American Independent Party

The American Independent Party platform looks good on paper and its leadership is solidly in favor of all three main items on my political agenda: smaller government (by enforcing the Constitution and following the principles of Liberty), strong defense, and profamily legislation. The problem I have with this party is with their registered voters. There is no greater gap between a party platform and the votes of those registered with it than with this party.

Here is how the typical American Independent Party registrant chooses this party. They say to themselves, “I am an American. I am an Independent. Therefore, I am an American Independent.” Good grammar, bad politics. “Decline to State” is the official meaning of “independent.”

The AIP is the third largest Party after the Republicans and the Democrats, but I warrant you that a majority of its confused, rootless registrants will vote for Arnold Schwarzenegger! That has been the pattern before, a left of center performance capable of being swayed by emotion. Any Republican who wanted to quit his party and join this one would have to make it his priority to change its registration base into a predominately Christian conservative one, from one best characterized as unchurched and young. At least this was the situation the last time I checked.

Any Party with a base out of touch with its leadership is in trouble. The Republicans had better watch out for this themselves! Anybody that wants a minor party to graduate to major party status had better follow a strategy of appropriate registration, thereby weakening the major parties. Minor parties can be major players, if they are careful to use their influence to pressure major parties and have a very disciplined registered base, which will throw its support where the leaders say.

Unnecessary Use of Absentee Ballots Is Unwise and Dangerous

Absentee ballots are much more vulnerable to voter fraud than any other type of ballot. This is because they lie around so long with inadequate security, they are subject to being selectively discarded or altered. Also, you may not have all the information you need to make a responsible decision at the time you cast your absentee ballot. The responsible thing to do is to postpone your final decision on voting until you have all the information relevant to it you are likely to get.

Remarks on Minor Party Candidates

Of the 119 or so candidates who had valid contact information and a web site a few stood out as sincere and pleasant. I hope that some of these will grow in the sophistication and validity of their views and serve us better in the future than the present motley crew who infest the halls of the Legislature and the Executive branches of the State government.

In no particular order here are my comments on some of the about seventy candidates who weren’t too important to respond to my questions. Only a few of them actually were too important to answer personally. I had the cooperation of John Stoos, a consultant for McClintock, the most major of the candidates who responded in any sense.

B. E. Smith wants to “return a republican form of government to the people.” I can get behind that! That certainly expresses my sentiment about our situation and our first priority. No single candidate expressed this more succinctly. Too bad he is in favor of disorganized crime—or disorganized criminals at least! He is one those who favor the legalization of marijuana. He comes from a Libertarian, pro Constitution viewpoint. Bruce Margolin also favors legalization of drugs, marijuana particularly. He comes at this Libertarian position from the Democratic side and has the endorsement of NORML, who are a pro legalization of marijuana organization.

If you want to vote for the most seriously pretty and truly serious candidate, then Brooke Adams wins hands down—and you’d better keep them there Arnold! She is a thoughtful moderate with a good political operative working for her. I wonder what office she will really run for and probably win? Another attractive, energetic woman with a very active mind is Cheryl bly-Chester. She just needs to work very hard on summarizing her positions, extracting principles from them and then working those principles back into her practical proposals. I really like this candidate, but as for every single one with the exception of McClintock (CRA) and Templin (AIP), she needs a lot of work on relating theory to practice, and also like most of them, getting a theory!

Dick Lane is runner-up for the most evasive candidate. Check out his answers and my comments. At least we had a little fun! Mike Schmier wins the all-time weasel award. Check out his answers (or were they the answers of the assistant he blamed for them) and my comments to see a little exercise in counter spin techniques.

One of the most down-to-earth, head screwed on tight was Paul Nave, a body builder. Gerold Lee Gorman was another candidate who made his case well. Rich Gosse had an excellent short answer to the question about what the legitimate functions of government were, viz. “to enforce contracts and protect us from evil people.”

Trek Thunder Kelly played the campaign partially for laughs, but he couldn’t help himself, he made good sense! I personally think that a good sense of humor is one of the finest characteristics that a person can have and also indicative of above average intelligence. I’d visit this fellow’s web site just to view the graphic!

Socialists’ Pick

You have four choices—more than anyone else! Five of them are on the ballot. If you like a Hindu Guru flavor, you can have the Natural Law Party candidates. Yes, the Ommmmmmm crowd couldn’t settle on one candidate, so they are impartially promoting both Darin Price and Iris Adam. Actually this makes a strange sort of sense (and they are nothing if not strange), because neither has a spin of the prayer wheel chance of election!

If you are an old-fashioned bomb thrower, who just can’t let the glory days of Vietnam War protests go, then your party of choice is the Peace and Freedom Party—better named the Violent Revolution and Socialist Oppression Party. Their candidate is C. T. Weber, who thought I was being deceptive, because I didn’t express my bias before asking questions. Unlike most questionnaires, my questions were unbiased and they did not represent pressure on candidates to change their positions, only to express them!

The Green Party candidate, Peter Camejo put in a good performance in the debates. If you liked his ideas, then you liked him. If you are dissatisfied with the Democratic Party because it is not liberal and environmentally sound and consistent, then this is your party of choice. True it is not as hard-line Socialist, but at least it can ruin the electoral chances of Democratic Party candidates if they don’t pay enough attention to your ideas and agenda!

The Socialist Equality Party candidate, John Christopher Burton, was unfailingly polite and cooperative. These are serious ideological socialists. They never abbreviate their message nor compromise it. For the socialist purist, you couldn’t make a better choice.