With Ron Paul on the ballot in Montana he is apparently receiving precisely the number of votes John McCain needs to tie Barack Obama in the state. That is if you believe the recent poll done by Montana State University-Billings.
If this year’s presidential election were being held today, for whom do you think you would vote?
Barack Obama 44.4%
John McCain 40.2%
Ron Paul 4.2%
Ralph Nader .7%
Bob Barr 1%
Undecided 9.5%
Of course, the undecideds are in third place, which means McCain could still come out on top if they pick McCain. It is telling that Ron Paul requested he be removed from the ballot in Montana too late for it to be done and he’s now running in third place amongst named candidates in the state.
In May 2007 during the first primary Republican Presidential debate many were introduced to Ron Paul for the first time. One of the first answers he gave during that debate explained in a mere few sentences his philosophy regarding the role of government. It doesn’t really matter what the question was (it was a question about phasing out the IRS). It was his answer that was the springboard for understanding the more finer points of the quintessential Ron Paul.
“You can only do that [phase out the IRS] if you change our ideas about what the role of government ought to be. If you think that government has to take care of us from cradle to grave and if you think our government should police the world and spend hundreds of billions of dollars on a foreign policy that we cannot manage you can’t get rid of the IRS”. (see the video starting at the 1:45 mark)
There it is. It’s quite fundamental. If you truly want limited government the government can’t act as if there are no limits. This is an actual recipe for change in contrast to all of the new programs that Barack Obama and John McCain keep promoting from the campaign trail. Unfortunately, it seems the majority of Americans have answered the “role of government” question with “gimme more please!”
Forget the VP Debate, it was for the birds! Besides the upcoming Break the Matrix Third Party Debate, you can have this debate right now! Let me show you with my Sarah Palin and Ralph Nader example. Plus an idea to change American politics for millions of young Americans with viral media.
<< For those unaware, please read George Dance’s critical article “Third-party debate in early October” on the upcoming Third Party Debate in early October. Date is not yet announced. >>
Fellow columnist Jonathan Cymberknopf reported in his late September article “Ralph Nader and Bob Barr banned from the media” that the media has stopped covering the Third Party tickets who have a mathematical chance to win, and this does indeed seem to be the case. These candidates in alphabetical order are:
He is mostly correct; the mainstreammedia is completely ignoring these candidates. However, viral media has the potential to take the third party’s message to millions, spreading far TRUER democracy, and revealing the current election of McBama as the staged sham that it truly is. The cool facet about it is that if it starts, its spreads like wildfire because everyone shares with everyone else. On the flip side, there is only one month left, but with the financial world reeling, McBama-supported idiotic bailouts and bank failures galore, there is a real chance this could have a lasting effect on American politics for a long time to come, if it is done correctly. Here is the idea.
How well do you know the U.S. Constitution? Are you ready to test your knowledge? Thanks to Chip Wood’s Straight Talk, here are 25 questions to test your Constitutional savvy. Care to give it a try? (Attempt to answer each question before reading the answer).
Although Ron flounders a little at the end there, he pretty much sums it up in a way that I think a lot of us have never fully considered: 16% of the country votes for one candidate, and the rest of us, the true majority, are all left feeling like “the minority”. Footage below, including what we can and need to do about it:
This interview with Bob Barr was taped during the Republican National Convention. The tone of the interview is a bit like a couple of friends sitting down for a conversation with attempts at humor, neither quite successful. Barr does certainly seemed very focused on getting in to the debates, which is music to my ears. There was little in the way of issues discussed in the interview, but Barr defends against the spoiler role yet again. He’s getting good at it.
A few months ago we at Liberty Maven created The Paul-O-Meter where we rate the Presidential candidates on how closely they are to Ron Paul on the issues. We then opened up the rating system to readers. Since then we have added all sitting Senators and Congressmen to the system. Also, an option to submit candidates was added so that candidates currently running for office can be added. Now there are some new features that we are ready to unveil.
The Paul-O-Meter has moved to its own domain: Paul-O-Meter.com. A great new search feature was added to make finding candidates in the system extremely easy. Also each candidate now has his/her own Paul-O-Meter page for easy linking from other sites. For example here is Bob Barr’s Paul-O-Meter page.
What started as a humble little idea of rating the Presidential candidates in relation to Ron Paul became a full fledged rating system for any and all representatives and candidates for offices across America.
We aren’t finished with it yet. We have more features planned such as allowing each rater to give a reasoning for how each criterion is rated. We hope to make the Paul-O-Meter into something like OnTheIssues.org. In fact even if you despise Ron Paul the candidate ratings will give you great insight into each of the candidates positions. This will certainly be the case once we add the description feature.
This is quite a shot in the dark, and I’m sure the Barr campaign discussed this internally, although one never knows. They can use the Texas ballot access fight to their advantage in an attempt to get Bob Barr into the debates.
They should continue spreading the word about Obama and McCain missing the ballot access deadline in Texas. Also, they should add a new tactic to their press releases on the matter. The Barr campaign should make it clear (and public) that if both the Obama and McCain campaigns are truly interested in “change” as they claim then they should be for what the majority of the American people want and that is for Bob Barr to be in the debates (according the the recent Zogby poll saying 55% of those polled said he should be included). This alone is already being pursued to a degree, but it must be made more public using all media opportunities. The key is to continue to use the “change” rhetoric of the anti-change Parties against them.
The final and most convincing argument can be found with the Texas ballot fight where both Obama and McCain missed the filing deadline (supposedly). It seems that threatening a lawsuit could be used as a negotiating tactic. The Barr campaign’s lawyers can offer to drop the lawsuit if both Obama and McCain agree to allow Barr into the debates. Pointing out the amount of money and time both campaigns will have to spend on defending the lawsuit instead of their own campaigns should be a key point.
It is unlikely either Obama or McCain will fold to such “offers”, but it is worth a shot, especially since the law is being relaxed to their benefit. For Bob Barr, fighting for debate access is more important than fighting for ballot access at this point.
If Obama and McCain are truly for “change” and putting the “country first” then they should not suppress Bob Barr’s inclusion in the debates. Unfortunately, unless the main stream media makes this Texas ballot fight and hypocrisy widely known most voters will never get to hear the true message of change in this election.
Yesterday the FOX 5 affiliate in Atlanta covered Bob Barr’s recent good polling numbers in a handful of states. The ultimate question in the story is “has Barr’s campaign already reached its high water mark?” For the sake of the liberty message I certainly hope not.
The Paul-O-Meter is designed to rate candidates and office holders on how closely they measure up to Ron Paul on 20 criteria. We at Liberty Maven have rated the six main Presidential candidates and have recently added all Senators and members of Congress to the application. For a detailed description of the Paul-O-Meter check out the methodology.
We’ve added a new feature to the Paul-O-Meter. It occurred to us that we may not know about some wonderful candidates running for office around the nation. So now anyone can request a candidate be added to the Paul-O-Meter system. Once approved that candidate can be rated by anyone along with the existing candidates. This new feature will hopefully help draw attention to other liberty minded candidates running for office across the nation.
Liberty Maven
