Posted under Election 2012 & Interventionism & Iraq & Virgil Goode
Jim Antle’s article on Virgil Goode (post below) is the occasion for this Daniel Larison blog post. Larison is skeptical.
The Constitution Party is often the default third party alternative for antiwar conservatives. If one wants to vote only on foreign policy and civil liberties, the Libertarian candidate will usually be acceptable (though that wasn’t really the case in 2008), but the Constitution Party theoretically gives dissident conservatives of various stripes a vehicle to express their dissatisfaction with the Republicans on a wider range of issues. Antiwar conservatives unwilling to cast a protest vote for someone as socially liberal as Gary Johnson can usually rely on the Constitution Party to nominate someone credibly opposed to unnecessary foreign wars while still being conservative on most or all other questions. As the profile explains, Goode fits the second part of that description, but not the first.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t make for much of a protest candidacy if the third party candidate can’t make his differences with the major parties sufficiently clear. I have no objection to most of what Goode says here on foreign policy, but that remark about believing that there were WMDs in Iraq in 2003 is such a bizarre and unnecessary error that it brings me up short every time I read this article. The best part is when Goode qualifies his belief in the existence of Iraqi WMDs with the phrase “to some degree,” as if hedging on a demonstrably false belief made it less ridiculous. I don’t know why anyone would still be saying this in 2012. It certainly makes no sense for the nominee of a party that was opposed to the invasion of Iraq to repeat one of the worst pro-war lies. If he is hoping that this claim might make his past support for the Iraq (invasion) seem less obnoxious, he is mistaken.
The problem with the WMD argument all along was that even if we knew with absolute certainty that Iraq had WMDs, that still would not have constituted a sufficient casus belli for war. Invading Iraq because they had WMDs that they might use is still preventive war.
Crossposted at IPR without the editorial content.
Kirt Higdon on 12 Jun 2012 at 12:10 am #
If Goode actually believes even to some extent in the Iraqi WMD lie or seriously believes that Iran is a threat to the US, then I shouldn’t vote for him because he’s delusional. If he’s merely throwing out half-hearted lies to attract votes from war-mongering Republicans, then I shouldn’t vote for him because he’s a liar, even if a half-hearted one. If I wanted to waste my vote on an opportunist, I could always vote for Romney. He’s at least an opportunist sly enough to have a chance of winning.
RedPhillips on 12 Jun 2012 at 5:36 pm #
Sav, if I thought Goode was a non-interventionists and was just pulling his punches some in order not to scare off the freeper crowd, then that would be one thing. But I don’t get the sense that is what is going on. I get the sense that Goode really didn’t get it until he found himself with this new crowd and has figured out his old answers are no longer satisfactory. I do think he is catching on, but his early attempts sounded very much like someone who didn’t really want to answer for fear of offending either side (after having figured out there was now another side).
But this gets at the purpose of a third party run. Is it really about attracting a few more freeper votes, or is it about raising a standard and then bludgeoning the major party with it?
roho on 12 Jun 2012 at 9:31 pm #
I guess it boils down to what a WMD is by someone’s definition? In my mind they did not exist, all though we sold them the chemical weapons that they killed Iranians and Kurds with for years.
Now that their homes glow from depleted uranium ordinance from our tanks, we can charge them with EPA violations and force all of their jobs to go to Israel.
C Bowen (Hawthorne) on 12 Jun 2012 at 10:30 pm #
His position on the issue can only be judged if runs a Hardcore Birther campaign, both legalist, and identitarian–that should be the gambit, and the stick to be judged against.
Sean Scallon on 13 Jun 2012 at 1:13 pm #
I don’t anyone likes the idea of having voted for a war and deaths that followed based on lie. They cling to anything to avoid the truth they don’t want to tell themselves. Because who looks worse for that? The voter who believed what his leaders were telling them or the leaders who had access to far more intelligence and knew more what was going on and yet voted for the lie anyway?