For those who are tired of the duopoly controlling our nation with ruinous results, the debate this week for the Republican nomination for governor was bizarre but at least a refreshing change from the robotic, pre-written answers given by Republican and Democratic professionals. The Idaho debate organizers allowed two fringe candidates to appear with the Republican and Tea Party candidates: Harley Brown, a biker (in biker regalia) who declared that he is about as politically correct as a “turd in a punch bowl” and Walt Bayes, a guy so anti-government that he says that his wife drove for years without a license after they objected to the concept of an emissions test. Gov. Butch Otter and state Sen. Russ Fulcher were barely noticed in what followed. A clip is posted below.
We have been discussing the widespread unhappiness with the control of our nation and political system by the two parties. It often seems like the two parties are not even trying to respond to the vast majority of Americans who want change. The Democratic insiders have virtually pre-selected Hillary Clinton who remains unpopular with many over her support for the prior wars as well as virtual silence on civil liberties abuses. The alternative thus far is Joe Biden. So much for change. The Republican insiders are pushing Jeb Bush because the last Bush was such a roaring success.
The problem is that, despite the humorous moments in the Idaho debate, there remains no viable third party option. We are left with a biker who said God told him to run for president and an anti-government candidate with an alleged 16 children who promised to stay in power shutting down abortion until he is arrested or thrown out of office. Haley Brown felt compelled to add: “Don’t think I’m crazy, ’cause I’m not.” He complained that as a biker he is about as popular as a “playboy bunny” with police. So they laid it out plainly: “You have your choice, folks: A cowboy, a curmudgeon, a biker, or a normal guy. Take your pick.” Fulcher is apparently the normal guy.
Of course this is not much of a choice but that is the problem. There is never a choice for voters. The two parties continue to pick establishment candidates who will protect the status quo despite the fact that the public is disgusted with both parties. It is like the humorous picture of the line up showing two cops in uniform, a potted plant, a water cooler and the criminal suspect for identification. It is not real hard to tell which is pre-ordained as the correct answer. You can select A cowboy, a curmudgeon, a biker, or a normal guy. That pretty much wraps it up for the state of democracy in America.
I live in Idaho, the biker gets my vote. Our illustrious “independent” current governor was a sell out when he turned 18 oh so many years ago. As one one else pointed out, the god candidate wants to turn Idaho into a Taliban state. and Fulcher is no different than our sell out current governor. Yep, I’m willing to shake things up and will accept the fall out. Something has to change.
Harley Brown, a biker (in biker regalia)
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I’ve been riding for forty two years, have maybe two leather jackets, a pair of chaps, and god knows how many different types of gloves but I can’t wear a leather jacket while not actually riding on a motorcycle. I always feel somebody is going to walk up and go “aaayyy”. The Fonzie syndrome.
Well, I for one, will not be voting for Little Bitch and the other three are scary to even consider voting for. How about a choice of “none of the above.”
Screwed – I am a big fan of ‘none of the above’ as a choice on the ballot, however it would mean my favorite candidate, Mickey Mouse would start losing votes each year. I wonder if Eric Holder would find None of the Above racist?
Paul, Many states have open primaries.
Nick – could you give me a list of states with ‘open primaries?’ I know some states allow you to declare your party when you go to the poll, so Dems can screwup the Repubs and vice versa. But I was not aware of a system like WA.
Darren, Thanks much.
Until we get money out of politics, a viable 3rd party will not be possible.
rafflaw – the only way to take the money out of politics is to increase the House of Representatives to its intended size – 1 Representative for every 50,000 citizens in the state. Sadly, Senate races would be just as expensive.
now that was refreshing. The biker and the old guy would do just as good a job if not better.
Policticians are full of sh*t and most are just worried about their pension.
Vote for anyone but a dem or a repub. F em all.
Byron – as I said before, I would vote for the biker. Kinda like Jesse Ventura. 🙂
Help, please. I tried twice to reply to Darren. Retrieving just one would be great. Thanks.
Help, please. I tried twice to reply to Darren. Retrieving just one would be great. Thanks
Darren, That is the worst infringement on voting rights I have heard of in my lifetime. How about you good citizens w/ an organized write-in campaign w/ non politician candidates.
Nick:
I found the comment and it is restored.
Folks, Nick’s comment is above.
Darren – for a long time you had to be registered in a qualified party to vote in the primaries. Now, with so many Independents, independents voice a preference for the party they are going to vote for.
I do have to agree with the powers to be in your state. The idea of the primary is for the party to select the people to run in the general. It is not a pre-general election.
I hope the biker wins the election. I don’t believe he will be effective governor but the protest vote potential with him is high. It would really show how pissed off the voters are with the status quo and the cookie cutter gingerbread man table scraps the voters are forced by the duopoly to accept.
There is often something to be said about a lame-duck politician. They cannot often interfere with the lives of ordinary people as much.
We have an atrocious situation in Washington State.
For over seventy years our state’s primary system, the one most individual voters were happy with, was that the primary election decided which candidate of each of the parties went to the general election. In the past a voter could choose between a Democrat, Republican, Independent, Socialist, Green Party, or whatever.
Then, jackass politicians in Olympia, in the duopoly, sued all the way up to the supreme court to end this system and help ensure two party rule. The next primary system that came out was that voters were then required to pick a ballot based upon one, and only one party. This enfuriated Washington Voters across the board. I think if the voters could have went to the polls in a special election and voted to retain or kick out the politicians at once the elected government in the state would have been shown the door.
The next abomination, which is still the present law, provides that only the top two candidates in the primary go on to the general election, Blocking out every other person running to hold office. There can be no third party candidate because only two candidates go to the election.
http://www.oppositionnews.org/articles/2014/q/50-campaign-dirty-tricks-used-establishment-candidates/?utm_content=buffer1ec97&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer
Most honest, well-intentioned citizen-candidates who try to run for elective office are either terrorized into inaction, intimidated into dropping out of the race, or so afraid of the consequences of challenging the establishment elites that they never run for office to begin with. That’s one of the reasons most incumbents are running unopposed these days. But for the reformers that know what they’re up against and aren’t caught by surprise, they can run against establishment Republicans and Democrats, and they can beat them.
The below isn’t made up. Your author has witnessed each and every example occur in real life. This list is the result of 25 years of grassroots, independent and third party election campaigns against the very same establishment incumbents you might decide to run against some day in your part of the country. Take heed, be prepared and good luck.
50 Dirty Tricks used by incumbent establishment candidates
1. Once elected, sell out your base. They will vote for you anyway. Instead, use your resources to buy off the opposition and/or quietly flip-flop to their position.
2. Lie, lie and lie some more. Out-spend your opponents 50-1. Send out mailers and run ads continuously lying about your them.
3. Put laxatives in the polling place coffee pot. Have your way with the ballots, polling machines and the election.
4. Break off pencil tips in your opponent’s slot in the voting booths so that the punch-pin can’t penetrate the punch card. Or enlist a party computer hacker to infiltrate the electronic voting booth’s software and vote tabulations.
5. Go through the absentee ballots before they’re counted and get rid of those voting for the opponent.
6. Pay opponent’s election workers $100 to disappear on Election Day.
7. Rewrite the law to require independent and opposition party candidates to collect ten-times the number of ballot access petition signatures that establishment candidates must.
8. Use relatives and friends in government to investigate every bit of your opponent’s background.
9. Challenge opponents’ ballot access signatures and have party Election officials and Judges rule in your favor whether warranted or not.
10. Have the government dig up the street in front of your opponent’s house. Tow away their car. Ticket every visitor and family member’s car every day.
11. Have local kids tease, torment and bully your opponent’s children at school and in the neighborhood.
12. Have media outlets and ad agencies charge your opponent five-times what they charge you for ad buys and services.
13. Put your campaign signs on people’s front lawns whether they support your candidate or not. If they take it down, tell them they support your candidate and that’s all there is to it.
14. Use supposedly independent news outlets to repeatedly smear your opponent.
15. Have local police harass, arrest, and issue unending citations to opponents and their supporters.
16. Find out what businesses are supporting your opponent and pressure them to stop their support.
17. Send a spy to join your opponent’s campaign.
18. Violently attack opponent’s campaign workers while they’re walking the precincts.
19. Steal opponent’s signs and campaign materials and have local authorities ignore it.
20. Find some mystery person from the past to come forward with damaging revelations about your opponent.
21. Run phony candidates in the other parties’ primaries.
22. Buy off opponents’ high-level advisers and staffers.
23. Distribute campaign literature hatefully attacking yourself in your opponent’s name.
24. Make sure deceased and other ineligible voters remain on the voter rolls. When challenged, ignore the challenge.
25. On Election Day, make sure the police know they work for the party; not the people, the government or the election judges.
26. Campaign right inside the polling place, pressuring voters if need be.
27. Have our Precinct Captains control each election, its equipment, the ballots and the rules. Judges come and go and have no clue what they’re doing.
28. Regardless of how many acts of election and voter fraud you perpetrate, have the local media report for the 100th year in a row, “There were no election irregularities, just one election judge sent home because he smelled like alcohol.”
29. Use government funds, jobs, grants and contracts to buy off opponent.
30. Use buddies on the state and federal level to investigate and find a reason to indict your opponent.
31. Reward all campaign contributors with 100-times the amount they donated in government grants, pork or no-bid contracts.
32. Hire gang members or local thugs to intimidate your opponent and steal campaign materials.
33. Line the government from top to bottom with friends, family and contributors.
34. Send thugs to opponent’s campaign rallies; slashing tires, breaking windows and even smashing tables and chairs over the heads of old people and little kids.
35. Print and distribute campaign literature for your opponent, making them as hateful, ugly, sexist or racist as possible.
36. Find a relative of the opponent with a criminal past. Link them to the candidate.
37. Find opponent’s past sex partners and convince them to come forward with damning accusations.
38. Run a Trojan Horse candidate against you and your opponent, mirroring his/her platform and splitting the opposition vote. If need be, have the fake reform candidate drop out before the election and endorse you.
39. Register as many voters as possible using commercial mail box stores, PO Boxes and non-residential addresses.
40. Withhold government services from opponents, their families and supporters.
41. Double-staff polling places with election workers. Use half to distract and tie-down opponents’ workers and the other half to work the polls.
42. Give presents and gifts to election judges plastered with campaign stickers. Have it displayed prominently on the election judges’ table for all voters to see.
43. Take over polling places with your precinct captains and accompany voters into the booth to help them vote.
44. Have local media black out opponents’ campaign, except for your accusations against them.
45. Insist all companies wishing to do business with the government make campaign contributions to you and/or hire specific individuals from your campaign in high-paying jobs.
46. Have party workers at the Board of Elections accidentally forget to print the opponent on the ballot, or even their entire party.
47. Send campaign workers to your opponents’ rallies and public events to heckle them.
48. Hack your opponent’s personal computer and/or internet connection. Sabotage their efforts and materials.
49. Pay your supporters to actually vote on Election Day. Warn them you’ll be watching the voter rolls.
50. Pay your opponent’s supporters not to vote. Warn them you’ll be watching the voter rolls.
While the times and technologies may change as the years go by, the tactics of the two establishment parties and their incumbent elected officials don’t. These officials are continuously re-elected because their well-intentioned and naïve opponents aren’t prepared for the ruthless, brutal and criminal experience America’s elections have become. But if honest citizen-candidates know what they’re getting themselves into, and have the support of their friends, family and coworkers, they can overcome the odds and win.
May 5, 2014. If you’re an independent or an opposition party candidate and you’ve ever run for political office before, then you know the system is rigged against you. First, you may have to collect ten-times the number of ballot access signatures as your Democrat and Republican opponents. Then they purposely exclude you from the debates. And if you make it that far, the establishment incumbents may just use their 50 dirty tricks of election campaigning on you.
Why don’t we have more parties? Richard Winger has been following “third” parties for decades.
The United States has the most severe ballot access laws of any democracy in the world.
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/case/3pt/winger.html
How Ballot Access Restrictions Harm Minor Presidential Candidates
Ballot Access Laws Governing the Democratic and Republican Presidential Primaries
Ballot Access Laws Governing Third Party and Independent Candidates
How Strict Ballot Access Laws Harm Candidates for Office
If you look at the politics of Harry S Truman and John F Kennedy verses Lyndon Banes Johnson, Bill Clinton and Barak Obama, you would have to say the Democratic party has gone so far to the left that Republicans would be considered centrist by standards of the 50’s and early 60’s. This is because the Democrats realized they could buy elections by giving away the farm
if the polls are any indication right now, the money, outside money, is working inside states, and moving the electorate.
This is the next State of the Union address
Mind over matter……A future state of the union address?
What is a duopoly?
leej, I think folks might be surprised. Freakonomics debunked the theory that the candidate w/ more money wins elections. The duopoly are happy to still spout that myth as are the MSM. The more $ the duopoly have the more they spend on ads. TV, radio and newspapers have a windfall in ad dollars. People are ripe for another choice. They don’t need to be sold. But, BOTH PARTIES will spend big bucks smearing them, as will the duopolists here.
I am going with the biker. How could that go wrong. 😉