LIBERTARIAN HYPOCRACY (Jim Ryan vs. Carla Howell)

BillyBoy wrote there is no evidence at all that Jim Ryan...

Email, phone call and face to face pleas for challengers come from many different directions. Some are Republican Party Officials. Some are patronage workers whose personal loyalties are known. Some are uncontrolled volunteers. Some pleas are forwarded or cut and paste of pleas originated somewhere else. None of the pleas I have received seem to be from Lee Daniels. Many are from "Friends of Jim Ryan". Many imply it is a coordinated effort of the Jim Ryan organization.

It would be interesting if an investigative reporter (say a free lancer for www.illinoisleader.com) were to infiltrate the challenge effort, find out the facts, and make a name for himself as an investigative reporter.

HYPOCRACY is obviously a play on derivations. Yes, most of us are inconsistent when it suits our agenda. During the Ogilvie era, many Hispanics in the city were Republican. I supported RINO Lopez for alderman against an Ogilvie patronage worker and a machine Democrat. (We hoped the Republicans could unite in a runoff.) The RATS threw Spanish surnames off the list of registered voters; Then claimed that the Lopez petitions were invalid. The RATS hadn't even looked at the Lopez petitions. A hillbilly welfare mom I had recruited produced hundreds of hillbilly voter registrations, and thousands of Non-Hispanic petition signatures for Lopez. (This same welfare mom also worked for John Hosper with me.)

The RATS are especially aggressive against candidates that try to steal their base.

I don't know the facts of Carla well enough to comment.

Cal Skinner seems more Pat Buchanan than Libertarian. He wants to put in state prisons people who refuse to register and seek permission of the federal government to exist. Then he wants the federal taxpayers to pay for the state prisons to do this; and tells us it will cost us nothing. Then he calls this plan a for profit plan. That is Buchanan logic, not libertarian.

Buchanan logic: We have a mess in Washington. The mess in Washington is all the fault of illegal aliens. Let's make illegal aliens the scapegoat, rather than ourselves for being incompetent at the game of politics.

Satadru, You're right. Jim Ryan and his DuPage minions have not asked me for my support, nor given me a reason to do it. But they assume they can spam me with pleas to help knock off Cal. They're stupid to make assumptions.

I bet the LP has enough signatures of registered voters. If they get dumped it will be for a technicality. (Someone misspelled the name of a street wrong, or the same petition was passed by both a husband and wife and only one of them signed as the petition passer.)

The only strategy I see for Ryan to win is to paint Rod as a wacko extremist in one corner, Cal as a wacko extremist in the other corner, and Jim Ryan as the solid, reasonable representative of the middle. Jim Ryan needs Cal in every debate possible to make Jim look reasonable, even if non- charismatic.

But Jim is acting like the wacko, intolerant, paranoid.

If Cal were smart, he would take the high ground and appear to be the solid, reasonable candidate....and not the wacko.

>> Cal Skinner seems more Pat Buchanan than Libertarian. He wants to put in state prisons people who refuse to register and seek permission of the federal government to exist. Then he wants the federal taxpayers to pay for the state prisons to do this; and tells us it will cost us nothing. Then he calls this plan a for profit plan. That is Buchanan logic, not libertarian. <<

That's what I've been saying all along and no one seems to believe it. Most of the threads where I refer to Skinner, I call him "Pat Buchanan II". His campaign is more akin to Buchanan's than Browne's.

Buchanan bolted the GOP because after years of "service" they regarded him as an embarrassment and brushed him off, so Pat then "joined" a 3rd party that fit any of his stances on social issues. Many of them welcomed him with open arms and later regretted it. He ran a firey "right wing" campaign, accusing Bush and Cheney of being RINOs (even though Bush had beaten RINO McCain in the primary), vowed he would get double-digit support, then Pat started playing both sides of the aisle while accusing Bush of doing so. He was one of those types who said stuff like "once the Republican Party drops it's support of pro-life, I drop it" (in reality, they kept the plank while he joined a party than doesn't care about the rights of the unborn). He went around proposing ideas like having all U.S. government officials take a "loyality oath" not to work for a foriegn government when he didn't follow it himself (Pat says government workers in swing states were perfectly okay to work for the Confederate States of America while they were still U.S. citizens during the Civil War) Virtually of Buchanan's "supporters" were either Reform Party loyalists or disgruntled Republicans who couldn't stand Bush. The GOP worked hard to marginalize Pat. Naturally his supporters claimed there was a massive GOP effort to ensure the public wouldn't know who he is by getting him off the ballot and keep him out of the debates. Unfortunately for them, polls showed the public was already WELL AWARE who Pat was-- it was that the stuff he was peddling wasn't selling. Up to election day Pat insisted he was the masterful orator that would get the Reform Party ballot access everywhere. He ended with a whooping 0.4% and nothing to show for it.

For a party that is supposedly suppressed so much, it seems the LP has gotten statewide access in Illinois at least 80-90% of the time in the past twenty years. They've been FAR more successful in ballot access than the Reform Party, even though that party had many more supporters in the 1990s.

What the LPI did not get is any sort of viable campaigns. This is, of course, due in part that the two-parties have a lot more money and dominate control of the elections than third parties. But is also has to do with the fact that Illinois has ALWAYS been a very partisan "two party state" (we are one of the VERY few state's that has never elected a third party governor in our entire history). Even in the 1890s, when third parties like the Populist Party were electing members all throughout the country, they were largely ignored in Illinois. The lack of support for the LPI also to do with them running much more low key "campaigns" than other 3rd parties. Nader's people were all over Illinois in the 2000 election, putting up posters, holding "super rallies", throwing "Nader/LaDuke" stickers all over the state. The only thing I heard from Browne supporters was at a national level. Skinner, is an exception of course, he's attempting to run a very active campaign (again, Skinner's outlook seems to be more like Buchanan's than Browne's)

But in any case, here are the numbers:

HOW LIBERTARIANS HAVE FARED IN STATEWIDE RACES IN ILLINOIS

PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGNS

1980-- Clark/Koch 0.8% (38,939 votes)
1984-- Bergland/Lewis 0.2% (10,086 votes)
1988-- Paul/Marrou 0.33% (14,944 votes)
1992-- Marrou/Lord 0.2% (9,218 votes)
1996-- Browne/Jorgensen 0.5% (22,548 votes)
2000-- Browne/Olivier 0.25% (11,623 votes)

GOVERNOR

1998-- Tobin/Sila N/A%, Disqualified from ballot by October 30 judicial ruling
1994-- Kelly/??? <0.1% (6,706)
1990-- no candidate listed 1986-- Shilts/??? 0.5% (15,647)
1982-- Armstrong/??? 0.66% (24,417)

U.S. SENATE

1998-- Rhys Read, Disqualified from ballot by October 30 judicial ruling
1996-- Rob Miller 0.9% (40,717 votes)
1992-- Andrew Spiegel 0.7% (34,527 votes)
1990-- no candidate listed
1986-- Donald M. Parrish Jr. 0.4% (13,892 votes)
1984-- Steven I. Givot 1.25% (59,777)
1980-- Bruce Green 0.6% (29,328)

MAXIMUM percentage a Libertarian candidate EVER got in a statewide Illinois campaign:
Steven I. Givot, nominee for U.S. Senate, received 1.25%

One reason 3d parties don't do well. I have seen election judges ASSUME that, of course, the voter intended to vote for a major party and his hand must have slipped. IMO these judges were not intending fraud. They really believed they were being good judges by correcting the voter's mistake. Numerous times in Chicago, the candidate I voted for got 0 votes in the count. When I was in Vietnam, my RINO election judge was my landlady and the aunt of the Republican Ward Committeeman (Now in charge of keeping George Ryan out of prison). I asked her, "Did you get my absentee ballot in time?" She answered "Yes" and explained that the election judges agreed that anyone in Vietnam would have to be loyal to their commander in chief, Lyndon Johnson, so they counted my vote for the Democrats.

IMO most votes for a 3d party are protest votes against the 2 major parties. A vote for Cal is a protest against RodRyan.

Bill, I worked hard for John Hosper in 72. I don't remember how he did. How many protested crook Nixon and wimp McGovern? Interesting that Ed Clark got the most of any Libertarian you show. That was the year John Anderson was going to get the protest vote. Voting for Reagan over Ed Clark in 80 was my hardest decision. Reagan and Dubya are the only Republicans I have ever voted for re President. I worked hard for Goldwater but was too young (by 2 days. 21 was the voting age back then.)

How about, Republican and LP freepers? Why is it GOOD when Howell supports this but bad when Jim Ryan does?

BB you have some bad information here. Carla Howell did not oppose Jackie Robinson's (R) appearance on the ballot. The MA Libertarian party had the opportunity to appeal the Sec. of State's obvious bending of the rules to getting their token Republican on the ballot. Carla would have nothing to do with it and said so.

Carla nearly matched the Republican vote count for that Senate race. No other third party even came close. In Mass., there are no other credible third parties other than the Libertarians.

And now in this year's Senate race, the Republicans didn't get anyone on the ballot. The Libertarians are there and will again far outpace all other third party candidates in that race.

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