Posted on 01/09/2008 12:50:44 PM PST by EternalVigilance
January 9, 2008
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Monday, Stephen Stone, CEO of Alan Keyes for President, met with Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan to discuss "evidence of deception by the Iowa Republican Party with regard to the recent caucuses."
Stone delivered a letter that described the campaign's allegations against Iowa GOP officials. According to Stone, the state party's behavior in the caucuses "disenfranchises voters" and appears to have "violated the election laws."
Among the facts outlined by Stone:
Said Stone, "In our judgment, the tactics we've witnessed by the state party are reminiscent of 'communist-style' electoral politics. By unfairly developing a 'suggested ballot' of candidates, and allowing irregular handling of votes for Ambassador Keyes, state party officials created an atmosphere of intimidation for Keyes voters."
"Aside from damaging the environment for free choice in the election process" — Stone said he told RNC chairman Duncan — "such deceptive practices are both unethical and illegal."
Duncan's response, Stone said, was to deny that the Republican Party has any responsibility for the illegal or improper actions of state parties. According to Stone, this response is unacceptable, since the RNC recently penalized several state parties for pushing the 2008 presidential primaries far ahead of schedule, due to their inordinate zeal to be "first in the nation."
As punishment, the national party stripped New Hampshire, Wyoming, Michigan, Florida, and South Carolina of half their delegates to the national GOP convention, to be held in Minneapolis in September. "If the RNC can do this, it can do similar things to stop states like Iowa from ignoring fair electoral process and deceiving and disenfranchising the electorate," Stone added.
The full text of Stone's letter to Chairman Duncan is available below — along with supporting documents and the testimony of witnesses.
It's bad enough what they did to Alan Keyes and to many of my family members and friends, but somehow it is the disenfranchisement of my daughter that makes me furious, more than anything else.
It was a vote for the Republican nominee for president. Not a vote for POTUS.
Do you think it was right?
Bigger question.....why have we not heard Jesse Jackson nor Al Sharpton rising up to brng attention to this? Are black republicans not worthy of protection?
Depends on what happened. If they purposely did it to hurt Keyes, it’s wrong. But I can’t imagine why they’d bother.
If Keyes late entry was the reason, then no. They can have their rules and deadlines. I’m not familiar with Iowa party rules, perhaps they can decide who is considered a valid candidate on their own. I don’t know.
On the larger question, I don’t think Keyes is a credible candidate, don’t think he’s really in the race, and therefore I think it was your daughter who threw away her vote.
If he was on the ballot, I’d want to know how many votes he received; so I can understand that point.
They pretended that he wasn’t a candidate from the beginning. Excluded him from any mention as a candidate. Lied and said they didn’t know he was running, even though every single party leader was in the room during the Des Moines Register Debate in which Dr. Keyes participated.
You better wake up, buddy. It might be your vote in the refuse container next.
A lot of this is according to Keyes’s campaign. Do you have any response from the Iowa GOP?
They say they didn’t know he was running, which is ludicrous. The entire leadership was in the hall when Dr. Keyes appeared in the Des Moines Register Debate.
And, they had no problem taking the money from his exploratory committee for two tables at the Iowa Straw Poll last summer.
Well, if that’s the case, it does sound like he got screwed.
No, your daughter did that when she chose to vote for a joke candidate.
Well, to you he may be a joke. But to me and my family, he’s one of the few leaders left in this country who stands steadfastly for what we believe in.
And to us, almost all of the rest of this “Republican” field is what is a bad joke.
But, unlike you, I’d stand up for any of them, or any Democrat, if they were treated the way Dr. Keyes is being treated in this election. Without a free, open and fair electoral process, self-government is functionally dead in America.
So I can put you down as 'for' reparations and race baiting?
No. And Alan Keyes has never done or advocated either. You should really put down the Obama talking points.
You should really review what he said and did during the Illinois senatorial campaign.
For all intents and purposes, a vote for Keyes is thrown in the garbage can anyway.
It's not like he has a snowball's chance in ___ of winning anyway.
So, this is all just hunky-dory to you, then, because it was done to a candidate you don’t like.
Obviously, I know quite a bit better what he actually said than you do.
So you are going on record as saying that he never proposed that descendants of former slaves receive income tax exemptions for that reason? That such a statement wasn’t made on or about August 16, 2004? That he didn’t make such a statement at the Hotel Intercontinental in Chicago?
In response to the idea of “reparations,” or payments from the national treasury, to the descendents of slaves, he pointed out that it is such payments, in the form of Great Society programs, etc., that have destroyed the community and its self-sufficiency. He said that if you can show that harm was done, a better solution would be to exempt them from taxation for a certain period of time, like the ancient Romans did for communities that had been damaged or harmed in some way.
He has compared it to the payments made from the Treasury to those in the Katrina area. He has said that instead of pouring tens of billions of dollars into the affected area, it would be better to exempt them from taxation for so many years. Business would boom, and the positive effects would be much more long lasting.
Now, I know it isn’t in your political interest to hear anything longer than a stupid meaningless soundbite, but that’s what you have to do if you’re going to get what Alan Keyes actually has to say. He doesn’t play the soundbite game.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.