Gary Johnson has now participated in one debate with other candidates seeking the Libertarian nomination, and has made plans to appear in others. Johnson has received the endorsement of several state and county LP organizations, which has not been a common practice in the LP in the past. Johnson has been included in several polls of hypothetical general election matchups. He has issued several press releases/op-eds, many of them on civil liberties issues such as ending the USAPATRIOT act, supporting gay marriage rights and legalizing marijuana. He has criticized leading Democratic and Republican contenders on these issues, and in a number of interviews on MSNBC, CNN, Fox, and other media outlets has suggested he could draw as many or more votes away from the Democrats as from the Republicans. Johnson spoke at a recent conference of the ACLU. He has also been holding a series of video/chat townhalls through his website with LP leaders; the next one will be tomorrow. Johnson has had several op-eds, interviews and articles in outlets such as Huffington Post, Washington Times, the Daily Caller, Reason Magazine, and so on, and has been doing local radio interviews around the country. Johnson also responded to the State of the Union, as did Lee Wrights and RJ Harris. Johnson has the most detailed spending plan of these candidates, calling for a 43% cut, and continues to make his case for the national sales tax plan known by its proponents as the FairTax, which has drawn criticism from Lee Wrights among others.

RJ Harris has been keeping his blog updated, has attended several state conventions and debates, has made plans for others, and has some newspaper articles. He has helped with Oklahoma ballot access. Along with Carl Person, Harris has reorganized his campaign under new management and both of these candidates as well as Bill Still have updated the design of their websites. Harris was involved in a car accident while on his way to a Constitution class at the Oklahoma Capitol taught by 2004 Libertarian presidential nominee Michael Badnarik which he helped arrange. Badnarik is now trying to teach such classes at state capitols around the country. Harris was not seriously injured, but had some car damage.

Lee Wrights has also continued, and plans to continue participating in state conventions and debates and writing regular articles/op-eds. He has also issued his first TV spot, which can also be used by other candidates, and was included in an Al Jazeera article along with several candidates of other parties.

Johnson, Harris and Wrights, out of the candidates who have participated in debates and remain listed at LP.org, have been issuing the most regular updates (although Still has been updating his website frequently, but I don’t know of any active distribution of his updates beyond that). They are also the three candidates who have been acknowledged in recent LP press releases and/or LP.org blog posts.

Carl Person, Bill Still and Roger Gary are the other three candidates who have been traveling to conventions, participating in debates and meet the new LP.org listing criteria:

Seeking the nomination of the Libertarian Party exclusively
Dues-paying member of the National Libertarian Party
Campaign website is current with contact information
Obtained the approval of at least five members of the 18-member Libertarian National Committee.

Of the remaining candidates that are no longer listed at LP.org, Sam Sloan (temporary website here) meets all the criteria except obtaining approval from five LNC members, which was added most recently. He has enough money to travel around to state conventions, and is trying to get into the debates but has been excluded.

Other candidates:

Jim Burns sends out fairly regular email updates to his list.

Robert Milnes continues to update his site/blog frequently. In recent weeks his main focus has been on exposing discrepancies in the resume claims of Tiffany Briscoe, who beat him for the Boston Tea Party nomination. He is trying to get the FBI to investigate that election, which he thinks was rigged, so far without any luck.

Politics1.com lists the following additional candidates, all or almost all of whom were previously also listed at LP.org but have since been removed:

Ralph
Beach (South Carolina)

Scott Keller (Florida)
– Computer programmer.

James Ogle
(California) – Parliamentary system advocate.

Dave Redick (Wisconsin)
– Retired businessman, engineer, Army veteran & frequent
candidate.

Leroy Saunders (Georgia)
– Limousine company owner.

Mosheh Thezion (California)
– Electronics technician & ’10 US Sen. candidate.

Dean Tucker (Texas)

Joy Waymire (California)
– Tea Party activist, ranch manager and tax preparer.

I don’t know what if anything any of them are doing by way of campaigning.

There are some additional candidates who are or were filed with the FEC as Libertarians that have not even made it into the politics1 listing, such as Ronald Keith Hebert and Shawn James Hogan. I don’t have any information about any of these candidates beyond their FEC filings.

At this time, the rumored entries of Jesse Ventura or (less likely) Ron Paul into the LP race remain rumors only.

One additional rumor has an unnamed wealthy individual supposedly interested in running for VP and spending a significant amount of money on the race, particularly or perhaps only if Gary Johnson is the nominee. 2008 VP candidate Wayne Root is also rumored to be a likely VP contender. Another possible VP candidate may be 2000 and 2008 VP runner up and 2008 presidential nomination candidate Steve Kubby. As in 2008, some of the presidential candidates may also switch to the VP race after being eliminated.

Additional information about the activities of any of these candidates, and any that I may have missed, welcome in the comments.

…Contained in this major dump are several thousand private forum messages, personal emails, internal organization notes, names, phone numbers, home addresses and other information on all of their members and supporters. It’s time for these cowardly suit and tie white supremacists to sleep with one eye open. Scared much?

In addition to finding the usual racist rants and interactions with other white power groups, we also found a disturbingly high amount of members who are also involved in campaigning for Ron Paul. According to these messages, Ron Paul has regularly met with many A3P members, even engaging in conference calls with their board of directors. Ron Paul’s racist politics and affiliations are already well known, being viciously anti-immigrant, anti-abortion and against gay marriage — not to mention having authored the racist “Ron Paul Papers” and receiving financial support from other white power groups (pictured with Don Black from stormfront.org). Hard to believe Ron Paul draws some support from the left and the occupation movements, especially now that it is confirmed Ron Paul hangs out with straight up racist hate groups.

We put extra effort in ruining the life of A3P webmaster Jamie Kelso. On top of being on the board of directors of A3P, former $cientologist, and high ranking Ron Paul organizer, he also is the account owner of german nazi forums and store nsl-forum.org, rhs-versand.com.

This claim has been circulated many places on the web, but I have yet to see specific messages to back up the claims.

The data dump is here for those who want to do their own investigation.

Tom Knapp writes:

A couple of disclaimers:

•  I don’t think anyone is going to mistake me for a Ron Paul apologist. I’ve been critical of Paul for various reasons, including but not limited to the issues raised by “the newsletter controversy.” Believe this: If I find anything credible anywhere directly connecting Paul to A3P and organizations of its type, I’ll shout it from the rooftops.
• I’ve only spent a few hours researching the dump, running searches on strings I would expect to shed light on the claims above.  There’s a lot of data to sift through, so what I’ve found so far may very well not be the final word on the subject.

Those two things said, I’ve found nothing really substantiating the two claims in the communique quote above. To wit:

1. A “disturbingly high amount of members” of A3P “are also involved in campaigning for Ron Paul.”

   This is a pretty fuzzy claim in the first place, insofar as “disturbingly high” is a subjective evaluation and “involved in campaigning for” can mean a lot of things.

   What I found were several references to A3P members attending Paul campaign events; a couple of references to A3P members talking with low-level Paul volunteers whom the A3P people perceived as “with us” or “pro-White;” and one suggestion that a film/video guy who had done work for the Paul campaign be approached about doing the same kind of work for A3P.

   None of the campaign events mentioned were portrayed as Paul intentionally addressing A3P-type audiences — it was stuff like “we went to see Paul speak at CPAC” and “we went to Paul’s GOP convention rally in Minneapolis” and so on.

2. “Ron Paul has regularly met with many A3P members, even engaging in conference calls with their board of directors.”

   The closest thing I found to Paul “meeting” with A3P members were references like “managed to get my picture taken with Paul when I attended the Minneapolis convention rally.”

   I found references to A3P’s board of directors, and I found references to conference calls, but I found no references to Paul or his campaign being involved in said conference calls.

Does this mean those two claims are false? NO, it doesn’t. I may have missed something. Like I said, it’s a lot of stuff and I’ve only spent a little time sifting through it.

But those claims are strong enough that the burden of proving them falls on those making them. If the material to substantiate the claims is there, someone who can find it needs to highlight it and point it out instead of just leaving it buried down in the pile of garbage it’s embedded in.

Here’s the picture I get from my limited swim through the A3P sewer:

The A3P types consider the Paul movement, and the wider “paleo” movement (other referenced people, pubs and groups in the dump included Pat Buchanan, Thomas diLorenzo, The American Conservative magazine, the John Birch Society, et. al), to be “implicitly pro-White” (their terminology) and are attempting to build a “bridge” (their terminology) between those movements and “explicitly pro-White” (their terminology) groups including (named in the dump) A3P, White News Network, Stormfront, et. al.

I don’t think that belief on the part of A3P types is entirely unreasonable, given that the Rothbard/Rockwell “paleo strategy” which Paul used to raise money in the 80s and 90s was intended to specifically cater to such tendencies.

On the other hand, I think the A3P types are probably:

1. Under-estimating the extent to which Rothbard, Rockwell and Paul were using the “paleo strategy” to cynically exploit them — suckering them for political “seed money” and so forth — as opposed to genuinely make common cause with them; and
2. Seriously over-estimating the extent to which the now-existing Paul movement, which is not, for the most part,  a product of the “paleo strategy,” is composed of people likely to be sympathetic to the A3P-type fringe.

So far, I’m not seeing anything that constitutes a serious indictment of Paul, his campaign, or the movement surrounding his campaign — or at least nothing above and beyond other long-known plausible indictments of any or all of the three.

But, once again, this is just my initial impression, based on limited time and limited skills for digging through the dump. If anyone else is finding or seeing anything I’m missing or mis-interpreting, by all means let me know in comments, via contact form, etc.

As a side note, while I consider myself a member of Anonymous (expect us!) and while I’m happy to see A3P exposed, I was not involved in this operation nor did I have any foreknowledge of it.

If anyone has found more incriminating information in the data dump to back up the way it was characterized in the hackers’ message, please put sourced data in the comment section here.

In regards to some of the longer standing claims,

“Ron Paul’s racist politics and affiliations are already well known, being viciously anti-immigrant, anti-abortion and against gay marriage”

Progressive blogger Punk Patriot writes

Ron Paul is NOT anti-woman. Dr. Paul is a licensed physician who practiced obstetrics and gynecology prior to entering politics, assisting in the delivery of more than 4,000 babies over the course of his medical practice. He does personally hold socially conservative Christian values and believes that life begins at conception, but unlike many others in the Republican party he believes the federal government has no right to impose his socially conservative values on the entire nation. Dr. Paul consistently opposes a federal ban on abortion and believes quite reasonably that the question should be left up to the states (video here and here). Dr. Paul voted against the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act, a bill designed to criminalize the transportation of pregnant minors across state lines with the intention of the minor obtaining an abortion. Dr. Paul voted against the misleadingly titled Population Planning Bill, a bill designed to forbid dispersal of aid funds to international women’s health groups that also perform abortions even though they are already prohibited from using those funds to cover abortion services. Dr. Paul also voted against the equally misleadingly titled Child Custody Protection Act, another bill intended to prohibit the transportation of a minor across state lines to avoid parental notification laws and obtain access to abortion services. Those are pretty progressive politics for a socially conservative pro-life Christian.

Ron Paul is NOT anti-gay. MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell proclaimed, “[w]ithout Ron Paul in this race, we would never hear one sensible thing said about marriage equality on the presidential debate stage… and no American politician is in a position to change more minds about marriage equality than Ron Paul. He is not speaking to the converted; he is speaking to conservative Republicans, he is speaking to evangelical Christians, he is going into the halls of the staunchest opponents of marriage equality in this country and he is telling them a truth so clear and so powerful that he is surely changing minds.” Dr. Paul opposes a federal ban on gay marriage, and believes “[a]ll voluntary associations, whether they’re economic or social, should be protected by the law.” In fact he doesn’t just believe it, he expressed it on Fox News at a Republican presidential debate broadcast when he would have had much to gain politically from pandering to evangelical homophobia. Dr. Paul voted against the Same-Sex Marriage Resolution, a 2006 joint resolution proposing a constitutional amendment providing that marriage in the U.S. consists only of the union of a man and a woman and that federal and state constitutions can not be construed to require marriage or legal incidents of marriage be conferred in other unions. Dr. Paul voted to repeal the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. When interviewed by arch-conservative John Lofton on his evangelical right-wing radio program The American View, Ron Paul eloquently defended a position of tolerance for people of all sexual orientations in a situation when it would have been politically beneficial for him to confirm the bigoted views of the listening audience. LOFTON: “Let’s shift gears here to another topic: Homosexuality. Do you believe it’s a sin?” PAUL: “I’m not as judgmental about that, probably because of my medical background.” LOFTON: “Do you believe that God says it’s a sin?” PAUL: “Well, I believe a lot of people understand it that way, but I think everybody’s God’s child too, so I have trouble with that.” Repent America, an evangelistic organization in the extreme theocratic right wing that is “focused on the public proclamation of the Gospel to further the Kingdom of God”) have even used this interview in attack ads against him because he does not believe homosexuality is a sin.

Ron Paul is NOT anti-black. Nelson Linder, President of the Austin chapter of the NAACP, a member of Dr. Paul’s constituency who has known Dr. Paul for 20 years, unequivocally dismissed charges that the Congressman was a racist and stated that the reason he was being attacked as a racist in the press was that he was a threat to the establishment (audio). Ron Paul is the only candidate from the two major parties who has consistently opposed the “War on Drugs,” which the NAACP has rightfully denounced as the last bastion of institutionalized racism in America. Dr. Paul is the only candidate from a major party who has vowed to issue a Presidential pardon to all nonviolent drug offenders (1:38 into this video), the disproportionate majority of whom are disadvantaged minorities unfairly targeted by law enforcement for the color of their skin (A black man’s view on Ron Paul being racist: Part 1, Part 2).

[..]

Ron Paul is NOT in league with Christian Reconstructionist theocrats who would make laws respecting an establishment a religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Dr. Paul voted against the National Day of Prayer Resolution, a concurrent resolution to “recommend that United States’ leaders call for national days of prayer and urge all Americans to seek God through humble prayer and fasting.”

[...]

Ron Paul DID oppose the Civil Rights Act of 1964, for exactly the reason quoted in the article: “The Civil Rights Act of 1964 not only violated the Constitution and reduced individual liberty; it also failed to achieve its stated goals of promoting racial harmony and a color-blind society.” Dr. Paul DOES NOT oppose civil rights and fully supported the Act’s repeal of Jim Crow laws, but he was deeply disturbed by the expansion of the power of the federal government over the behavior of private individuals.

Ron Paul DID co-sponsor a bill to overturn Roe v. Wade, for the same reason he voted against a Constitutional ban on abortion: he believes it to be out of the jurisdiction of the federal government.

A number of UNATTRIBUTED newsletters with Ron Paul’s name in the title did come out in the early 1990′s containing baldly racist and homophobic material. His response to that material is telling : “The quotations in The New Republic article are not mine and do not represent what I believe or have ever believed. I have never uttered such words and denounce such small-minded thoughts.” This can easily be confirmed by looking into publications and recordings directly from Ron Paul himself from both before and after the newsletters in question, including the following three-part recording of an educational program about juror’s rights from 1989, in which Dr. Paul expresses his reading of and admiration for staunch abolitionist Lysander Spooner while simultaneously defending the principle of jury nullification of unjust legislation: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

Regarding immigration, VDARE (dedicated to limiting immigration) writes

Now, at last, Paul has finally given a comprehensive discussion of his views on immigration—in his latest book Liberty Defined, where he lists his positions on fifty different issues.

But what he—or the left-libertarian faction that seems to have his ear/ byline after the strange death of Rothbardian paleolibertarianism—actually says about the issue of immigration is a profound, and in fact tragic, disappointment.

The article concludes that “Ron Paul needs every vote he can get in his insurrectionary candidacy. In spurning immigration patriots, he has blundered.”

Finally, as to the claim

“…A3P webmaster Jamie Kelso. On top of being on the board of directors of A3P, former $cientologist, and high ranking Ron Paul organizer…”

As with the claim that Paul has had phone conferences with the A3P board of directors, I’d be interested in seeing more concrete evidence that Kelso is a high ranking organizer for Ron Paul.

Although he is currently running for president and serving in the US House as a Republican, Ron Paul ran for president in 1988 as a Libertarian and remains a life member of the Libertarian Party. In 2008 he endorsed Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin in the general election.

Johnson said he’d cut the military’s budget and end Obama’s interventionism. It wasn’t until he got started on legalizing marijuana that the crowd (figuratively) lit up. A steady stream of applause followed Johnson’s declarations after that.

“I support gay marriage equality. I support repealing the PATRIOT Act. I would have vetoed the Department of Homeland Security, because I think it’s redundant. I would’ve never established the department of—the TSA agency. I think we should end the practices of torture. Period. I can understand the complexities in the following, but I think we should end the practices of detainment without being charged. There is nothing I want to see the government come in and fix with the Internet.”

Johnson also made a point throughout the evening of highlighting the differences between himself and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), who sought and received Johnson’s endorsement in 2008.

“I don’t think that Ron Paul is going to win the Republican nomination. For the most part, we are talking about the same message, but we do have differences. And when he drops out, or finds an end to the Republican primary, I don’t see this agenda moving forward,” Johnson said.

“And I think it’s important to point out differences between myself and Ron Paul. I don’t support building a fence across the border, I do support gay marriage equality, I do believe in a strong national defense. I do believe in our alliance with Israel, for example. And I think military alliances are key to reducing military spending by 43 percent and still provide for a strong national defense. And I believe in a woman’s right to choose.”

The crowd went nuts over that last one.

Nate Nelson at United Liberty adds:

Johnson could pose problems for both Obama and the eventual Republican nominee. On the one hand, Johnson built a very solid fiscal and economic record as Governor of New Mexico — which could appeal to Paul supporters and other Republicans as well as right-leaning independents who may feel disaffected if Romney, Gingrich, or Santorum wins the GOP nomination. On the other hand, there are some remarkable differences between Johnson and Paul that could help him succeed in appealing to the more left-leaning so-called “liberaltarians” and even some non-libertarian progressive Democrats and independents whom Paul has so far failed to win over.

It’s unlikely in the extreme that Johnson will win the presidential election. The electoral game is too rigged against third parties and, besides, the Libertarian Party’s dysfunctional nomination process will officially put him into the general election campaign far too late for him to assemble the kind of grassroots movement he’d need to win. But Johnson could well be a problem for both major parties. He could be competitive in his home state and throughout the Southwest, which could make the race for some pivotal swing states even more interesting than usual. In other words, he could play the role of spoiler in the upcoming general election even better than Ralph Nader did in 2000, and it should scare the pants off both Republicans and Democrats that it’s still unclear whose campaign he could spoil.

ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero also drew the Nader comparison:

“Do you run the risk, in other words, of being a Ralph Nader, given the fact that you have so much more coincidence with the president’s agenda than with Mr. Romney or Mr. Gingrich?”

Meanwhile, Johnson has an article in the conservative Washington Times newspaper spelling out his plan for spending cuts and a national sales tax plan known by its proponents as the FairTax. Excerpt:

Here I present a simple but drastic economic plan to foster a boom in America.

First, we need to get rid of the income tax. When our first great Supreme Court justice, John Marshall, equated the power to tax and the power to destroy, he was predicting what’s happening to our country right now. Giant, slow corporations spend their money on lobbying because tax avoidance is where their profit is. General Electric earned $14.2 billion in 2010 and paid zero taxes on it. Why? Because it has the lobbyists to get subsidies and tax breaks.

But those mom-and-pop stores? The tech startups? The nimble new corporations with new ideas and new visions for our economy? They pay as much as 35 cents on every dollar they earn. When the company pays its employees, the government taxes that money again. We need to stop taxing work, savings and investment. I advocate removing all income taxes, all capital-gains taxes, and replacing them with a consumption tax, kind of a national sales tax called the Fair-tax.

We also need to get rid of payroll taxes. Look at it from the perspective of employers for a moment. When they want to hire someone, it costs more than just the wage they’re paying. They have to pay payroll taxes, including for Social Security and Medicare. That cost is about 10 percent of the wages they pay an employee. Remove that burden, and employers will be able to hire 10 percent more people. With an unemployment rate of 10 percent, why wouldn’t we jump at this chance? The Fair-tax replaces employment and payroll taxes.

[...]

At the same time, I have proposed cutting the federal budget by 43 percent to bring it into balance. It can be done. It requires the will and ability to ignore and even fight the special interests that have a vested interest in more and more government spending. Our system is corrupted by special-interest campaign contributions. Crony capitalism permeates our government. The result is that, as the Congressional Budget Office reported this week, the deficit for 2012 will once again exceed $1 trillion.

The Washinton Times article incorrectly says that “Gary Johnson is the Libertarian Party nominee for president….”

Johnson’s plan stands in contrast to candidates such as Lee Wrights and RJ Harris, who are also seeking the Libertarian presidential nomination and have different proposals on taxes and spending. Wrights has his own plan for cutting spending and a couple of articles laying out his criticism of the FairTax (TM) plan, while Harris says

Fellow citizens, if you elect me as President I will exempt you from personal taxes by ending the IRS and allowing nothing to take its place. Then I will end the federal welfare system and the benefits will come from having stopped the government from stealing what you earn along with your ability to be as thrifty or as beneficent as you choose.

Finally, Johnson’s campaign has put out a message contrasting their candidate with two other past Libertarian presidential nominees other than Ron Paul (1988) – Bob Barr (2008) and Michael Badnarik (2004), and also by implication with Harry Browne (1996/2000).

George Phillies reports:

In a widely-circulated message “Paid for by Gary Johnson 2012″ a writer identified as Andrew Ferguson wrote in part:

“Flash back to the last election cycle. No, go back two, to 2004, when the LP, still reeling from Harry Browne’s machinations, nominated a complete unknown as its presidential candidate. The list of “missed opportunities by the Libertarian Party” is a long and tragicomic one, but surely the choice of Michael Badnarik must be at or near the top: in an election evenly split between the military-statist Bush and the eco-statist Gore, the LP could’ve had a healthy cut of the excluded middle – but Badnarik’s was not the name to draw those voters.”

(The letter writer seems to have been unaware that Kerry was the Democratic nominee who ran against Badnarik in 2004, and that Al Gore ran against Harry Browne in 2000, with Bush being the Republican nominee both times. Back to the letter:)

“In 2008, with that swing-and-a-miss behind them, the LP whiffed with the opposite approach, nominating a big name who was a, shall we say, imperfect fit with party ideals. I’m not one to deny the place of pragmatism in politics, but the man who authored the Defense of Marriage Amendment and fervently prosecuted the Drug War was a strange choice for the supposed party of freedom. No matter how hard he pushed his Road to Damascus narrative, a large chunk of the LP base (namely, donors and state and local party poobahs) was never going to buy into his campaign.”

“As a result, Bob Barr’s failure was utterly predictable – the rift in the party in 2008 was clear for all to see – but more to the point, just as utterly inevitable. In Barack Obama, the Democrats found a candidate who could reach out to the same undecideds the LP tries to make its own – those looking to cast a vote in dissent, anything so long as it has nothing to do with the party in power. Empty as we now know (or always knew) his promises of “Hope” and “Change” to be, they were nonetheless effective in closing off any change the Libertarians had of playing a role in the last cycle.”

(I believe that the writer meant chance, not change, in the last part of the preceding sentence. Back to the letter:)

“All of which is to say, the LP screwed up by getting its candidates backward – if anything, the off-the-ranch Republican with name recognition would have fared much better in 2004, serving as an alternative to two unpalatable statists. Meanwhile, 2008 would have been the time to run an outsider, someone who could elucidate a libertarian point of view, in the rare moments he (or she – vide Mary Ruwart) was called upon to do so.”

With 77 days to go before the first ballot, the combination corporation/political party called Americans Elect opened up a system today for delegates to draft presidential candidates to appear in its proprietary, privatized online presidential nominating system. The official rules of Americans Elect create three standards by which a draft candidate can qualify to appear on the ballot.

Standard 1: If a candidate has been one of the following… “Vice President, United States Senator, Member of Congress, Presidential Cabinet Member, Head of a federal agency, Governor, Mayor of any of the largest 100 cities in the United States, Chairman or Chief Executive Officer or President of any corporation or nonprofit corporation or philanthropic organization with 1,000 or more employees, President of a national labor union with 100,000 or more members, military officer who has attained flag rank [General or Admiral], Ambassador, and President of an American-based university with more than 4,000 members” … then the candidate is Automatically Qualified as a presidential-quality candidate and has to collect just 10,000 clicks of support from 10 states to appear on the ballot.

Standard 2: If a candidate does have the experience referenced above, but the Americans Elect’s corporate Candidate Certification Committee steps in and decides that the candidate is qualified to be president anyway, “in view of the Contingently Qualified Candidate’s equivalent experience and demonstrated capability,” then the candidate is deemed Contingently Qualified as a presidential-quality candidate and has to collect 50,000 clicks of support to appear on the ballot.

Standard 3: A candidate not Automatically Qualified or deemed to be Contingently Qualified by the Candidate Certification Committee can still qualify for the ballot IF the Candidate Certification Committee vote to reject the candidate was not unanimous. In order to obtain ballot qualification, a majority of all people who have ever been registered as Americans Elect delegates will have to visit the Americans Elect website and affirmatively vote to support the candidate’s access to the ballot.

Meanwhile, the Republican race for the presidential nomination has continued to grow more bitter between Romney and Gingrich. With Romney winning in relatively moderate areas like New Hampshire and southern and central Florida, Gingrich winning in more conservative areas such as South Carolina and northern Florida, and both candidates having plenty of money, it appears at this time that their battle will be protracted and very negative in tone.

Tom Knapp notes

This is Romney’s fourth time out in this cycle. He’s 2 for 4, and has yet to break 50% anywhere. The majority of Republican primary voters keep saying “not Mitt.”

In past cases like this, the big parties have come together – Obama and Clinton, Reagan and Bush. Could this time be different?

Several candidates formerly seeking the Republican presidential nomination have already jumped ship and are seeking the nomination of other parties. Gary Johnson has switched to the Libertarian race, which most observers believe he is leading at the moment. Buddy Roemer is (last I checked) still seeking the Republican nomination, but is shut out of the debates, polls and media coverage, and is also seeking the Americans Elect nomination. Ron Paul ran as a Libertarian in 1988, endorsed Constitution Party presidential candidate Chuck Baldwin in the 2008 general election, currently leads in number of supporters for the Americans Elect nomination (although he would have to express interest in it to be nominated), and has refused to rule out a run as something other than a Republican. Donald Trump briefly sought the Reform Party nomination in 2000, and also briefly sought the Republican nomination for this year (but dropped out before any primaries or caucuses). He has changed his registration to independent and speculated repeatedly about an independent or alternative party run.

News analysts on MSNBC have been speculating tonight about Gingrich running as an independent/alt party candidate should he lose the Republican nomination to Romney. One complication he would face if he makes such a decision is that by the time the Republican contest is decided, it would be very difficult to get on the ballot in all the states in a very short time frame, something mainstream media analysts rarely consider when discussing the possibility of various big party politicians or celebrities mounting last minute alt party/independent runs. Unlike Ron Paul, Gingrich does not have a natural base of support with an existing alternative party with ballot access in most states such as the Libertarian Party. It would seem that Americans Elect could conceivably fill the gap.

Although Americans Elect has no official party platform, it has described its mission as “bridging the vital center of American politics” and has put out a variety of indications that its ideological orientation is most likely to be centrist. The Americans Elect ticket is supposed to be “balanced” by having the VP nominee be from a different party than the presidential nominee, which could present a problem for an ideological candidate such as Gingrich. Gingrich has exploited economic populist themes against Romney to some degree, such as attacks on Bain Capital. It is conceivable that he could find some common ground with Democrats on those issues, although many of his views on economic issues would have to change before he would align more with Democrats than with Republicans on the economy.

If Gingrich wins the Republican nomination, Romney could indeed “bridge the center” by running on the Americans Elect ticket, and he would have the personal wealth to finance such a run, although not to the same degree as NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg, a frequent focus of speculation about the Americans Elect nomination, or even Donald Trump. Bloomberg and Trump are both currently independents, so it’s possible that if one of them were the VP nominee it would be deemed a balanced ticket under Americans Elect rules (whether it would or not is not really clear to me).

Could Gingrich or Romney be the Americans Elect Nominee? Your opinions welcome in the comments.

-paulie

If one believes that the problem is out-of-control government trampling our Bill of Rights, Newt Gingrich is definitely not the solution. If one believes the problem is the lack of Christian morals among our civil magistrates, Newt Gingrich is definitely not the solution. If one believes the problem is the slaughtering of over 50 million innocent unborn babies, Newt Gingrich is definitely not the solution. If one believes that the problem is honesty and integrity in the White House, Newt Gingrich is definitely not the solution. If one believes that the problem is out-of-control federal spending, Newt Gingrich is definitely not the solution. If one believes the problem is the United States catering to the evil machinations of the Security Council of the United Nations, Newt Gingrich is definitely not the solution. If one believes the problem is more and more outsourcing of America’s manufacturing jobs and products, Newt Gingrich is definitely not the solution. If one believes that the problem is ever-burgeoning deficit spending, Newt Gingrich is definitely not the solution. If one believes the problem is the banksters at the Federal Reserve, Newt Gingrich is definitely not the solution. If one believes the problem is illegal immigration, Newt Gingrich is definitely not the solution. If one believes the United States gives away far too much foreign aid, Newt Gingrich is definitely not the solution.

Newt Gingrich? Really?

Baldwin goes on to further detail his case against Gingrich, as well as Santorum and Romney, and to elaborate on why he supports Ron Paul.

Paul, who was the 1988 Presidential candidate of the Libertarian Party, is seeking the Republican presidential nomination this year, as he did in 2008. Baldwin actively supported Paul in 2008 and is doing so again this year, and in return Ron Paul endorsed Baldwin in the 2008 general election.

Meanwhile, 2008 Libertarian presidential nominee Bob Barr, who famously backed out of Ron Paul’s joint appearance with Baldwin, independent Ralph Nader and Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney because he would not appear on stage with “people like Cynthia McKinney,” has endorsed Newt Gingrich.

Recent Barr columns include The bizarro world of Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum (published yesterday), and several previous columns expressing his support for Gingrich.

Barr, Gingrich and McKinney all represented Georgia in Congress.

More of Baldwin’s article here.

Newt Gingrich may have won South Carolina. But this wasn’t a Newt victory, as much as it was a devastating rebuke to the national media. 

Study the poll numbers. Yes, Romney really dropped the ball with the tax return and 15% capital gains issues, but the numbers started flipping from a Romney landslide to a Newt Gingrich landslide only after the ABC television interview with Newt’s ex-wife. And voters made the final decision to change their votes only after hearing Newt strongly and courageously scold and shame the media in the South Carolina Presidential debate on Thursday. 

Make no mistake about it- this was a resounding rebuke of the mainstream media. They were kicked in the teeth. 

Read on. I’ll tell you why they deserved it. 

 America may hate politicians, they may hate Congress, they may even give Obama among the lowest ratings in modern history at this point in a Presidency. But the media has now sunk to even lower depths than the politicians.

 And deservedly so.

 Only days ago I pointed out what a travesty it was the media sharks were in a feeding frenzy to destroy Romney over taxes, Gingrich over ex-wives, and Ron Paul over 20 year old newsletters, but seemed to lack the same level of enthusiasm about Obama’s mysterious past. But the biased leftist media doesn’t care. Par for the course.

 This same mainstream media also snickers at the idea that Obama is a socialist. Funny how they ignore a brand new Pew poll that proves that liberal Democrats not only favor socialism over capitalism, but by a wide 59-33 margin they see socialism as a positive. Even more shocking is that the same poll proves that a large majority of African American voters (Obama’s staunchest supporters), by a 55-36 margin, also see socialism as a positive. Shouldn’t alarm bells be ringing in the mainstream media?

 Well, the alarm bells aren’t ringing for a good reason. The mainstream media is made up of radical, extreme, progressive leftists who also see socialism as a positive. Want proof? Let’s head back to my Columbia University days. You know, the same place where my classmate Barack Obama was indoctrinated…oops, I mean educated…in the philosophy of radical socialism.

 Something extraordinary happened on March 30, 1981 at Columbia University. I was sitting in the biggest political science class at Columbia University. Perhaps 200 or more students in a theatre in the round. If Obama was attending Columbia at the time, as he claims, and he was a Political Science major, as he claims, he would almost certainly have been in this class.

 On this date in history my hero Ronald Reagan was shot. The reaction in that large political science class that day tells you all you need to know about the media. Because all these years later, when I read Columbia College Today magazine, with updates on my classmates’ careers, it is extraordinary how many of them are now leading members of the mainstream media.

 As I sat in class that day listening to the professor lecture, a strange loud noise came from the back of the room. The entire class turned around. The doors in back burst open and a breathless student ran in and screamed, “They just shot Reagan. President Reagan has been assassinated.” Can you imagine what the response was at that moment of horror from the future leading members of America’s media? Take a wild guess.

 A standing ovation. Wild celebration. High fives. Cheering. Fists pounding the air. My classmates were jumping up and down and hugging each other like they had just won the lottery. It was the happiest day of their lives! And I can’t forget the words wafting through the air in the midst of this celebration, “YES, they killed that bastard Reagan!”

 Reagan was my hero. He felt like a second father to me. I got sick to my stomach and ran out of the class. I raced into the bathroom and vomited, then sat on the bathroom floor with tears streaming down my face. I thought my hero President Reagan was dead. Worse, I realized my ultra-liberal classmates were not just your run-of-the-mill leftists. They were socialists and Marxists who openly hated America, despised capitalism, and were cheering for the death of a man simply because he was a conservative and capitalist. I was dazed, disgusted and disillusioned.

 Please keep in mind that many of these same men and women now run the American media. They are at the very top of many of the most important television news shows and news organizations. And they proved that day (and throughout my 4 years at Columbia) that at their core they despise conservatives, conservatism, patriotism, and the exceptionalism of America.

 This is the same media expected to give a “fair shake” to a conservative Presidential candidate like Mitt, Newt or Ron Paul? Not a chance.

 Now you know why the media is so desperate and obsessed with digging up dirt on Newt’s ex-wives, Mitt’s old taxes, or Ron Paul’s 20-year-old newsletters. But this same media seems to have no interest in digging up Obama’s mysterious and questionable past. They sit across from Obama, tingling, lobbing softball questions, while gazing into their fellow socialist’s eyes. Now it all makes sense. Now the pieces of the puzzle fit.

 The sudden turnaround in South Carolina after a media “hit piece” on Newt is the first sign that the American people are finally starting to understand how biased the media really is.

 Now you know why the mainstream media had their teeth kicked in on Saturday in South Carolina.

 And…they deserved it.

 Wayne Allyn Root is a former Libertarian VP nominee and the author of “The Conscience of a Libertarian.” He now serves as Chairman of the Libertarian National Campaign Committee. He’s a regular guest on Fox News and hundreds of television and radio shows across America.  His syndicated column has appeared on Newsmax and Forbes.

He’s also a gun-slinging, riverboat gambling, entrepreneur and capitalist evangelist. His web site: www.ROOTforAmerica.com

Howard Phillips, founder of The Conservative Caucus (TCC) and its Chairman since 1974, has resigned, saying that recent health problems required that he “direct my energies on my health, my family life, my spiritual priorities, and my writings.” He affirmed his gratitude “for the opportunities God has given me to work with such fine people and I remain wholeheartedly supportive of the important work and mission of this organization.”

Phillips, now 70, led TCC through successful battles to block ratification of the SALT II Treaty, begin the SDI missile defense program, repeal the Catastrophic Coverage Act, prevent passage of Hillary Clinton’s socialized medicine scheme, and persuade the House of Representatives to impeach President Bill Clinton.

He visited all 50 states in campaigns against the Panama Canal treaties, SALT II, and the nuclear freeze. He also held organizational meetings in all 435 congressional districts during the early years of TCC.

His leadership in TCC’s Victory Over Communism project included support for anti-Communist freedom fighters in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, repeal of the Clark Amendment, Congressional approval of the MX missile, a 600-ship navy, and even a visit to Eastern Europe and the Baltic states as the Soviet empire began to show signs of collapse.

Phillips is a graduate of the Boston Latin School and Harvard, having served as President of the Harvard Student Council. He was one of the founders of Young Americans for Freedom.

Prior to founding The Conservative Caucus, he was Republican Chairman of Boston and campaign manager for Richard Schweiker’s successful 1968 Senate campaign in Pennsylvania.

During the Nixon administration, Phillips headed the President’s Council on Youth Opportunity and the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), and won nationwide conservative acclaim when he attempted to eliminate the OEO programs.

The Constitution Party (originally named the U.S. Taxpayers Party) nominated Phillips as its candidate for President in 1992, 1996, and 2000.

TCC’s Board of Directors expects to choose a new Chairman early in 2012, with Darrell Castle serving as interim Chairman. Castle was the 2008 Vice-presidential nominee of the Constitution Party.

Wikipedia notes that Jewish by birth and a native of Boston, Massachusetts, Phillips converted to evangelical Christianity in adulthood and has been associated with Christian Reconstructionism.

Phillips first campaign for president in 1992 ended in a seventh place finish. The campaign received 43,369 votes for 0.04% of the total vote. In 1996 the Phillips campaign finished sixth with 184,656 votes for 0.19% of the total vote. In the 2000 election he received 98,020 votes for 0.1% of the total vote and a sixth place finish.

Phillips’ original intention was to have Pat Buchanan run for President; however, when Buchanan did run for President outside the Republican Party in 2000, it was as the Reform Party candidate.

The 2008 ticket that Castle vas VP on, led by Chuck Baldwin, got the party’s best result yet, 199,750 votes, and was endorsed by Ron Paul.

Wikipedia also notes

Buchanan’s 2000 Reform Party running mate Ezola B. Foster switched her membership to the Constitution Party in 2002. Buchanan stated on the September 7, 2004 edition of Hardball with Chris Matthews, “There is a chance I would vote for [Michael] Peroutka.” However, he later penned an endorsement of President George W. Bush in the pages of The American Conservative.

U.S. senator Bob Smith announced his switch from Republican to the U.S. Taxpayers Party in 1999 to seek its 2000 presidential nomination. Smith later claimed that anti-New World Order ideologues within the party resisted his candidacy due to his Roman Catholicism. He continued his campaign as a non-partisan independent but ceased the campaign soon thereafter and returned to the Republican party to assume a Senate committee chairmanship. In 2008, he began writing editorials on the Constitution Party’s web page, fueling speculation that he would seek its presidential nomination again, although he had endorsed Rep. Duncan Hunter for the Republican nomination. He requested that his name be withheld from consideration in a March 2008 letter to CP supporters.
Minuteman Project co-founder Jim Gilchrist ran for Congress with the American Independent Party in 2005, but has since rejoined the Republicans.

Author and WorldNetDaily columnist Jerome Corsi launched a brief campaign for the 2008 nomination but in July 2007 decided to return to writing. Former Reagan Administration official and Christian activist Alan Keyes had actively sought the Constitution nod after ending a bid for the GOP nomination.

…

In 2010, former Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo ran for governor of Colorado as a Constitutionalist. He received 36.8% of the vote finishing in 2nd place. Despite losing the election, Tancredo managed to secure major party status for the Constitution Party in Colorado, as that state requires a party to surpass 10% in a gubernatorial election to qualify for such status.

In 2010, former Republican Representative Virgil Goode (VA-5) accepted an appointment to the National Executive Committee of the Constitution Party.

How unbecoming it is for the self-styled freedom-loving Wall Street Journal (“Ron Paul Nader?” Dec. 21) to use the politically bigoted word “spoiler” to describe a hypothetical Ron Paul-Libertarian party presidential run.

Why is a third-party candidate called a “spoiler” when the nominees of the Republican and Democratic parties, that have given us a spoiled political system (corrupted by the highest bidder) are never referred to in such a pejorative way? These two decaying parties do not own the voters in this country, though they act that way through their many state laws obstructing outside competition.

Since all candidates are supposed to have the equal right to run for election, then they are either all spoilers of one another in seeking votes or none of them deserve to be called “spoilers.” Candidates from smaller parties are not second-class citizens. After all, either of the major party candidates “takes away” far more votes from the other than any third party candidate does.

IPR Notes:

Ron Paul was the Libertarian Party presidential candidate in 1988, and is seeking the Republican presidential nomination this year, as he did in 1988. There has been media speculation that he might go Libertarian again, and Paul has not ruled it out, although his goal remains to win the Republican nomination. Another former contender for the Republican presidential nomination this year, former NM Governor Gary Johnson, has already jumped over to the Libertarians.

Ralph Nader sought the presidency as a Green in 1996 and 2000 and as an independent in 2004 and 2008. He is not running this year.

In the last 27 years, 1992 was the only presidential election year when neither Paul nor Nader was an independent or alternative (“third”) party presidential candidate in the general election.

2012 Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul was endorsed today by Louisiana State Representative Joel Robideaux (R-Lafayette) and former Deputy Chairman of the Louisiana State GOP Charlie Davis.

Rep. Robideaux and Mr. Davis will serve as Louisiana co-chairs for the Ron Paul 2012 Presidential campaign.  In making his endorsement and assuming campaign co-chair responsibility for Louisiana, Rep. Robideaux offered the following statement:

“Ron Paul is the only Republican running for President who has the credibility to actually follow through on his commitment to stop the runaway train of federal bureaucracy and spending.

“None of the other Republican candidates have offered a plan to make any meaningful cuts in federal spending.  In fact, the other candidates only seem interested in wearing the conductor’s hat and tooting the horn a few times as the train goes over the cliff.

“Only Dr. Paul has actually offered a plan to cut spending in real terms rather than just trimming the planned increases.  Dr. Paul has proven he has no interest in wearing the conductor’s hat or tooting the horn.  He is only interested in pulling hard on the brake to keep the train from going over the cliff and taking all of us down with it.

“As a CPA, and Chairman of the Ways & Means Committee with responsibility for taxation and revenue, Dr. Paul is the only candidate I trust to deal with this immense problem and restore fiscal sanity to America’s budget process.  Only Dr. Paul has consistently proven his commitment to limited government and less spending over the last 35 years.”

A former Deputy Chairman of the Republican Party of Louisiana, Charlie Davis has held many positions in the Party since 1995, and was recently elected unopposed to a new term on the Republican State Central Committee.  A chief organizer of the “Pro-Life, Pro-Family” delegate slate that won the majority of the state’s 2008 Republican delegates, he also served as a delegate to the 2004 Republican National Convention and was a member of the 2008 Electoral College.

Mr. Davis also currently serves on the board of the Louisiana Family Forum and is married to Ellen Wray Davis with one son and two daughters.  Mrs. Davis is former Political Director of GOPAC, former Executive Director of the Republican Party of Louisiana, and 2008 Republican National Convention delegate.

“Ron Paul best addresses the core problems that face America—the bloated federal bureaucracy, an ever-growing national debt, and a systemic loss of personal liberties that are threatening the very foundation of our Republic,” said Mr. Davis in his endorsement as he joined Rep. Robideaux for the Louisiana campaign co-chairmanship.

Ron Paul 2012 campaign Louisiana State Director Pete Chamberlain welcomed the endorsements as well as the intensity the co-chair structure will bring to the Bayou State effort.

“We are excited to announce Charlie Davis’ and Rep. Joel Robideaux’ leadership in the Louisiana campaign.  The support of such highly esteemed Republican leaders, both of whom are on the vanguard of the conservative movement in Louisiana, speaks highly of the work already in progress and forthcoming efforts.  It’s clear that the Ron Paul campaign is building the momentum and organization it will take to win Louisiana,” said Mr. Chamberlain.

A couple days after Christmas, I went to Iowa to help Ron Paul’s presidential campaign in the lead-up to the Iowa caucuses. I’d never been there before, and I like traveling, but mainly it was just something I felt like I needed to do; that how well Ron Paul did in that caucus could be a real game changer. And I confess it was a downer that he didn’t take first place, even though he made an excellent showing. But overall it was a positive experience, and I think I did some good. I was surprised however at how disorganized the operation appeared to be, especially given that the media was reporting (as seemed to be true) that Ron Paul had the most extensive ground campaign in the state.

Even before I left, I was trying to find the answers to three important questions — Where should I go in Iowa in order to do the campaign the most good, where should I plan on being on caucus night to speak on behalf of Ron Paul, and where could I sleep during my trip (either at the homes of local supporters, in accommodations obtained by the campaign, etc.) I brought a sleeping bag so that I could crash on the floor of a campaign office or something if needed. I never really was able to get answers to these questions, although I did end up finding free places to stay all but two nights (one of which was sort of my own “fault” as I misread my departure time and missed my return flight out of Chicago, necessitating staying in a motel there an extra night).

I didn’t see a lot of organized precinct-walking. People were doing a lot more phone calling. It was winter in Iowa, after all — though not nearly as cold as I’d been afraid it would be. Some of the activists almost seemed to think I was a little nuts for wanting to spend my time out on the streets putting up fliers and stickers and such. But I’d flown out from California, dammit, and I wasn’t just going to sit in an office making phone calls when I could do that from home! I wanted to go out and be visible and talk to people. Actually I think I spent about as much time driving around as out campaigning on foot, but with my rental car decked out with Ron Paul yard signs in the windows and a “rEVOLution” sticker prominently affixed to the bumper, that didn’t really seem like a waste of time. And it let me see a bit of the state.

I had brought with me some copies of a flier I’d made from the Blue Republicans essay ( Huffington Post ), and was able to make some more copies at the Ron Paul grassroots office in Davenport. This is probably the best written material I’ve seen for convincing people on the left to consider Ron Paul, and my goal was to put it up in liberal-leaning parts of the state. Along with Davi Barker’s “24 Types of Authoritarians” cartoon (see attachment), which wasn’t specifically campaign-related, but is one of my favorite pieces of outreach material and something that everyone should see and grok.

Iowa City, the place I drove to initial my first stay-over in Davenport, turned out to be an excellent area for this mission. It’s a college town with a fairly extensive downtown shopping area, lots of little shops and restaurants, definitely a bit more character and alternative/bohemian flavor than the strip malls and big box stores evident in many parts of Iowa which could be pretty much interchangeable with similar strip malls and big box stores in any other state. To give mainstream corporate conformity its due, the pedestrian-friendly downtown Iowa City scene could have been transplanted from pretty much just about any college town in the country too, but to make a perfectly valid generalization, the long-established haunts of university students are to typical suburban sprawl as a hand-painted coffee mug is to a styrofoam cup, or a delicious creation from Ike’s Sandwich shop down the block from me is to a Big Mac. These truths are no less self-evident than those cited in the Declaration of Independence, and I firmly believe that history will one day shake its head in wonder at the cultural ostriches of our era.

But you are no doubt eager to hear about the actual caucuses, and I digress. The place I ended up caucusing was a little town called Hedrick, in Keokue County. It wasn’t until the day of the caucuses, calling around and trying to find a precinct where they didn’t have someone prepared to speak, that this location was recommended to me. I’d been doing get-out-the-vote stuff in the Fairfield area, a relative libertarian hotbed (Jefferson County, of which Fairfield is the major town, was the only county in Iowa that Ron Paul won in 2008), and they had their precincts pretty well covered. So I drove up to Hedrick, but when I got there it turned out there was a local woman prepared to speak on Dr. Paul’s behalf after all, so I didn’t end up giving a speech for him. It wasn’t a wash however, as I did coax two RP supporters into volunteering as delegates who I think probably would not have done so otherwise.

The caucus process itself, at least where I witnessed it, was a bit disappointing (although even what it was still made me jealous as a Californian where we don’t get to caucus at all). Only three candidates (Paul, Santorum, and Bachmann) had people speaking for them, and as soon as those speeches concluded, the voting began. I’d expected more time for people to discuss the merits of the candidates with each other, but there was very little opportunity for that. Although I understand that the process varies considerably from precinct to precinct, and some people I talked to went to caucuses where people were more engaged. At the Hedrick precinct there were 41 voters, and Santorum ran away with the bulk of their support, garnering 19 votes. Paul and Gingrich were tied for second with 8 votes each; Bachmann got 4, Perry 2, and Romney, interestingly, got none. If only South Carolina voters could be so accommodating!

After the voting, the Hedrick townsfolk chose delegates, and the chair had to practically beg people in order to get enough volunteers to fill out the 8-person delegation they were entitled to submit. That was eventually accomplished, but I think only 2 of 4 alternate slots got filled. Then they took suggestions for changing the Republican Party platform. This process was really disappointing. In the LP, of course, we look at the existing platform and debate and iron out the language of actual plank changes. In Hedrick, there were not copies of the existing platform on hand, and people proposed only broad suggestions, like “Require term limits for Congress”, “End birthright citizenship”, etc. There was no voting; people just called out their ideas, and the two dozen or so suggestions were written down on a list, purportedly to be forwarded along with the delegation, to the state convention.

On the bright side of this procedural informality, no one objected to my contributing three ideas to the list — one was “Equal ballot access rules for all political parties”. The other two were to have the platform endorse a couple excellent pieces of legislation listed on the website of the libertarian non-profit Downsize DC the “Read The Bills Act” and the “One Subject At A Time Act”. This was the most specific that any of the platform suggestions got.

Another notable thing about the Iowa effort was that the official Ron Paul campaign only had one office, near Des Moines in the center of the state. I never actually made it to that office, and in fact a person I spoke with there did not seem very interested in wanting people to come help, let alone being able to try to answer any of the questions I had (see above) and suggested I try contacting the grassroots folks instead. Which is probably just as well. Paid campaign staffers who have been given any significant level of responsibility tend, in my experience, to behave like fearful, over-protective mothers and are a drag to work with.

Grassroots supporters, meanwhile, had opened at least four additional offices on their own, and had a generally more welcoming vibe. I spent time at three of those offices, in Fairfield, Davenport, and Iowa City. In Iowa City I ran into Richard Campagna, our 2004 vice-presidential candidate, and in Fairfield I stayed at Roger Leahy’s place. Roger has been a very generous supporter of Dr. Paul, and was no less generous toward me, giving me the run of his charming guesthouse for three nights! I don’t recall physically meeting any other people who were specifically Libertarian that I was aware of, but most of the RP supporters seemed fairly libertarian, from what I could gather. There were several other active Libertarians in Fairfield who I somehow never managed to run into, including Clyde Cleveland who ran for Congress on the LP ticket.

I did have a great conversation at the 2nd Street Coffee House (the place to eat if you’re in Fairfield, imho!) with a couple guys from local radio station KRUU — thoughtful liberals who had some reservations about Ron Paul, but were friendly and invited me to be a radio guest sometime. So gotta follow up with that!

Watching Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift confront the question “Are most political reporters simply insiders?” is a discomfiting experience. Her struggle to defend the indefensible unavoidably inspires compassion for her uneasy predicament. But the case she makes so proves the point that any sympathy engendered morphs quickly into cynicism.

The political reporter appeared on a Dec. 29, 2011, panel discussion on Al Jazeera, subtitled the question du jour. Joining her were Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman and Justice Party presidential candidate Rocky Anderson, of whose candidacy Clift knew nothing. Al Jazeera devoted a third of the half-hour program’s opinions to the former Salt Lake City mayor. Clift apparently had never heard of him.

“I think Rocky Anderson is running probably to get his issues out there, more than from an expectation that he might necessarily win,” she awkwardly speculated aloud, unsure about the Justice Party’s name, no less.

Clift, who also contributes to The Daily Beast, defended the media’s treatment of third parties, which independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader in 2008 called a “blackout” and “political bigotry.” To the contrary, she asserted, the media love the drama third parties bring.

“The last thing the press corps wants is a Romney-Obama race,” she said in an edition of Al Jazeera’s Inside Story: U.S. 2012. “Think of that, for all those many months.”

Clift acknowledged the anger the American people feel toward their government and their yearning for more choices and parties. And she said the media has responded, sort of. They have covered speculative third-party bids by Donald Trump and Ron Paul and will be doing more.

“There are two sort-of-third-party entities,” she added, “Americans Elect, which is going to have an Internet convention and choose a ticket, and No Labels, which is trying to get away from Republican and Democrat. They’re not actually going to mount a ticket.”

Clift mentioned neither Jill Stein nor Kent Mesplay, declared 2012 Green Party candidates. Her defense for ignoring alternative parties:

“Hundreds of people file to run for president. You have to have some sort of screen.”

Back in 2008 we were supposed to believe Mitt Romney’s repeated declarations that he was pro-life and a staunch defender of the God endowed family. We were supposed to accept the notion that he was a “conservative” champion of limited government and fiscal responsibility. But the true facts of his political record utterly contradict these falsehoods. Christie, Perry, Cain and Gingrich have been trotted out, endorsed by this or that supposedly “conservative” element, pundit or apologist. But in one way or another, by their own words and the true facts of their record, all stand exposed as “made men” who have been willing in some decisive way to serve the elite faction’s effort to overthrow constitutional self-government and replace it with elitist dictatorship. One has helped the effort to subvert the republic’s moral foundations; another has openly or silently abetted the attack on its constitutional integrity; another has gone along with the elitist takeover of education; or its subversion of the people’s political and territorial sovereignty; or its suffocation of the economic freedom and consequent material strength of the nation. And finally, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum ironically epitomize the depth of the elite faction’s subversion of the republic’s principles, and its substitution of leaders committed to that subversion in place of those, like America’s founders, determined to articulate, maintain and perpetuate them.

Keyes goes on to criticize Ron Paul for his support of States Rights, which he links to the Confederacy, as well as Paul’s libertarian leanings, which he says “ignores the God revering premises of constitutional self-government.”

He also criticizes Santorum for endorsing pro-choice Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter’s primary bid for re-election.

South Carolina Citizens; my name is RJ Harris and I am a career army national guard officer having been four times deployed in the service of our Republic. I come to you today in SUPPORT of Ron Paul’s call for a return to George Washington’s foreign policy of Non-interventionism and peace through strength at home.

My family and I have lived on the sharp edge of the past several president’s interventionist foreign policies for nearly a lifetime. So I have seen first hand that most of the combat operations we have engaged in for the last twenty years has less to do with our defense and much more to do with the enrichment of the military industrial complex by way of our nation building operations. What most Americans don’t see is that for every soldier in the field there are more than three civilian contractors on the ground in theater in support and an entire legion of more contractors and defense companies working around the world in their support. To put one bullet down-range or engage in a single community outreach project under the direction of the military costs our grand-children hundreds-of-millions of dollars. I say our grand children because our nation is flat broke with our debt running by conservative figures above $15t. This debt has swelled to such gargantuan proportions that even Admiral Mullen’s, the former Chair of the Joint Chiefs, stated before he left his post that the national debt to China had become a national security issue.

Add to this that MANY of our top intelligence analysts who have worked around the world report to us that our covert operations create more terrorists than they kill by way of the collateral damage which comes with late night missile strikes on private homes which may or may not be the homes of those were are trying to bring to justice. And for those that question the validity of that statement I will report that I several times shared a meal and conversation with an Afghanistan contractor from a very influential local family who explained to me that he had lost more relatives, non-combatants all, to coalition forces than to the Taliban. And then consider that our military consists entirely of volunteers who have now been stretched to the breaking point with some soldiers being deployed in excess of 10 times down range in just the last few years. And I can also tell you first hand that many was the time that my own national guard unit went WITHOUT the training funds and mission equipment it desperately needed because those resources were being expended in defense of nations other than our own.

While I was in Afghanistan in 2010-2011, the Army Times and the Stars and Stripes reported that full spectrum combat operations training levels were so low that not a single Army division had engaged in them for nearly a decade. This because every Army resource was going into counter insurgency training in support of the missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Think about that…for nearly a decade our nation was being defended by an army which had not been training or equipping for combat operations to repel or defeat a sovereign foreign power. When one considers that the very point of having the Army and the National Guard in the first place is to defend this nation from a WWII level event, it seems almost criminal that it would be nearly exhausted as it is now to chase down individuals in counter insurgency operations in someone else’s country.

Considering ALL of this then it seems unfathomable that there would be even a single Republican Candidate in the field arguing that continuing this foreign policy is making us stronger for clearly it is doing the opposite. This current foreign policy of interventionism has bankrupted our nation costing us trillions of dollars and thousands of lives while stretching our all volunteer military resources to the breaking point. No WONDER the President has now announced that we cannot sustain support for a two-war defense…it’s because we have destroyed our defense capability through the debt caused by paying for interventionism. Unbelievably, every single Republican Candidate other than Ron Paul is calling on us to support MORE of this failed foreign policy and they have the audacity to claim that it is Paul who is weak on defense!?

Well I am here today to tell all those arm chair Monday morning generals that it is they who are weak on Defense, it is their policy which has broken our military and bankrupted our nation and that it is RON PAUL who understands that our volunteers signed up to defend THIS REPUBLIC and not every other nation in the world.

But I haven’t just built my support for Ron Paul’s foreign policy positions on my own lifetime of experience in that field which tells me he is right. Even more important than that experience is remembering that our first five presidents, who were all alive when the Constitution was ratified, ALSO ardently pursued a foreign policy of non-intervention abroad yet peace through strength at home and in international waters. And this was at a time when the most powerful nation in the world was still smarting over losing to us in the Revolution and the French were angry that we would not help Napoleon. These two greatest powers in the world at that time had both promised to bring war back to our shores for these slights and yet we did not send armies over to invade them.

George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson understood that we have our own borders to defend and our own nation to protect and that if we spend all of our blood and treasure fighting wars around the world there will be nothing left with which to defend OUR nation and we will have created MANY enemies in the process from which we would then need a defense. Glenn Beck has often said that we need a president to be the kind of leader that would ask before EVERY foreign policy decision, “what would George Washington do?” Well when George Washington was asked why he did not invade sovereign American Indian Nations in reprisal for their attacks on the frontier he responded that he would need a declaration of war or letter of reprisal to take our army outside the United States to fight! Now how often have we heard Ron Paul saying that THIS would be his standard before sending our troops into battle and we have heard this from NO ONE ELSE IN THE REPUBLICAN RACE!
For this and many others reasons it is clear to me that Ron Paul is the STRONGEST on defense of the presidential candidates in the Republican field and I hope that all of you in South Carolina who say you love the troops so much will listen to one of them today sharing with you that only President Paul can restore a Constitutional Military and a sustainable foreign policy. In my 2010 Congressional race, running on exactly these foreign policy arguments, I won the endorsements of EVERY Tea Party organization in Oklahoma. So don’t let the Republican chicken-hawks and remote control generals fool you into thinking we need more of this failed interventionist foreign policy. They are invested in it because it was them who convinced us to engage in it in the first place! So I encourage you in light of all this to take another look at the one living embodiment of a Founding Father in this presidential campaign and join me in supporting RON PAUL in South Carolina’s primary and beyond!

Before I close I have to respond to those who will chastise me for supporting a candidate from another party and or for me leaving a promising career as a GOP candidate in my own right to run for the Libertarian Party’s Presidential Nomination. To understand this action one need only realize that my PRIMARY reason for running for President in the first place was and is to ENSURE that the Citizens of this Republic have a Liberty Candidate on the ballot in 2012 no matter what happens in the GOP primary. If it plays out that, God forbid, the Thomas Jefferson of our time could not win in the Republican Party then it is critical that a candidate emerge from the Libertarian Party running on nearly the same platform as Ron Paul especially since Paul himself has said so often that he has no intention of continuing his race outside the Republican Party. George Washington admonished us all in his farewell address to place our love for the Republic and our Patriotism for our Nation well above that of any party loyalty. That is exactly what I am doing and I am asking you to do the same.

But something funny happened Tuesday in New Hampshire. Ron Paul finished a very strong second in the state’s “open” primary with 23% of the vote. Perhaps even more significant, every exit poll shows that Dr. Paul was the winner among young voters, independents and other “non-traditional” Republican primary voters. In other words, he did pretty darn well among those same demographic groups that elected Barack Obama.

The crowds at Ron Paul’s events in New Hampshire may not have looked like the good folks who typically show up at Lincoln Day dinners, but they were big, they were enthusiastic and they produced an election night outcome that shoved several “mainstream” candidates to the back of the bus to South Carolina and beyond.

Johnson uses the final couple of paragraphs to explain why Paul’s good showing in New Hampshire is a good sign for “liberty”.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

JOHNSON ENDORSES PAUL

January 3, 2012, Salt Lake City, UT — Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson is officially endorsing Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) for the 2012 Presidential nomination. Gary Johnson is ending his campaign for the Presidency as of this evening.

The email is not from the campaign and is not reporting anything resembling the truth–campaign staffers confirmed that Johnson has not called it quits.

“If Ron Paul decides that he is going to go third-party, which is detrimental to this nation, and pulls a million votes, which is relatively insignificant in the big scheme of things, I will do everything in my power to defeat his son in Kentucky. I will do everything in my power to defeat his son Rand Paul in Kentucky,” Mark Levin said on his radio program tonight.

Rand Paul was elected to the U.S. Senate in Kentucky in 2010, so he is not up for re-election until 2016. Ron Paul is, of course, a former Presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party, having run in 1988, and in 2008 endorsed several third party Presidential candidates.

Barack Obama’s rhetoric certainly has a populist tone to it these days, but words are cheap.  At the same time that he invoked Teddy Roosevelt, Obama sought to undermine Social Security, one of the fundamental social safety net programs in this country.  Ron Paul and the newly Libertarian Gary Johnson, on the other hand, provide adequate solutions to some of the symptoms of this greater problem.  Both are opposed to the race-driven drug war and the military-industrial complex and the empire which sustains it.  They are even opposed to our modern “crony capitalism,” and in my eyes they are certainly better choices than any of the offerings of the major parties, yet their libertarian ideologies encourage corporate greed and power in some nasty ways.  Actual solutions, or at least the first steps toward actual solutions, to our systematic socioeconomic inequality are present in the campaigns of the Green Party’s Jill Stein and the Justice Party’s Rocky Anderson.  Stein’s campaign is centered on the idea of a “Green New Deal,” providing employment and a fair, democratic redistribution of wealth while jump-starting American environmental efforts.  Anderson, the former mayor of Salt Lake City, recently formed the Justice Party and the central theme of his candidacy is, in his words, “to change the system and get the corrupting influence of corporate and other concentrated wealth out of our electoral system and out of our system of governance.”

Teddy Roosevelt, Ron Paul, Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, and Rocky Anderson either are now, or once were, third party Presidential candidates.

“Yeah,” he told TheDC when asked if he believes supporters should vote for Paul — with whom he shares many libertarian policy positions.

But, Johnson cautioned, “I’m believing that Ron Paul is not going to win the nomination, and that is the exciting part about this for me. I do think it is about an agenda and a message. I think Ron Paul’s a messenger. I think that I am. I think there are others.”

In a Wednesday statement announcing his Libertarian Party candidacy, Johnson noted, “While Ron Paul is a good man and a libertarian who I proudly endorsed for president in 2008, there is no guarantee he will be the Republican nominee.”

This is probably about the closest he is going to get to an endorsement of Ron Paul, seeing as Johnson is an active Presidential candidate himself.

Gary Johnson had his much anticipated Press Conference this morning at 10 AM Mountain Time in the Capitol Rotunda of New Mexico.

He formally ‘left’ the GOP yesterday, and has absolutely milked every drop of PR possible out of the process of changing parties.

Good for him.

Gary clearly brings a new standard of quiet and professional competence and confidence to both the Libertarian Party and the 2012 Presidential Race.

Gary has all of the positives you can say about any of the Candidates in the other two parties, with none of the negatives.

Gary has none of the racist skeletons in his closet that Ron Paul has and none of the Socialist/Big Government skeletons of Romney and Gingrich.

What he does have is a track record of successful Governorship of New Mexico. He spoke today of having vetoed more Bills than every other Governor combined in the other 49 states.

Gary clearly counts better than Obama, who has the USA with 57.

Gary is also clearly pro Israel. He clearly pointed out that his position on Israel is one of the three major points he differs with Congressman Paul on.

Governor Johnson said: “Israel is and has been an important Military Ally.”
‘It’s naive to think that Israel won’t address the Iranian problem.’

‘The US should not give Foreign Aid to Israel.’

‘I wholeheartedly support …continuing to be Israel’s Ally Militarily.’ (order of sentence halves reversed for clarity)

Gary wants to cut the Military Budget by 43%. He pointed out this only turns the budget clock back seven years. He also proposed that Military Alliances that cost money are not ‘Foreign Aid’.

Gary took many digs at Obama and Paul, not the least of which was when he stated: “It’s not the messenger, it’s the message – it’s the agenda”, challenging the cult of personality.

Governor Johnson came across as humble, thoughtful, humorous, relaxed and confident.

Early on, he threw a lot of red meat to the Libertarian crowd stating, “The LP is the Third Party!”  He further pointed out 61% of Americans are willing to vote Third Party.

Gary made the case for the Fair Tax, and while I personally disagree, his point that it was ‘the best of the worst’, and his explanations of how it would be an improvement over the current system are very persuasive and certainly could resonate with voters at least as much as the Herman Cain 9-9-9 plan.

Viewership of the live feed rose steadily throughout the Press Conference that began promptly on schedule. This is in direct contradiction to all LP events starting on ‘Libertarian Standard Time’.

I caught the feed when it was in the high 600s, ending up at over 1850 viewers.
He raised $8,675.31 raised from 103 donors at end of Conference. Total event fundraising traditionally will be much higher than the first final number.

The Chairman of the Libertarian Party and several other Libertarians, notably California LP Candidate and big Marijuana Legalization guy Steve Collet were in the Audience.

Gary wants to immediately withdraw from Afghanistan, is against Eminent Domain for the Keystone Pipeline, and for term limits and free markets.

The free market thing may be the fourth place where he and Ron Paul differ, since it seems that Gary is not against NAFTAesque treaties.

The audience was smallish, but enthusiastic, and kept the Governor on his toes with a wide variety of questions.

Governor Johnson for President Website: http://www.garyjohnson2012.com/

Note: as of 45 minutes post Conference: $10,141.32 raised from 112 donors.

Copyright December 2011 – Bruce Cohen
All Rights Reserved
Reprint rights granted with credit given.

http://getbruce.blogspot.com/2011/12/gary-johnson-announces-libertarian.html