Posted under Alan Keyes & Chuck Baldwin & Constitution Party & Election 2008 & NeoCons
… The sign of the Missouri delegation says “Principle Over Politics,†and that’s what I’m here to talk about with you today. First of all, thank you for all the help everyone in this room has given to this party and I thank, especially, each of you who assisted me in my campaigns for the presidency for which I am very grateful.
The Democrats say that this election is about change. I say it’s about choice, not in the abortion sense, but in the sense of our deciding whether our party will continue to exist. There is already a neocon party. It’s called the Republicans. There is a candidate for the nomination of our party who until about a week ago was a Republican and who is a neocon and supports all the neocon principles.
We have to choose between being a neocon party or the Constitution Party. The neocons favor a continued presence in Iraq, and indeed the gentleman to whom I refer favors an ongoing U. S. presence in the Middle East. Neocons favor continued U. S. membership in the UN. Our party is on record against it. But this gentleman is for it. Our party is against foreign aid. It’s in the platform, but this gentleman favors continuing and indeed expanding foreign aid. Our party has passed resolutions and in its platform said we should get out of NATO which our membership in which requires us, if we honor that treaty, to go to war whenever one of the member nations of NATO comes under attack. Pat Buchanan wrote a great column the other day, “Should America Go to War for South Ossetia?â€
People have joined us and they’ve joined Ron Paul and the candidate I favor by the way is a very strong supporter of Ron Paul. The neocon candidate who challenges Chuck Baldwin regularly denounced Ron Paul and the policies which he advocated. He often sounded like Rudy Guiliani in his denunciation of Ron Paul’s position that we should get out of Iraq. And, of course, Ron Paul was with the principles of this platform and let me—and let me say, Ron is someone with whom I’ve worked since he first came to Congress. I’ve worked closely with his congressional staff, his campaign staff, and let me tell you that Chuck Baldwin is a hero to those folks because Chuck Baldwin was out there on the front lines for Ron Paul.
Bob Barr is a friend of mine as Alan Keyes has been in years gone by. And Bob Barr spoke with Ron Paul on three occasions, begging him for his support as he seeks the Libertarian Party nomination. But, Ron Paul will not do that because in his heart Ron Paul knows that Chuck Baldwin is right and that if the Paul people are to support anyone it’s Chuck Baldwin they should be supporting. And this is something we can look to. Ron Paul has attracted scores of thousands of supporters. He’s got an estimated thirty-five million dollars in the bank and those supporters and those resources can become an asset to this party if we nominate a candidate who has been a friend of Ron Paul not an enemy of Ron Paul.
If our principles are excluded from the 2008 campaign they could be lost to history. Ideas which are not advocated in a political context are lost to history. I urge you, my dear friends, to choose a nominee who is duty-driven, not ego-driven, a man who joined our party more than five years ago, not less than one week ago, a man who is not a perpetual office-seeker, moving from state to state, but a man who is a persistent proponent of the principles on which this party was founded and whose candidacy will not shower ridicule on our party for having favored reparations and jumped into mosh pits and so forth.
Our candidate, if he is Chuck Baldwin, is a man whose disgust with the policies of George Bush, led him to leave the Republican Party early in the Bush administration, not to linger until a week ago. With Chuck Baldwin it’s not personal ambition, it’s servant leadership.
My friends, in some respects, Dr. Baldwin’s opponent, a man whom I do respect and I admire and whom I have loved as a friend is in fact worse than the GOP on some issues. While the GOP says it’s a tax-cutting policy, Alan Keyes says he favors a compulsory national—he favors a national sales tax which according to the advocates of the so-called fair tax, which was pushed by Mike Huckabee would impose a thirty percent tax on many sales. That would kill the automobile industry. It would further kill the real estate industry. It would further destroy our economy.
Chuck Baldwin’s principal opponent favors compulsory national service. He favors a return to the military draft. That is a horrendous thing. And I’m not making this up. This is what he told me from his mouth to my ear, and others have been present with him when those positions were advocated.
My friends, in the time remaining me, I’d like to share with you some excerpts from the comments that I made when I was first nominated as your candidate for president in 1992…
roho on 29 Apr 2008 at 1:13 pm #
May “Principles” always trump “Ambitions”……….Run Chuck Run!
Patroon on 29 Apr 2008 at 2:11 pm #
When I heard about Phillips’ speech I made this response on Third Party Watch:
I feel for Jim Clymer because he in a tough spot. You want Keyes supporters but you don’t want Keyes. It’s tough to seperate the two because his supporters are passionately devoted to the man. I know many of my friends and associates wanted Phillips to make nut-kicking speech against Keyes and they got it. But would a passionate speech in favor Baldwin and the values of the party have been a better course to take?
I ask this question as an adamant opponent of Keyes but one who realizes that unless the party grows and draws in more mainstream conservatives, you’re not going to have much to pick from for potential presidential nominees.
We should all feel very fortunate and blessed that Chuck Baldwin decided to run because if he didn’t it would have been very difficult to deny Keyes the nomination. Now’s the time to promote Chuck’s candidacy.
Trent Hill on 29 Apr 2008 at 3:06 pm #
Patroon,
It wouldn’t have been THAT difficult. We had him 3-to-1,and probably could’ve donethe samething with Scott Bradley or Jim Clymer at the top of the ticket.
Now we spend the next 4 years finding credible candidates for 2012. I suggest Roy Moore, Rep. Steve Stockman, or even Walter Jones!
Patroon on 29 Apr 2008 at 4:36 pm #
That’s assuming they would run in the first place. Certainly Moore wasn’t interested (I think he’s saving himself for another run being governor) and Baldwin was a reluctuant candidate.
Just reading some of the bios and speech of those who-would-be-president from the CP besides Keyes made me cringe.
James on 29 Apr 2008 at 6:36 pm #
In this instance at least, the neocon take-over of genuine conservative institutions has been halted. I hope this is the beginning of a trend where by the neocons are thouroughly exposed, rejected and expelled from the conservative movement for good.
roho on 29 Apr 2008 at 7:00 pm #
Make no mistake about it……”The Neocons are settled in at the GOP, and are not going anywhere!”
True Conservatives have to ask themselves, “Am I a conservative because I’m a Republican? Or am I a Republican because I’m a Conservative?”
What has happened, is that the “Gop Worshiper” needs to claim his psuedo/conservatism to camoflage his Jacobson ideology inorder to grow.
Real Conservatives are totally comfortable in their ideology, with parties being nothing more than a political necessity…….Therefore, I was a conservative Democrat at one time, a conservative republican at one time, and soon to be a conservative member of the CP.
Integer on 30 Apr 2008 at 2:38 am #
roho said:
“…Jacobson ideology…” ?!
It seems to me that you are conflating two words, one of which represents something very evil and another which (in my humble opinion) represents something pretty good (although a little old fashioned these days):
Jacobin: The left wing of the French National Assembly during the terror of 1793. i.e. Robespierre, Murat etc. boo, hiss!
Jacobite: The legitimist house of Stuart in exile, Bonny Prince Charlie, good Celtic music and all that jazz. Yea, horaay!
I think you can easily figure out which contemporary political movements are analogous to their 18th century predecessors!
Mariel on 30 Apr 2008 at 3:04 pm #
This is all interesting to me. I was a Huckabee supporter, and I still think he’s better than the neo-cons, but I am willing to vote for Chuck Baldwin, even though he helped defeat Huckabee. I don’t like it that Huck is supporting McCain so strongly. Huck would have been a decent president, even a very good one, and the “fair tax” would have been refined when and if it came in.
Since our Republican choice is McCain, I can’t go there, even if Huck is VP.
So, Chuck Baldwin, go!