Tag Archives: Election 2016

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Note to Candidates: Count Contributions Carefully

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Great presidential puzzle
Great presidential puzzle (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

The fallout continues from last week’s massacre at an historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina. In an online manifesto of sorts, accused killer Dylann Roof credits an organization called the Council of Conservative Citizens with inspiring his racist agenda.

Now, it turns out, at least three Republican presidential candidates (Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Rick Santorum) and one likely candidate (Scott Walker) have received campaign or PAC contributions from CCC’s president, Earl Holt III. All four are returning the contributions or donating similar sums to charities.

But there’s more to this story. Writing in the Washington Post, Will Greenberg and Tom Hamburger report that “[t]here is no evidence that the campaigns, including those of Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Rick Santorum, were aware of the group’s background.”

That’s probably not true. If it IS true, it makes those candidates look, well, incompetent.

The Council of Conservative Citizens, which “oppose[s] all efforts to mix the races of mankind … and to force the integration of the races,” has been been scandalously associated with the Republican Party since at least as far back as the 1980s.

Numerous Republicans, including US Representative (and later, to the shame of the Libertarian Party, its presidential nominee) Bob Barr, US Senator Trent Lott, Mississippi governor Haley Barbour and Mike Huckabee, then lieutenant governor of Arkansas, have addressed the group’s events and been called out for doing so.

In 1999, Republican National Committee chairman Jim Nicholson asked Republican CCC members to disassociate themselves from the organization.

And in two presidential campaigns, Rand Paul’s father, Ron Paul, was dogged by associations with CCC, including a scheduled (but either missed or “disappeared”) appearance on its “Political Cesspool” radio show and contributions from CCC activist Virginia Abernethy.

CCC is not a new problem for the GOP. It’s been a problem for nearly 30 years. Presidential campaign staffers have been down this rabbit hole in previous election cycles.  Anyone running a serious campaign for the GOP’s presidential nomination knows — or SHOULD know — that CCC-linked money comes with scandal attached to it.

No, I’m not accusing these four candidates of being racists. But in politics, it matters who you hang out with and whose checks you cash. In the information age, a computerized contributor blacklist (“return checks from X”) just isn’t that complicated to implement … and only returning the money after you get caught doesn’t cut the mustard.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Presidential Politics: They’re All Conservatives

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"The Great Presidential Puzzle": &qu...
“The Great Presidential Puzzle”: “Illustration shows Senator Roscoe Conkling, leader of the Stalwarts group of the Republican Party, playing a puzzle game. All blocks in the puzzle are the heads of the potential Republican presidential candidates, among them Grant, Sherman, Tilden, and Blaine. Parodies the famous 14-15 puzzle. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As reliably as seconds ticking by on an expensive wristwatch, Republican presidential candidates loudly and vehemently identify themselves as “conservatives.” We’re used to hearing politicians lie, but these politicians are telling the truth for once. They ARE all conservatives.

Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, on the other hand, lie constantly about their political orientations. They label themselves “liberals” or even “progressives.” But they are conservatives, too.

Since FDR’s New Deal, politicians of all stripes have consistently tried to link conservatism with “smaller government.” But that’s not what conservatism is, or ever has been about. Conservatism is about conserving.

What does it mean to conserve something? “To keep in a safe or sound state; to save; to preserve; to protect” (Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1913 edition).

What does political conservatism aim to save, preserve, protect? The existing system. As William F. Buckley, Jr. put it, political conservatism consists of “standing athwart the tracks of history yelling stop” (or, in the case of conservatism’s “progressive” variant, “yelling slow down”). And that, in a nutshell, is the platform and program of every serious candidate for either major party’s 2016 presidential nomination.

Sure, there are differences in emphasis. But they’re not especially significant.

The candidates who call themselves conservatives are hell-bent on preserving the post-WWII garrison state by way of the single largest welfare (mostly corporate welfare) entitlement program in the federal budget: They want to maintain “defense spending” at a rate ten times that of America’s nearest competitor (China). They describe proposals to even limit the growth of that budget line as “draconian cuts.” When it comes to “social” programs like Social Security, they occasionally talk about minor cuts or privatization … but only by way of “saving” the system, not abolishing it.

The conservative candidates who call themselves “progressives” come at it from the opposite direction: Their priority is saving those “social” programs. When it comes to military spending, they occasionally talk about tiny cuts, or perhaps capping increase rates, but as the Obama administration demonstrates, even those minor modifications are not hills they’re prepared to make their last stands on.

If we think of politics as a 360-degree circle, the differences between modern American “conservatism” and modern American “progressivism” cover maybe five degrees, just to the right of zero. Those boundaries are, to mix metaphors, third rails. Step on them and die — or at least, as Rand Paul has discovered, get a nasty jolt encouraging you to hurry back into safe territory.

In reality, there are only two available political directions: Society can become more libertarian, or it can become more authoritarian (and eventually totalitarian). The conservative candidates of both parties offer only the latter option.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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In 2016, Let’s Have Real Presidential Debates

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Every four years, the Commission on Presidential Debates puts on a series of campaign commercials disguised as presidential and vice-presidential debates.

The CPD is, in theory, a non-profit organization “established in 1987 to ensure that debates, as a permanent part of every general election, provide the best possible information to viewers and listeners.”

But the CPD is really just a scam the Republican and Democratic Parties use to funnel illegally large “in kind” campaign donations, in the form of tens of millions of dollars’ worth of free media exposure, exclusively to their own candidates.

A real non-partisan, non-profit debate organization would use objective criteria for deciding which candidates may participate in debates. The CPD continuously refines its criteria with an eye toward ensuring  that no third party or independent candidates qualify for a microphone at a CPD “debate.”

Billionaire independent/Reform Party candidate Ross Perot managed to jump through their hoops in 1992, afterward polling 19% in the general election. CPD excluded him in 1996, cutting his vote percentage down to 8%. Since then, CPD has successfully excluded additional candidates from their Democrat/Republican campaign infomercials.

Libertarians aren’t fans of laws limiting the people’s ability to give their money — as much of it as they want — to the candidates they support. But if there are going to be such rules, they should apply across the board.

That’s why the Libertarian Party, the Green Party, both parties’ 2012 presidential and vice-presidential candidates, and 2012 Justice Party presidential nominee Rocky Anderson are suing CPD. The Our America Initiative, headed up by 2012 Libertarian Party presidential nominee Gary Johnson, is coordinating the legal challenge.

The relief the plaintiffs seek is simple: That if the CPD is going to pretend to be a non-profit, non-partisan debate organization, it be required to start acting like one. Instead of giving the Republicans and Democrats a free series of campaign infomercials, CPD  must put on real debates,  open to all candidates who are legally qualified for the office they seek and whose names appear on enough state ballots for them to hypothetically win the election.

Would victory in this suit make a real difference for third party and independent candidates? Absolutely. Exposure in the debates might or might not put Libertarians or Greens over the top, but it would at least expose the American public to the real panoply of choices instead of to one pre-selected pair.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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