Operation Rescue on a larger scale
The Constitution Party selects an activist as their Presidential candidate.
Last Saturday, at its national convention in Salt Lake City, the Constitution Party chose Randall Terry as its presidential candidate. People probably know him as a leader in the pro-life movement, so in that aspect I like him a lot.
But one thing which troubles me is that, at least at first glance, his campaign isn’t about voting for him or the Constitution Party, but voting against Joe Biden. I certainly don’t have a problem with discouraging people who might support our current Resident, but it seems to me that the CP is being used once again here.
This is what it says on the “about” page for Terry’s presidential website - note there is nothing there about his seeking the CP nomination.
November 5th is our chance to stand for the babies! Please do not vote for Biden or any baby killing democrat for that matter. We are mounting this campaign to show the truth about abortion and to encourage voters not to vote for Biden. We are not even asking for your vote. Over 50% of Catholics, 1/3 of Evangelicals, and 90 % of Blacks (many who say they are against abortion) voted for Biden in 2020. If a small percentage of them repent, it could cause Biden’s defeat. And it will put the plight of babies front and center in this election!
Our Strategic Solution for ballot access, to run ads in ALL FIFTY STATES: We get on the ballot in 10 states we can run ads in all 50 for just 25,075 signatures total. We can do this! (Emphasis in original.)
Now they don’t even have to get the petitions, since the CP has ballot access in 12 states. In that respect, his was a fairly shrewd move.
Again, to Terry’s point:
That is why we are getting on the ballot in 10 states – to run ads in all fifty states. Imagine this: for $11,000, we can run a :30 second ad on “The View.” Picture Whoopi Goldberg watching our ad with Pastor Broden saying that “abortion is black genocide,” and that “Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are doing the killing for the KKK, lynching black babies in the womb.” These ads will create a holy firestorm.
But while they claim they have the law on their side, the holy firestorm will be averted when networks refuse to carry the ads and dare the campaign to take them to court. It will simply be a process of running out the clock, and since the CP runs on a shoestring anyway the opposition can lawfare us to death.
Meanwhile, if the idea is to promote the Presidential candidate’s main issue yet people aren’t going to be able to vote for him, what good have you done? The CP didn’t even bother to fill out the paperwork to allow their candidate to be a write-in for either Maryland or Delaware in 2020. If they can’t do that again in 2024, I’ll find a new political home. We had a grifter last time, so I was hoping we would avoid twice in a row.
However, there was the promising development of the CP choosing the running mate Terry had already selected for himself. Stephen Broden is a pastor, businessman, and former Republican Congressional nominee (albeit one who ran in a deep blue district in Texas.) One thing I like:
A frequent speaker at Tea Party Rallies advocating a return to Constitutional principles in government and a respect for the Judeo-Christian values underlying the founding of our nation…Speaker at 9/12 event in Washington, D.C.
On the last part, I’ll have to find the tape since I don’t remember him; then again, I was more interested in covering the crowd and attitude than what any particular speaker who I was unfamiliar with said.
It may be one of those cases of IF I can vote for the CP, it would be more for the VP candidate than the presidential one. Shades of McCain/Palin.
But this nomination reflects a problem third parties often have: the person at the top has an outsized personality but no plan to build a legacy. We saw it with Ross Perot, who basically willed the Reform Party into existence back in the 1990s and got it to flower a little bit with another outsized personality, Jesse Ventura (who was Minnesota’s governor for a term.) Even Donald Trump thought of running the first time as a Reform Party nominee, but backed away. By the same token, Ralph Nader was arguably the peak of the Green Party in this country, yet he didn’t carry anyone into office with him.
As a nation, we are disillusioned with our political choices, but because the duopoly is so strong and has persuaded most people that they’re the only viable options, we get Tweedledum and Tweedledee. It wasn’t force of personality and name recognition that elected Donald Trump, it was being the Republican nominee. If he were in the Reform Party or some equivalent, he would have got 10% of the vote.
So when you are a minor party nominee, your legacy isn’t that of winning but of building the movement. The TEA Party won at first, but to borrow a Biblical analogy (Matthew 13:5-6), didn’t have a strong enough root system and burnt up in the heat of public scorn and scrutiny.
I’m far from convinced that going all in on one issue - even though I agree with the sentiment - is the way to build a party or even sniff a place at the political table. If we are Constitutional, it’s about building a more perfect union, not just one area of it.
But the thing that keeps bothering me about this pick and Terry’s plan is the old adage about catching more flies with honey than vinegar. Does the CP really want to be known as the party that shows dead babies?
I still talk about abortion as “baby murder,” particularly when I get pissed off about a setback to the pro-life cause, but to me it’s also “denying basic rights to our most vulnerable population.” Shouldn’t we, as a Constitution Party, be talking about the rights that are enshrined in that document (the ones being abused by our current government) and not focusing just on sickening images of abortion?
Remember you can Buy Me a Coffee since I have a page there.