of mind, or we just give up and shuffle off the stage of history, leaving it to the invading hordes and their multiculturalist collaborators.
We have another chance now; let's make the most of it.
Labels: Constitution Party, Gop, Party Politics, Presidential Candidates, Third Party