In the age of Obomba, there is nary a peacenik to be found among the Democrats. They are eagerly following Obama into the dark and odious swamp of “humanitarian” imperialism. So what’s an anti-interventionist (and civil libertarian) to do in this electoral season? Not much choice but to head for the libertarian wing of the Grand Old Party.
And there this antiwarrior found himself last Saturday morning, at the Republican Caucus in Massachusetts Congressional District 5. In Massachusetts, delegates to the Republican National Convention (RNC) are chosen by vote in these District caucuses, three delegates in each CD. The delegates are bound by oath to vote for the winner of the state primary, Mitt Romney this year, but only on the first ballot for President. After the first ballot they are free to vote their conscience. And they are also free to vote as they see fit for the VP, the platform and sundry other matters, great and small. So the caucuses matter; potentially they matter a lot. Any registered Republican can vote, but attendance is usually slender partly because media coverage is slight.
The Paulites were out in force with their slate of delegates, the “Ronald Reagan, Liberty, Unity Slate,” a name which fooled no one. The establishment marshaled its forces for the Mitt Romney slate. It was not hard to tell who was who in the auditorium; the older part of the crowd was with Mitt and those with kids in strollers belonged to Ron Paul. When the votes were tallied, the Liberty slate won by a 2:1 margin! That scenario was repeated again and again in most of the 9 Congressional Districts, with the Liberty slate trouncing the Romney gang and winning 17 of 27 delegates chosen by the caucuses.
There is one glitch. 14 more delegates will be chosen by the party hierarchy, and so the anti-interventionist contingent might not be in the majority of the Mass delegation, although some in the establishment are having second thoughts about the Liberty faction. After delegates were chosen and the Liberty landslide was evident, the alternates were voted on. One Romney alternate arose to aver that, as he thought about it, he agreed with Ron Paul on about 80% of policies! It did him no good. The Romney alternate slate went down by a margin of 2:1 to the Paul slate. But the careerist pols were now paying attention.
In another CD caucus, the irrepressible Rich Aucoin, once upon a time candidate for Lieutenant Governor and now running on the Liberty slate, elicited a defense of Obomba from the Romney camp! Aucoin writes:
“My speech touched on Obama’s declaration that he has the power to assassinate us without trial…and I ended with a semi-joke:
Q: Why isn’t the TSA catching any terrorists? A: Because they’re not screening passengers on Air Force One!
I got a thunderous response. The next establishment candidate took umbrage at this and inserted into his speech a retort to me, saying something to the effect that it is irresponsible to call the POTUS a terrorist without proof! He received dead silence. I would love to give the guy a follow-up slap down for defending Barack Obama at a GOP caucus (!!!)….and will do so once I have his name.”
And so it went. The mainstream media in Mass. has not covered any of this. But Republican establishment bloggers have taken. Thus, one pro-Romney blogger wrote on the day after the caucuses:
“The establishment is understandably shaken by the turn of these events. With big names like Kerry Healey (former GOP gubernatorial candidate!) and Brad Jones not winning (i.e., losing as delegates to the convention!) in their home district caucuses. They shouldn’t be. They should embrace the energy of these “new” people and not turn them away. This wing of the party, if treated with respect, forms a dedicated grassroots army.”
Translation. Let us see if we can coopt them. But there is an interesting kernel of truth here. The GOP has withered significantly in many places, including Massachusetts; and in such places the Ron Paul people may already have the numbers to take it over. They certainly have the commitment.
This scenario has been repeated again and again throughout the US. Here is what Tim Pawlenty (Remember him?) has to say about the future of the GOP:
“We’ve got to be a party that’s about addition and not subtraction. In places like Minnesota, the Northeast, the West Coast, the Mountain States, the Upper Midwest, the Great Lakes, we don’t have a margin of error where we can afford to shrink the party. We want to be growing the party if we’re going to win elections and also have the opportunity to govern and make a difference for the country. So this is about expanding market share, not contracting it.”
Pawlenty has hit upon the crux of the matter here. The GOP, sucked into Christian Fundamentalism and the vilest designs of the neocons and the Israeli lobby, is an endangered species in the 21st Century. Only the young libertarians offer it a chance of survival.
The core of the libertarian activists see their present activity as one step in a long-term effort to take the GOP back to its anti-interventionist roots. Many feel that Ron Paul is unlikely to get the nomination by capturing caucus votes. But they also understand that they are learning an enormous amount in the battle to make at least one major party – the GOP in this case – into a genuine antiwar and pro-civil liberties Party. The Dems (including the pwogwessives whose candidate was and remains Obama) have failed to field an antiwar candidate. It appears, as a wise friend tells me, that for now the road to peace runs through the Right.
John V. Walsh can be reached at John.Endwar@gmail.com
I believe that the Paul delegates pledged to Romney are free, both under Roberts Rules of Order and precedent, to abstain, thus possibly forcing a second ballot.
I've read elsewhere that the actual party rules say exactly that.
Vote for Ron Paul or you will wish you did!
A friend of mine living in Austin Texas told me that the state GOP muckety mucks didn't have the guts to run a straw poll months ago out of fear that it was obvious people hated both Perry and Romney so much that "He who shall not be spoken of" would have risen to the top. That sort of siege mentality carried forth and it will be quite an embarrassment once caucus day arrives. People like a winner without giving thought that they're so-called "choice" is another knife in the back! Like the old saying goes, "If you keep doing what you've been doing, then you'll keep getting what you've been getting". So when I broke a near twenty year pledge of never voting Republican, just to cast a ballot at our state caucus, I kept my eyes open on who were the Romney robots. And if it weren't for all the seniors who were bussed into the event I'm certain that Mittens would not have gotten the bare fifty per cent that he slithered away with.
The young Ron Paul supporters are well informed citizens that are fighting for liberty. These patriots cannot be swayed by the corrupt msm or the establishment GOP. This makes me proud. I am not young but support Ron Paul too.
World has not changed that much in the last century. I found an interesting piece of writing by Emma Goldman in which she said:
"We say that if America has entered the war to make the world safe for democracy, she must first make democracy safe in America. How else is the world to take America seriously, when democracy at home is daily being outraged, free speech suppressed, peaceable assemblies broken up by overbearing and brutal gangsters in uniform; when free press is curtailed and every independent opinion gagged? Verily, poor as we are in democracy, how can we give of it to the world?"
Is that only me or it really is the same today? I think I have been reading similar statements in discussions on Antiwar.com since Kosovo war many many times.
Since Ron Paul is to my sadness not going to change anything since he is not allowed by (GOP) party to run for president, although I think he is the hope of the world not only US, I present one more quote from great Emma Goldman:
"If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal."
Aren't they bound to vote for Romney in the first round, anyway? It would still be good news for Paul, but he didn't win the "delegates" per se – – as that would require actually winning a state for once.
And the first vote is the one that matters. As it looks next to impossible for Romney not to reach 1,144.
Read the piece again. It says they must vote for Paul on the first ballot.
That is it. IF, and a big "if" it is, there is a deadlock on the first ballot, then they are free to vote as they wish on subsequent ballots. When the Santorum, Gingrich etc delegates are released, then how will they vote? Who can say.
AND these delegates are free to vote as they wish for VP and platform issues and generally to make the liberty movement known.
they can also abstain in MA and who knows how many other states. This could get interesting.
I find the idea that Republicans can be anti-war and pro-personal liberty invigorating, and am one more foreign policy lefty coming over to Ron Paul. Mailed my ballot in this morning.
On other stuff we can agree to disagree I hope, but it is important for as many of us as possible to stand up against this foolish pursuit of Empire that is beginning to militarize at home.
Obomney's drones are up, Janet has the deadly hollow point ammo, the 9/11 crime scene has been coated with patriotic saccharin such as a 1776 ft high anthill, Congress is cranking out dark legislation like Mussolini on coke, so yeah, it's time I made some personal compromises in other departments to get behind not just Ron Paul but a newly exposed facet of a demographic fault line that will shiver the timbers of both parties next fall.
Thank you. I did the same here in CO, as I changed my registration to Republican to participate in the precinct caucuses, and then served as a Paul delegate to the county Republican convention. By the end of it, I believe CO sent a strong slate of Paul delegates to the RNC. And, there are now follow up battles going on as the same political force is trying to take control of the Republican party leadership positions.
My question is this. We need a strong anti-war campaign in the general election. Who's it going to be? We need to find one good candidate in the fall election, and then have the full anti-war movement rally behind that campaign.
I am afraid that without RP, there will be no serious antiwar candidate.
Rocky Anderson is a "humanitarian" interventionist. Gary Johnson proclaims his fealty to Israel and claims we in the US have a responsibility to the Apartheid state. Jill Stein is well meaning but the Greens remain infiltrated by Dems who will want her to go light on Obomba – and she has not won a single election in MA although she has been trying for some time.
The “Ronald Reagan” slate fooled no one, but it did enlighten me.
Ronald Reagan might not have been as bad as his successors, each worse than the other, and could project something of an idiot's charm. Yet through his foreign policies he was a mass murderer and torturer more bloodthirsty than Jeffrey Dahmer; also a traitor to his country and to democracy; also a fool and habitual liar whose buffoonery renders him even unworthy of Paine's phrase “Right Honorable murderer of mankind.”
I was set to go to the caucus. I had proof that I had registered as Republican. I had dressed as a Republican, was prepared to say nice things about various Republicans that I honestly believe while self-censoring praise for MA's past Senators Sumner and Hoar. But I just couldn't bring myself to go at the last minute. I felt the same revulsion at the project as if I had been asked to endorse the John Wayne Gacy Liberty slate, or the Lenin slate, or the Hitler slate (the 1st not as effectively murderous as Reagan; the latter two worse).
The local organizer, when I called him to tell him I wasn't going, and why, told me, since I did not apparently Get It that the idea of the “Reagan” slate was a clever stratagem, a “Trojan Horse” –by handing out a list of candidates under the Reagan name the Paul faction would minimize the likelihood of a negative reaction by party regulars, catching them off-guard apparently. What tactical incompetence! Of course even the stupidest party regulars would figure out what was happening out immediately if such a list was being handed out—the tactic was tantamount to having a sign on a Trojan Horse announcing that it was a cleverly tricky Trojan Horse, as if the giggles emanating from within weren't enough. (A minimally competent attempt to keep party officials in the dark would have done something like circulating a list of candidates surreptitiously beforehand through the same network with which people were notified of the caucus.)
Thinking about this tactical sub-idiocy, and the tie to the vicious Reagan (“everyone likes Reagan” I remembered someone having said at an organizational meeting), I felt really good at not going to vote for the Reagan/Paul slate. I remembered a state organizer at a meeting having said, rather cultist-like, at least twice, and possibly four or five times, that he went along with some decision because Dr. Paul says that's what he thinks should be done, and that Paul has always proven to be right, and so he always does what Dr. Paul says to do.
Reflexive invective against “Paultards” used to make my blood boil. I wonder whether I will still react as strongly.
I am somewhat inclined to think, with some regret, that it is past time for this candidacy and movement to die, deader than the multitude of Reagan's innocent victims. It seems to stink of the rot of death already.
One does not have to believe each and every part of every piece written against Reagan's foreign policy, or in favor of his enemies, but there was a lot of smoke, and surely a lot of fire. Just recently presented online, for example, (www.counterpunch.org/2012/05/02/the-personal-revenge-of-tomas-borge ) by a D. Kovalik, which I have just read after writing my comment, above:
<<<….Reagan continued to arm the Contras – who never controlled one inch of Nicaraguan territory, but who engaged in acts of terror against the Nicaraguan population such as destroying hospitals, schools and electric power plants – even when the U.S. Congress outlawed such support. To do so, Reagan turned to a group of unsavory characters such as Oliver North who funded the Contras through the sale of cocaine as well as illegal arms sales to Iran. This came to be known as the Iran-Contra Scandal.
One of the most chilling accounts of the Contras I ever heard came from former CIA agent John Stockwell …:
“I don’t mean to abuse you with verbal violence, but you have to understand what your government and its agents are doing. They [the Contras] go into villages, they haul out families. With the children forced to watch they castrate the father, they peel the skin off his face, they put a grenade in his mouth and pull the pin. With the children forced to watch they gang-rape the mother, and slash her breasts off. And sometimes for variety, they make the parents watch while they do these things to the children.”
In order to justify such crimes, Reagan claimed that the Sandinistas – who in fact were greatly improving the standard of living of the Nicaraguan people – were enslaving the Nicaraguan people with their own brand of Marxism-Leninism. Reagan singled out Borge above all other Sandinistas as the most pernicious and authoritarian figure. And, if you read the obituaries of Borge, you will see the influence of this slander, with him described as “ruthless” and as the Sandinista “enforcer.”
In fact, Borge was a brave soul who took his Christian faith, and its demand for the forgiveness of one’s enemies, seriously — first and foremost by joining in the decision to abolish the death penalty after the triumph of the Sandinista revolution in 1979. Of course, the U.S. would cynically exploit this act of forgiveness and kindness by organizing the National Guard, many of whom might have been put to death by a less benevolent revolution, into the Contras which would go on to terrorize Nicaragua for the next decade.
….[Borge] was arrested and subject to unspeakable acts of torture by the National Guard. This torture included the Guardsmen’s rape and murder of Borge’s wife before his very eyes.
The story I was told about this in 1987 when I was in Nicaragua was that Borge had vowed revenge against those who had tortured he and his wife. And, when the Sandinistas took power in 1979, Borge exacted this revenge on one of his torturers who he learned was in prison. Borge went to the prison, swung the door of the torturer’s jail cell open, and said “I have come to have my revenge against you as I vowed. For your punishment, you will have to walk the streets of this country and see the children of this country who you tortured for so long learn to read and write.” >>>
Look into Reagan's Iran contra stuff in detail. Pure treason incarnate. Or remember his comment, provoked by antiwar demonstrations, that what this country needed was "a good bloodbath."
I humored my daughter by attending the caucus and voting for the Liberty slate, with the clear understanding that they had all pledged to vote for Romney on the first ballot. If some do not, just to deny Romney the right to be our candidate, those people will be no better than the Obama people. I'd like to see change in the GOP, make them more relevant and practical, but not at the expense of being denied my representation in the convention.