Here is a summary of Fred?s June fundraising numbers. On the fundraisers, the two that were for his candidacy were the ones held in Nashville and Los Angeles. Every other appearance did not go towards his campaign. Here are the basic outlines:
75% (6,888) of the contributors gave less than $200.
Time covered: June 1-30
Total Raised: $3,462,355.05
Total expenses: $625,745.97
Biggest Single Expense: Web hardware $66,750
Payroll total (including taxes): $106,852
Burn rate: 18.0%
Fundraising events included: 2
Number of donors: 9,167
Avg. contribution: $369.87
Number of online donors: 7,534
Total online donations: $771,783
Number of donors under $200 (small donors): 6,888
Contributions came from 50 states and D.C
Some of his prominent doners (Source1, Source2):
Peyton Manning!- The Two time NFL MVP, 7 time Pro Bowler, and Super Bowl winning Quarterback from the University of Tennessee gave the maximum amount of $2300
John M. Dowd ? a Washington, D.C., attorney and former John McCain backer ? donated $2,300 (his wife Carol Dowd donate the same amount)
Eugene Volokh ? prominent UCLA law professor and libertarian blogger ? donated $750
Al D’Amato ? a former New York senator who endorsed Mr. Thompson on NY1 earlier this year ? donated $2,300
Douglas J. Feith ? a former undersecretary of defense and architect of the Iraq war ? donated $2,300
Kirby Wilbur ? prominent conservative Washington State radio host ? donated $2,300
Fred Malek- president of Thayer Capital Partners and a huge fundraising poobah, and one of Sen. John McCain’s finance chairmen
Mack Mattingly- former senator from Georgia who endorsed Thompson
Johnnie Byrd- former Florida House Speaker and 2004 Senate candidate
Wapo?s Chris Calliza added this, which I think is a fair assessment:
Overall, Thompson’s numbers are just fine for a first month of fundraising… His take is probably not good enough to remove him from the morass of bad publicity. But, his cash haul is also far from determinative when calculating Thompson’s chances at the nomination.
The Gallup Poll: Public Confidence in Presidential Hopefuls on Key 2008 Election Issues
Trust in candidates to handle the war in Iraq
- Rudy Giuliani 55%
- John McCain 55%
- Barack Obama 54%
- Hillary Clinton 51%
- John Edwards 50%
- Fred Thompson 39%
- Mitt Romney 37%
Among Republicans only, Giuliani topped this list at 75%, followed by McCain at 67%, Thompson with 57% and Romney, 49%.
Trust in candidates to handle terrorism
- Rudy Giuliani 69%
- John McCain 66%
- Hillary Clinton 55%
- Barack Obama 53%
- John Edwards 48%
- Fred Thompson 42%
- Mitt Romney 38%
Among Republicans only, Giuliani topped this list at 83%, followed by McCain at 76%, Thompson with 59% and Romney, 51%.
Trust in candidates to handle the healthcare system
- Hillary Clinton 65%
- Barack Obama 61%
- John Edwards 54%
- Rudy Giuliani 52%
- John McCain 45%
- Mitt Romney 36%
- Fred Thompson 35%
Among Republicans only, Giuliani topped this list at 71%, followed by McCain at 58%, Thompson with 52% and Romney, 45%.
Trust in candidates to handle the economy
- Barack Obama 62%
- Hillary Clinton 61%
- Rudy Giuliani 60%
- John McCain 53%
- John Edwards 51%
- Mitt Romney 40%
- Fred Thompson 39%
Among Republicans only, Giuliani topped this list at 79%, followed by McCain at 66%, Thompson with 57% and Romney, 53%.
Survey of 1,011 American adults was conducted July 23-26. The percentages reflect a combination of those who responded by saying a “great deal” or “fair amount.” The maximum margin of sampling error is ?4 percentage points.
I just got back from Vacation a few days ago. Spent some time in California visiting my family and Southern Utah visiting my wifes family. I quickly realized that my family is in fact better. Just Kidding. But it did give my mind the much needed break from hounding the Google pages and looking for anything about 2008. No matter how hard the first couple days were.
When I came back it was hard to get myself back to blogging, because the freedom from the computer, bought with a price, was a special prize. But I am back, and ready to shove Romney down your throats.
Now on with my post…
Since I left things seem to have taken a dramatic turn for Fred. Is he done? Not even close. Is he wounded? Yes. But it’s no real surprise. There are two reasons in my book why the Fred Thompson’s campaign seems to be suffering right now, and frankly it will continue:
1. His supporters have made Fred the God of all things conservative2008, and he gladly accepts it.
2. His lack of an official campaign gives some credence to the laziness charge, but more importantly it has turned him into a paper tiger.
I will address the first, first.
Fred hasn’t helped himself. Fred likes the compliments. How do I know? Just listen to his interview on Redstate.com where he thanks Chief Editor Erick for really covering the Fred story right. In other words, he likes the shilling, he likes the flattery, his ego is happy. If he wants to say that in a private note, or conversation fine, but to do it publicly said a lot in my mind.
Fred’s multi-use metaphor of gnats swatting at a horse is really a killer: He is positioning himself as a the dark horse, or the white horse or something equestrian- candidate and everyone else as bugs. That is setting up a situation where everything now expected out of him is huge and the others can’t compete. He will squash us when he wakes up.
It’s very disingenuous for his supporters to say he’s getting knocked before he is out of the gate. He is out of the gate. He has been since April. The guy has put himself all over the net, he is running a campaign and he has no other job. Is busy dealing with Boss Hog and the Duke boys? No, he’s running a campaign that does/does not exist.
Equally so, Fred supporters have a paradoxical claim when they tell people he is not lazy, but the reason for small results is because oh yeah, he’s not doing anything. That’s like saying I am not fat, but hey guess what I can’t ride the rides at Disneyland because I am so spectacular in waist size.
Now, I know I am a Romney supporter, and Fred is bottom of my list, (well not bottom- a step above Brownback.) But believe me, when I say it, if Fred should win I will support him just a strongly as I have Romney. But he has got some serious problems/dichotomies in his campaign – many of which are self imposed. I am not writing him off, but part of Fred’s credibility as a candidate has certainly been diminished, and only time will tell if he can rebuild it.
One thing I thought that I remembered about ARG is that they have been consistent, although many have disputed their results. A look at their trends show that their last poll in June had:
John McCain 23%
Rudy Giuliani 22%
Fred Thompson 19%
Mitt Romney 8%
Newt Gingrich 6%
Now, compare it to July:
Rudy Giuliani 28%
Fred Thompson 27%
John McCain 10%
Newt Gingrich 7%
Mitt Romney 7%
So, we have these trends:
Fred Thompson +8%
Rudy Giuliani +6%
Newt Gingrich +1%
Mitt Romney -1%
John McCain -13%
Rudy continues to draw well in South Carolina, while Thompson has gained the most support in the last month. McCain has plummeted, while Romney and Gingrich have had little movement in either direction.
- Rudy Giuliani 40% (48%)
- John McCain 13% (13%)
- Fred Thompson 11% (11%)
- Newt Gingrich 9% (4%)
- Mitt Romney 7% (6%)
Survey of 176 Republicans was conducted July 24-28. The margin of error is +/-7.4%. Results from the poll taken in June are in parentheses.
General Election Match-Ups
- Hillary Clinton 57%
- Rudy Giuliani 36%
- Hillary Clinton 62%
- Fred Thompson 28%
- Barack Obama 51%
- Rudy Giuliani 40%
Survey of 620 registered New York voters was conducted July 24-28. The margin of error is +/-3.9%.
From the Hill:
More than 9,000 donors contributed a total $3.4 million to likely presidential candidate and former Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) in June, according to reports his 527 committee filed with the IRS Tuesday.
Though the figure was widely reported Monday, the narrative following the amount seems to be one of a struggling would-be campaign.
Not so, say campaign officials.
Thompson managed to raise an impressive amount of money in one month with only two fundraisers, no direct mail and no telephone support, the exploratory committee said in a release.
The campaign raised the figure from more than 9,000 donors; 7,500 of them were online and 6,888 contributed less than $200.
The campaign noted that only $625,746, or 18 percent of the total, had been spent. The campaign spent more than $106,852 on payroll.
Friends of Fred Thompson Inc. filed as a 527 on June 4. Because he filed as a 527 group, Thompson has not had to file quarterly reports with the Federal Election Commission.
The former senator attended a number of fundraisers in July, including one Monday night in Washington.
UPDATE: I will have a more in depth look at his numbers later.
Rudy Giuliani
Fred Thompson
John McCain
Mitt Romney
Newt Gingrich
General Race 4 2008 News
Updated- Here are the complete results:
American Research Group Iowa Caucus Poll, conducted July 26th-30th, 2007
- Rudy Giuliani 22%
- Mitt Romney 21%
- John McCain 13%
- Fred Thompson 13%
- Newt Gingrich 4%
- Tommy Thompson 2%
- Duncan Hunter 2%
- All others <2%
- Undecided 17%
Here’s the breakdown: Mitt Romney leads Rudy Giuliani 24% to 21% among Republicans in Iowa. However, the MOE is ? 4.
American Research Group New Hampshire Poll, conducted July 26th-30th, 2007
- Rudy Giuliani 27%
- Mitt Romney 26%
- Fred Thompson 13%
- John McCain 10%
- Newt Gingrich 6%
- All others <2%
- Undecided 13%
Giuliani leads Romney 31% to 29% among Republicans in New Hampshire, while Fred Thompson leads Romney 25% to 20% among independents in New Hampshire, with Giuliani at 19%. Once again, the MOE is ? 4.
American Research Group South Carolina Poll, conducted July 26th-30th, 2007
- Rudy Giuliani 28%
- Fred Thompson 27%
- John McCain 10%
- Newt Gingrich 7%
- Mitt Romney 7%
- Mike Huckabee 3%
- Ron Paul 3%
- All others <2%
- Undecided 13%
Giuliani leads Fred Thompson 29% to 25% among Republicans in South Carolina, while Fred Thompson leads Giuliani 43% to 17% among independents in South Carolina, with McCain at 14%. The MOE is ? 4.
The main criticism of ARG polls around the blogosphere is that they oversample Independents. So let’s all agree to concentrate on just the Republican results. In these polls (all with a MOE of ? 4) Mitt leads Rudy 24% to 21% in IA, Rudy leads Mitt 31% to 29% in NH, and Hizzoner bests FDT in SC 29% to 25%.
- Fred Thompson 26%
- Rudy Giuliani 24%
- Mitt Romney 12%
- John McCain 12%
- Mike Huckabee 4%
- Sam Brownback 3%
Daily tracking results are from survey interviews conducted over four days ending last night. Each update includes approximately 600-650 Likely Republican Primary Voters. Margin of sampling error for each is +/- 4 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.
With the virtual orgy of schadenfreude yesterday regarding Thompson’s fundraising, I thought a little perspective might be in order.
Rudy raised approx $260,000 in his first month of fundraising. John McCain raised approx $1.1 million in his first month. That would bring Thompson in at 10 times Rudy’s totals and over 3 times McCain’s-and this was without utilizing direct mail or telephone fundraising.
Now Thompson should definitely be subject to criticism for his reluctance to get in to the race, roll up his sleeves, and do the hard work that all of the other candidates are (his refusal to enter debates alongside his Republican competitors is also puzzling considering his tough guy image.)
That all being said, $3 million in his first month without doing really anything substantial should be recognized as a harbinger of good things to come, not as a sign of weakness.
The level at which some are willing to trumpet these numbers as a sign of impending doom for Team Thompson is really emblematic of the level of anxiety that Thompson’s nascent campaign is causing in some circles.
From the Press Release:
Announcing his endorsement of Governor Romney today, Lieutenant Governor Bolling said, “I have carefully considered all of the Republican candidates for President in 2008. While they are all good men, I believe that Mitt Romney is the best candidate to carry the Republican banner in the 2008 presidential campaign.”
“Mitt Romney also has the right vision for the future of our country. We can trust him to keep America safe at home by defeating the Jihadists abroad; and keep America strong by reigning in government spending, keeping taxes low, protecting the values we believe in, and confronting head on the new generation of challenges currently facing our nation,” Bolling continued.
Background On Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling:
In 2005, Bill Bolling Was Elected To Serve As The 40th Lieutenant Governor Of Virginia. In a year that favored Democrats, Bolling received more votes that any other Republican candidate for statewide office. He is widely recognized as one of Virginia’s most effective conservative leaders. Prior to his election as Lieutenant Governor, Bolling served for ten years in the Virginia State Senate. He also has experience in local government, serving as Chairman of the Hanover County Board of Supervisors prior to his election to the Senate. Nationally, Bolling serves as Chairman of the Republican Lieutenant Governors Association. He is also a member of the Executive Committee of the National Lieutenant Governors Association.
[Update: Helping the dots connect]
From Wapo we have this:
It was not two months ago that Fred Thompson tantalized a crowd of more than 400 Virginia Republicans at a state GOP party fundraiser in Richmond, laying out his conservative principles for the first time after making his first official filing toward a presidential campaign. “Folks, we’re a bit down politically right now, but I think we’re on the comeback trail, and it’s going to start right here,” rumbled the actor and former Tennessee senator, to loud applause. For good measure, he threw in some Southern quips and references, to remind the crowd that he, unlike the other leading GOP candidates, hailed from Dixie. At that moment, the support of Virginia Republicans seemed his for the taking.
It hasn’t exactly worked out that way for Thompson in the state, a letdown that could be seen as emblematic of Thompson’s troubles in taking flight nationally. This morning, the state’s top ranking Republican elected official, Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, will endorse Mitt Romney at a press conference in Richmond The endorsement is a coup for the former Massachusetts governor, who is eager to show that he is viable in the South despite languishing in the polls in South Carolina, where the first Southern primary votes will be cast. Tonight, Romney heads over to Virginia Beach for a fundraising dinner. As notable as the endorsement, perhaps, is that Romney’s fundraising in Virginia did not fall off a cliff with Thompson’s entrance onto the stage — Romney collected $308,000 in the state in the quarter ending June 30, compared with about $466,000 in the first quarter, a dropoff more or less in line with Romney’s fundraising pace nationally over the first half of the year. Likewise, Rudy Giuliani collected $300,000 in the state in the second quarter, on top of about $438,000 in the first quarter.
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Reports that Fred’s money machine may not be firing on all cylinders leads me to share what I?ve learned about fundraising in the last three years: it is very hard work.
But if you have the right model you can accomplish amazing things. As a comparison note that Romney raised about $3 million before lunch was over at his fundraising kickoff. The contrast is stark.
Here are some quick thoughts on what it takes to raise money.
First and foremost, understand some of the underlying rules of fundraising:
1. ?People give to people to help people? ? I?ve been working with non-profit organizations for over a decade. Without fail, a general clarion-call for money will fail compared to a plea for a specific cause, especially when it?s linked with a picture and a story. You need to have a compelling story with a person who can conjure up a compelling reason to compell people to open their wallets.
2. ?People give relative to their means? ? No matter what the cause, the dollar amount of donations from the 35-60 crowd will far outweigh the 20-30 crowd for one simple reason: they have $ to spend.
3. ?Those closest must set the pace? ? When Romney kicked off the exploratory committee with a national call day January 8th, the 5 Romney boys set the example for the other 400 fundraisers by sticking at their tables for the entire duration of the event. When Meg Whitman, CEO of Ebay takes 9 hours out of her day to sit at another table and ask people for money it makes an impact on everyone around her.
Next we need to take a look at the trends in fundraisings:
1. Growing use of the Internet for fundraising ? ?Growing? is the operative word. By most accounts donations raised via the Internet are pithy and underwhelming. Only a handful of non-profit organizations have shown more than 6 figures in online fundraising. The trend is obviously toward the Internet but it has not been the harbinger of $$$ that many expected.
2. Innovation and adopting new practices and models ? The key to fundraising is innovation. I wager that any one of us receives half-a-dozen letters a week soliciting for donations. Standing out above the noise is the key to successful fundraising. Take for instance Romney?s ?Students for Mitt? program where college students can receive 10% back on everything they raise for the campaign.
3. Involve everyone in fundraising ? I know some professional fundraisers who were very upset at the Romney campaign for opening the floodgates to anyone and everyone. But it?s paid off. For example, as a ?Patriot? level fundraiser I have the ability to create ?associate fundraisers?. I get credit for whatever money they bring in and they in turn get credit for being part of a successful team of advocates.
4. Contemporary corporate marketing practices ? Like any aged market, the political sphere has its own consultants, approaches, and software packages. Most every political campaign uses Aristotle Publishing for voter lists and most every 501(c)4 uses Capitol Advantage for online advocacy. Romney has broke the fundraising mold by utilizing a contact management system called SalesForce.com typically utilized by large and dispersed sales and business development groups.
5. MOST IMPORTANT: FOCUS ON DONORS: When you give $2300 dollars to a campaign you are the man (or at least you should be treated like ?the man?.) Next to your unpaid fundraisers you must focus like a laser beam on your high end contributors. By creating incentives and time factors into your efforts you create an energetic need to get involved and ?max out?. Romney has held numerous incentive-bases time-sensitive fundraising efforts to meet this challenge
Lastly, you need to understand WHY people give:
? They believe you are making a difference in a cause they care about.
? They value your work
? They see it as an investment
? They get something in return
? They feel good about themselves
? Returning a favor
? Solving a problem
? Sending a message
? Receiving quality information
? Aligning with peers
? Bringing justice to the world
If you cater your message to these efforts your fundraising effort might just work. But note this: by my calculations 60-70% of the money that Romney has raised has been at in-person events.
I?ve said this before but I believe that Fred is one election too early to concentrate on the virtual handshake. Romney has hosted approximately 120 in-person fundraising events since January. The average take at these events is probably $150,000+. You do the math. Better yet, Fred better do it.
First, let me preface this piece by reminding everyone that I have no animus towards Fred Thompson. To the contrary, I think Thompson is a product of the pre-Bush conservatism of the 1990s, i.e., unhyphenated conservatism, before the word came to be redefined by social meddlers and various strains of idealists. Further, Thompson’s refusal to genuflect to those who think presidential candidates should be papable by embracing instead of disavowing his wild past makes a freedom-loving guy like me smile faster than you can say, “Barry Goldwater.” I certainly hope all of that softens the coming blow w/r/t Fred’s supporters on the site.
As R4’08er MattC reported today, Fred Thompson’s fundraising numbers have thus far failed to impress. Fred’s three-million-dollar June says a lot more about the state of the GOP, conservatism, and the country than it does about Fred Thompson though. More specifically, Thompson’s fundraising woes demonstrate that Cocoon Conservatives are totally misreading the vacuum that exists in the race for 2008.
By, “Cocoon Conservatives,” I mean the sort of conservatives who think that 2004 was the beginning of a permanent Republican majority, that all the polls are wrong, and that 2006 happened because Republicans didn’t support Bush enough, weren’t socially conservative enough, etc. These conservatives refuse to recognize that the Bush Coalition — a motley crew of social meddlers at home and idealistic interventionalists abroad, all united under the flag of an evangelical president — is obsolete, busted, and, like the most recent comparable coalition, the one assembled by President McKinley over a century ago, will probably fail to return for yet another 100 years. Those in the cocoon fail to realize that 2004 was a lagging indicator, not a primer of elections to come, that 2006 was the revenge of the independents, and that Republicans are facing such an uphill climb in 2008 due to disaffected folks in the center, not because the red states need sufficient red meat.
What does all of this have to do with Thompson? Prior to Thompson’s release of his fundraising numbers, there was a conventional wisdom starting to develop on the conservative blogosphere that the reason Republican fundraising numbers this year pale in comparison to Democratic numbers is that conservatives are holding tight their purse strings. Conservatives, so went the narrative, were not about to donate one red-state red cent to Rudy McRomney, and would instead hold on to their culturally conservative millions until a True Conservative entered the race. At that point, the floodgates would open, the band would get back together, and a revived Red State Coalition would propel Republicans into office yet one more time.
Well, we now know just how much the red-state holdouts are worth. The single-issue types, the ones who we Republicans are supposed to perpetually coddle, lest they (gasp!) sit on their hands and refuse to donate or volunteer are apparently the equivalent of a McDonald’s value meal in presidential fundraising terms. Contrast these meager funds with the tens of millions of dollars in Clinton’s and Obama’s coffers and the whole scenario becomes laughable. So the single-issue types are going to go golfing if we nominate Rudy? Let them. They could apparently all fit quite comfortably into one moderately sized minivan.
Conservatives living in the cocoon will eventually have to wake up and realize that maybe, just maybe, the GOP isn’t suffering because we’ve forgotten the lessons of 2004. Instead, Republicans need to re-learn the lessons of 2006 and run a campaign based on connecting with disaffected independents. It is they, and not any sort of Rovian base voter, who will decide the race for 2008.
As most of you know, Newt Gingrich has been in contact with Fred Thompson, and Newt has now confirmed this. Some might ignore it, or brush it off, but a Gingrich endorsement still carries weight. See what former senator and GOP nominee Bob Dole had to say a couple of days ago, via Bloomberg:
Bob Dole says his preferred presidential candidate, Arizona Senator John McCain, is fading and that his support is likely to be “picked up” by Fred Thompson, who is expected to announce his candidacy for the Republican nomination in September.
It has been reported on every major news outlet that Gingrich has been aiding the Thompson team, and been involved with policy discussion. He is leaving the door open for his own possible run, but only if Thompson fails to hold his traction in the polls, according to earlier reports.
from ABC:
ABC News’ Tahman Bradley Reports: Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich R-Ga., confirmed that he and his wife Calista recently had dinner with Republican presidential-candidate-in-waiting Fred Thompson and his wife Jeri.
“Yes, we had a very nice dinner with Jerri and Fred?,” Gingrich said Sunday in an interview on Fox News.
Gingrich did not answer a question about whether he would endorse Thompson if and when the former Tennessee senator enters the race, but said he believes Thompson will be “a very formidable candidate” in a Republican presidential field that features several strong candidates.
Don’t forget that former Gingrich aide Rich Galen has signed on with Thompson as well. If the Thompson run fails, wanna take a wild guess where at least 20 of his 25% support goes? Here’s a thought…. it would split, with Gingrich picking up the southern loyalists and the majority, and the rest likely going back to Rudy Giuliani, unless he declares full out war with Thompson this early in the game, which would alienate the large number of staunch Thompson backers. Remember that it is Giuliani who has gone from near 40% to 24% since Fred spoke of a possible run, and it is quite likely much of that support would trend back, or to Newt. So in reality, Fred is a win-win situation for Rudy. Granted, Rudy has to fight off Thompson for the nomination, but if Thompson failed, he would be a beneficiary, along with Gingrich. And before you bring up all of Newt’s baggage, let me leave you with a quote from none other than Ronald Reagan, from Robert Novak’s fascinating autobiography, ‘The Prince of Darkness’:
“After my marriage (to Jane Wyman) broke up, Reagan said, I tried to go to bed with every starlet in Hollywood. [Reagan paused and smiled] And I damn near succeeded. That was before I met Nancy.”
- Robert Novak: The Prince of Darkness, p. 270
Gosh, where have I heard something that sounds very similar to that and is being scrutinized by some? Now, I not only bring this up to refer to the comments on Thompson’s trophy wife and bachelor life during the 1990′s. I bring this up because some have been quick to scrutinize the private lives of Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingrich as well. Who are we to criticize failed marriages? Before anybody claims moral superiority, let’s remember who every candidate constantly likes to remind us of. Would you have been as judgemental of Reagan in 1980 if that quote was leaked to the press? If today’s media had covered politics back then and our candidates attacked each others personal lives, we probably would’ve had two terms of Jimmy the Peanut Carter, if 1980 had our partisan atmosphere. Maybe that’s something we should think about.
Rudy Giuliani
Fred Thompson
John McCain
Mitt Romney
Newt Gingrich
General Race 4 2008 News
First off
Yes, the fundraising for June tampered off of expectations. I just found out about the numbers myself, as I’ve been away all day. However, Thompson has sent out no letters, no phone calls, etc… This is strictly from a handful of fundraisers and the internet alone. Half of Thompson’s June appearences were for raising money for the party, and not his campaign. In total, there were 3 fundraisers, and add that the fact that he’s not a candidate yet, that’s not terrible for a late entry start up with a month of planning. However, since some here are so quick to criticize and compare at this point, I guess that makes everything fair game.
Update from Ryan Sager:
I may characterize Fred Thompson’s $3 million haul for June as “not great.” But let me qualify that in one important way:
* “Not great” doesn’t = “very bad.” $3 million is a decent number, on track roughly with how John McCain did each month of the last quarter. But, with a much lower burn rate than Mr. McCain, Mr. Thompson is building up a war chest that could run a credible campaign, come the expected formal announcement in September.
And although it’s different, compared to Giuliani and McCain’s first months, that ain’t bad for being undeclared, although it’s different circumstances.
Now, ABC reports today that Thompson will support the Fair Tax pledge. That makes 6 of our candidates. From ABC News:
He is not yet an official presidential candidate but former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson has already promised voters he’d sign a major overhaul of the American tax system if passed by Congress.
Asked last week on camera if he would sign the “Fair Tax” bill if it were passed by the House and Senate, the “Law & Order” actor said, “Yeah, absolutely.”
The five other Republican presidential candidates who have pledged to sign the Fair Tax bill into law if passed by Congress are Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson, Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.
The Brownback campaign announced today its “Pastors for Brownback” advisory committee, an impressive list of Iowa pastors supporting Brownback for president.
Christians across the Hawkeye state continue to rally behind Senator Brownback and his pro-life, pro-family, pro-freedom message, as the Associated Press has noted. The Pastors for Brownback team also joins an impressive Faith and Family Leadership Committee.
Other coalitions launched include Vietnamese for Brownback, Catholics for Brownback, Taxpayers for Brownback, and Moms for Brownback (with an official website launched today).
There’s a great piece in the American Spectator today by Jennifer Rubin (occasional contributor to R4’08) regarding Wendy Long, the chief counsel to the Judicial Confirmation Network. Wendy Long endorsed Mitt Romney last week and became his senior legal advisor and vice chair of his National Faith and Values Steering Committee, a move that Rubin calls “a political coup” because the conventional wisdom was that she would endorse and work for Fred Thompson. She explains why she chose Mitt instead:
She candidly acknowledges that she always liked Fred Thompson, in part because his support of causes like Scooter Libby “warmed her heart,” but ultimately concluded that Thompson could “not hold a candle to the Governor on intellect or leadership.” She contends that Romney is “the constitutionalist” in the race, meaning he best understands and supports concepts of federalism and the commitment to originalism in interpreting the Constitution.
Long also explains that leadership “matters tremendously” in selecting a president. For her this includes “the ability to direct the many and far flung team” that a president needs to confirm judges and lead the Justice Department. She cites Romney’s experience in business and running the Olympics and as Governor as proof he can “lead a large organization and then delegate” to competent managers.
Long argues that Romney “is the only one I’m absolutely sure” will give us more nominees like Justices Alito and Roberts.
Long is an articulate spokesperson both to bolster Romney’s conservative credentials and to take aim at Thompson, the opponent who clearly will pose a threat to his efforts to woo social conservatives.
Mike Allen over at The Politico has confirmed the rumors MSNBC heard last week: Fred Thompson raised just over $3 million in June for his “Testing the Waters” Committee.
I’ll let the article speak for itself:
“Fred’s Funds raise fear of flop…
But many Republicans have turned queasy as Thompson has ousted part of his original brain trust and repeatedly delayed his official announcement, which is now planned for shortly after Labor Day, in the first two weeks of September.
Some are already saying a prospective Thompson run is a flop. ?I just don?t see it anymore,? said a key Republican who had been extremely enthusiastic about a Thompson candidacy.
“That number is really underwhelming. There were indications it could be double that. They’ve been saying that people were waiting for Fred, and the money was going to pour in. He looks like he’s already losing momentum.”
The Shot, a great GOP blog out of South Carolina, points out this fact:
“This number is troubling. At this rate Thompson would only be able to raise $9 million per quarter. This figure would be about $3 million dollars less than Sen. John McCain?s dismal 2nd quarter figure.”
In? this clip, Rep. Tancredo discusses the stakes of the forthcoming presidential election as well as why he chose to run.
I had the pleasure of attending a gathering of Tancredo supporters in Ankeny, IA yesterday. I have some clips of the event to present along with an interview with Rep. Tancredo.
In this first clip, Rep. Tancredo discusses what he will and will not do as President.
Rudy Giuliani
Fred Thompson
John McCain
Mitt Romney
Newt Gingrich
General Race 4 2008 News
GOP Nomination 7/30
- Fred Thompson 25%
- Rudy Giuliani 24%
- John McCain 12%
- Mitt Romney 12%
- Sam Brownback 3%
- Mike Huckabee 2%
Daily tracking results are from survey interviews conducted over four days ending last night. Each update includes approximately 600-650 Likely Republican Primary Voters. Margin of sampling error for each is +/- 4 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.
On Saturday, I had the opportunity to listen in on a conference call with John McCain, who was campaigning in South Carolina. I came away impressed with his candor, and spirit. He covered a number of issues over the half hour or so he spent, but always came back to two or three points. The questioners seemed to ask questions that directly related to one already addressed, but it was still interesting to be able to listen in. It is a very effective method of communicating with your supporters.
Opening:
- McCain started off the call by stating that Americans are growing increasingly concerned with the US relationship with Iran, and thinks that this becomes an even greater concern in regards to Israel. Other concerns of the population are health care and immigration reform.
First Question- Foreign oil and energy independence
- said there are two issues to deal with? foreign oil and climate change. Ultimately, he thinks greenhouse gas should be top priority. He believes that serious progress needs to be made, using an international agreement that includes China and India.
Second Question- Would he use force when dealing with Iran
- McCain didn?t completely answer this question. He said that he supports the Bush plan, and that he thinks there are a lot of ways of putting pressure on them. He would not directly say that he supports a pre-emptive strike, which was the original question.
Third Question- Mismanagement of Medicare
- McCain focused on the negligence in regards to Walter Reed and veterans care. He said it was a disgraceful mishap, but is encouraged by the seemless transition report that had come out in the last few days.
Fourth Question- Asked to clarify his criticism of Rumsfield
- He stood by his criticism of Rumsfield. He is still angry that Rumsfield refused to listen to advice. He is optimistic after his recent trip to Iraq, but wonders if we have time in public opinion. He drew comparisons with Vietnam and how in both cases there were divisions between the government and those on the ground.
Fifth Question- how would he deal with illegal immigration
- McCain got grilled on this one by the questioner. He said that there has been not enough done because people were cynical of border security, which comes from the growing lack of trust that people have in the government. He promised to secure the borders before coming up with a new plan, but is still in favor of temporary worker visas for agriculture.
Sixth Question- Social security reform
- He gave Bush credit for trying. He said the solution requires reaching out to democrats to fix it, by sitting down and working it out. He didn?t give any specifics, but noted eight or nine different options.
This is a follow-up post on today’s story in the Des Moines Register about the Vietnamese community here in Des Moines rallying around Senator Brownback for his commitment to human rights issues and religious liberty around the world.
Here’s a YouTube video of one of our young interns out here in Iowa, Trinh Le, who is going to be a senior in high school. She put together yesterday’s event. She gave a very personal and moving story on the Pro-Life, Whole-Life tour about what her family has gone through and why she is supporting Senator Brownback. Please watch, I promise its worth it.
Race 4 2008 is please to present the following interview with Giuliani Judicial Advisory Committee member Ron Cass.
Mr. Cass served as the Dean of Boston University School of Law and is the Former Vice-Chairman of the US International Trade Commission. Mr. Cass is currently President of Cass & Associates, PC. It was announced last week that he will serve on Rudy Giuliani’s Judicial Advisory Committee.
In this interview, Mr. Cass discusses his own judicial philosophy, the proper role of judging and the courts in our system, and why Rudy Giuliani is the right choice for Republicans who are concerned about the future of the American judicial system.
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KWN: Could we begin by hearing a little bit about your own judicial philosophy and your view of the proper role of judges in our system?
Ron Cass: Let me start with the goal for judging. Because what judges do effects people in a way that is very special in our system. Most of the time when you’re dealing with pronouncements-Congress passes a law; the President makes an executive decision-usually that affects people in the future. You get a chance to see what the law is going to be and you get to adjust your behavior to take account of it. Courts make decisions that are retrospective, so they have the effect that you go to court and they tell you if what you did was right or wrong. That’s a special power in government, and it’s one to be especially careful with because you can’t adapt backwards. But you can in the future look what courts have done and make adjustments. But the people who are in front of the court are affected immediately and they don’t have a chance to adjust their behavior. So we have adapted rules over time for how courts ought to operate that are different than the rules we have for the political branch.
They are insulated from politics. They are insulated in terms of who can talk to them and about what. The take their time, read material, think about it. What is most important about courts is that their conduct be predictable, and that we can be able to predict their behavior from material that is already accessible to us and that it’s the same for everybody. That is what the Rule of Law is all about. You need judges who are doing things in a predictable way based on the materials available without regard to which judge you happen to get or what person is in front of a judge. So I don’t need to figure out that if I get caught doing a particular something that a particular judge in a particular court will treat it one way, a different judge in a different court will treat it another way; one judge will treat redheads one way this way and brunettes another way. I don’t need to know any of that to know what my conduct has to be to fit within the law. That means necessarily that what judges ought to be doing is to be making decisions based on exactly the sort of legal material that other people have access to.
What [did it] mean to the people who wrote and adopted and ratified the law? What it would be understood to mean by the people at the time it was written and how we can carry forward that understanding in ways that other can predict and adapt to. So when you talk about a law written by Congress, you look at the text of the law, you look at the context, and you look at the meaning. You try to be as clear as possible about what it was that Congress passed, not what they might have passed, not what somebody in Congress said they thought they were going to do, not what somebody hoped to do, but what they actually did.
Same with the Constitution. You want to look at the actual words in the Constitution; at the structure, at the context of the Constitution. What this means in the context of the document that we have. What was the understood meaning of those words was, is, has-been. And you also want to look at the court’s precedent that interprets the provision. Because those are also things that people will look at to try to predict how the court will understand and apply the Constitution. I don’t know whether any simple label like Strict Construction can adequately capture that. But that is what I think judges ought to be doing.
A lot of times when people use the term Strict Construction or Texturalism they mean exactly the same thing I just described. A different approach to the Constitution would be something, let me give an example-Ronald Dworkin, a famous legal philosopher says that the Constitution, and Constitutional decision making, is like writing a novel with different people contributing different parts. And what you ought to be doing is asking, given the materials at hand, “how do you make this the best possible novel? How do you make the Constitution the most moral, the most advanced, the most thoughtful document it can be?” I think that is exactly the wrong set of questions to ask. You don’t want to have judges make the law what they think it should be. You want to ask judges to interpret the law as predictably, as clearly, as honestly as they can according to it means to those who have gone before and written the materials thereupon. That’s what I think the job of judging, properly understood, is. And that’s what I think we ought to ask our judges to do.
KWN: How did you come to the decision that Mayor Giuliani is the best person to choose the kind of judges that would promote your conception of the proper role of the judiciary?
Ron Cass: Mayor Giuliani is a lawyer. He has been involved with the law for a long time. He has a great respect for the law. He has served in a variety of capacities as Associate Attorney General, as a U.S. Attorney, as a Mayor. He has shown that he cares a great deal about the law. He has a passion for trying to make the country better. As a political official, he has an agenda that he wants to do. But he understands that that agenda is pursued through the popular vote and through legislation and through the appointment of people in the executive branch. It’s not done through using the courts to advance an agenda. It’s done through using the courts to be predictable and honest and to have the sort of integrity that judging ought to have.
When he was a prosecutor; what prosecutors need to have is courts that understand and apply the law. When he was Mayor he needed to have a court system that operated in a predictable and understandable way. People can pick and choose anything they want to say, “well, I particularly agree or disagree with this one decision or this one comment.” But he has through his career been somebody who has clearly evidenced a devotion to the law and an understanding of the importance of the law. My strong sense of him is that he is somebody who is going to pick judges who have exactly the same understanding of their job that I have.
He was involved as Associate Attorney General in helping to advise Ronald Reagan which people to pick for judges. And I think that Ronald Reagan picked a lot of excellent judges for the courts.
KWN: Mayor Giuliani’s statement that a Strict Constructionist Judge could either overturn Roe or view it as precedent has been cause for alarm among some conservative court watchers. How would you address the concerns of people who cannot fathom how a judge in the mold of Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, or Alito could view Roe as rightly decided?
Ron Cass: Let me give three different responses with apologies because this will take some time.
First of all, whenever you’re appointing a judge you want to avoid anything that looks like a litmus test. I have said over the past many, many years that it is wrong for the Senate to be asking judges essentially to take an oath that they’ll uphold Roe v. Wade or any other decision. It’s wrong for people to ask judges to predict in advance what votes they will cast on particular decisions. The whole point of what we want judges to do is to deliberate outside the legal process, outside of legal pressures, to look at the material themselves. Not answer how a President or Senator really wants them to give in order to get past the appointment/confirmation hurdle. We want judges to be careful, dispassionate guardians of the law; to make their decision according to the text and precedent, and not according to politics. So whether it’s Mayor Giuliani, or President Bush, or President Reagan nobody’s whose President should be asking people to satisfy a particular litmus test one way of the other. Whether it’s pro-Roe or anti-Roe, or pro or anti any particular position. So I think people who focus too much on this and are asking a candidate to get assurances that a candidate perhaps on the Democratic side that perhaps favor Roe and on the Republican side oppose Roe; I think on both the Left and the Right people who ask this of a presidential candidate are making a mistake.
Second part of the answer… When you look at what courts do, how they proceed, it is important to understand what materials they have in front of them and what weight those materials get. When Roe was decided, the materials in front of them included very few precedents that in any way supported the Roe decision. You have the Griswold case which sort of came out of nowhere in terms of its construction of the Constitution. Justice Douglas, who wrote the case, couldn’t find a particular provision to say supported his conclusion. He said that there were emanations from penumbra of a variety of provisions of the Constitution. That’s a clear way of saying that, “I’m making this up.” And Roe is following directly in the footsteps of Griswold in creating a constitutional right that you have to strain mightily, to torture the text in a way that will produce that right.
One can say there are rights to be left alone and you can go back to certain Constitutional text and can hang you hat on that. But to say that there is a right to be free from certain types of regulations in this trimester and others in that trimester and others in the third trimester. The framework Roe created, the rights they articulated, it’s very difficult to defend this as principled constitutional construction.
Rudy Giuliani understands that and has said very clearly he believes that Roe was wrongly decided. He has had different things to say about what he thinks the right policy is in terms of abortion policy. But he understands the difficulty with that decision when it was rendered, and he understands the difficulty with the approach to constitutional decision making embodied in Roe v. Wade.
Third part of the answer… When you ask somebody if Roe was rightly decided, that’s a very different question than asking them thirty years later what should the Court do today? After Roe, some of them give a different basis for the decision that was given in Roe, even if they claim to be affirming Roe v. Wade. Some of them clearly cut back on the rationale that underpins Roe. When you ask people today how you should decide cases involving the government’s ability to regulate abortions. They’re not writing on a clean slate in the same way that they were when Roe was decided. And I think it’s perfectly legitimate to say that you want courts now considering the precedent as well as the text and context. I’m somebody who gives enormous weight to the text itself. I give enormous weight to the text and construction of the Constitution over pretty much anything else. But when people look at some fields of law, they very readily overlook the weight we give to precedent, and let me just give you an example. There are First Amendment cases that come up before the Court, freedom of speech cases. When the document was written protecting the freedom of speech, it was understood at the time to be an incredibly narrow protection. But we have built up a body of precedent, particularly over the past 60-70 years, it would be a real jar to have courts say suddenly we are throwing out 60 or 70 or 80 years of precedent and we are going to begin to making decisions without regard to what we have been deciding during that time. It would make the law less predictable, not more predictable, at this point. So I think that it’s fair for Mayor Giuliani to say, look-he isn’t asking anyone to pass a litmus test, but he is acknowledging that Roe was wrongly decided. But he is saying that at this point today what judges do with that is something that has to take account not only of the text and construction of the Constitution, but also of precedent.
KWN: Conservatives have felt quite frustrated with the pace of the confirmation process in filling vacancies to the federal judiciary. Would a President Giuliani exert more pressure in order to get these vacancies filled?
Ron Cass: Mayor Giuliani has said pretty clearly that he thinks the pace of confirmations has been inadequate. He thinks it is very important to fill the vacancies in the courts and to fill them quickly. He thinks it is very important to have an up or down vote on judges. He wants the Senate to move with speed. He wants the operations within the executive department to move with speed to identify, nominate, and confirm the right sort of people to the courts. So he is very focused on that. Anybody who has been watching the judicial confirmations over the last 25-30 years has seen the pace of confirmations slow down dramatically, has seen the hurdles that a candidate needs to go through rise, and has also seen the focus be shifted from a straight focus on the competent and quality of the candidate and whether they have done something that makes them unfit for the bench to really a focus on whether the candidate will support a particular agenda or not when on the bench. I think that is antithetical to the rule of law, and I think that Mayor Giuliani clearly understands that and will push very hard to get the judges appointed and confirmed expeditiously.
KWN: As someone who will be advising Mayor Giuliani on judicial matters, it would be interesting to hear what judges you admire, or perhaps what judges you feel best embody the judicial philosophy you outlined earlier.
Ron Cass: There are many judges that I can point to that embody that, and let me just give you sort of a handful of examples of the sort of judges that do. And let me also say that they differ one from another in terms of exactly what weight they give to text, or to history context or structure or precedent and they’ll differ from one and other.
But Justice Scalia, Chief Justice Roberts, Chief Judge Douglas Ginsburg for the D.C. Circuit, Judge Randolph of the D.C. Circuit, Chief Judge Easterbrook and Judge Posner of the Seventh Circuit; all of them have all been very thoughtful judges.
Judge Posner would be the one that would be the most creative in terms of the way he approaches the law from this group. Justice Scalia would be the one who gives the greatest value to text in the group. But all of these have been judges who have been thoughtful and very careful to be looking at the way a judges job should be done.
Race 4 2008 is pleased to present the following interview with Rep. Ron Paul.
Rep. Paul received his M.D. degree from Duke University in 1961. After serving in the U.S. Air Force as a flight surgeon, he established his medical practice in Lake Jackson, Texas specializing in Obstetrics and Gynecology and would eventually deliver over 4,000 babies. In lieu of accepting Medicare or Medicaid, he would render medical service to his needy patients for either vastly lowered fees or free or charge.
Rep. Paul is currently serving his 10th term representing Texas’s 14th Congressional District, to which he was reelected by a twenty-point margin in 2006.
Paul formally announced his candidacy for the 2008 Republican nomination on March 12th, 2007.
This interview was originally published on June 4th, 2007.
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KWN: Since the last debate you have been asked about 9/11 and the Iraq War at the beginning of each interview. To avoid asking you the same questions with different phrasing, I thought I would begin by simply asking you to state your stance on the role the U.S may have played in 9/11 and your thoughts on the execution of the War on Terror.
Rep. Ron Paul: Well, it’s a broad question for me because I talk in terms of not mismanagement of a particular war or some incident. I talk about a foreign policy of interventionism, which we were strongly advised not to follow by the Founders. So my complaint is that foreign interventionism, getting involved in the entangling alliances and internal affairs of other nations, is detrimental, and it comes back to hurt us. And I think that this has been true not just for this administration but for possibly the past 100 years. So I say that policy has a lot to due with those who would like to do us harm.
Now what I have been accused of is being less than a true American and unpatriotic because I suggest this. But those who attack me for that is sort of like saying that well, if someone is being murdered and I want to check into the motives of why someone might have been murdered in order to understand what happened, that therefore I am blaming the person that’s murdered is ridiculous.
So policy is very important. And this whole idea of “blowback” is something that the CIA has talked about for decades, and various CIA agents now have come to my defense saying, “Ron Paul is exactly right.” There are consequences, unintended consequences, there are “blowback” consequences, and we very often can suffer consequences that we don’t like because we are doing things that are perceived by other countries as being very detrimental.
The most important thing we can do as Americans is to try to put ourselves in their place and [think] how we would react if a foreign power had done to us exactly what we have done to others. And I think then they can better understand what I am talking about.
KWN: Do you feel that radical Islam in and of itself poses a threat to the U.S. or the American people?
Rep. Ron Paul: Not by itself. I think it’s something that we should study, be concerned and look at to see how that does also influence people towards suicide-terrorism, but it’s not the main motivating factor because the countries that have been most radical in their religious beliefs or the most radical Islamicists have been Iran and I think in Sudan. But none of them have attacked us. A country that is one of our closest allies and that we have protected since World War II, Saudi Arabia, that is where the radical Islamicists came from. Ironically, we paid…our CIA was very much involved in establishing the schools which preached and taught radical Islam as a technique of trying to confront Communism. And that to me is another example of good intentions eventually coming back to haunt us. Because it was during those years that Osama Bin Laden was actually on our side trying to defeat the Soviets. But we were teaching, preaching, and encouraging radical Islam. And now it’s coming back to hurt us because radical Islam teaches that we just don’t want occupation; whether it’s the Russians, or the Europeans, or the Americans.
KWN: Many people may be unaware that you have already had nearly 500,000 Americans cast votes for you for President of the United States. Can you tell us a little bit about your time at the top of a national ticket as the Libertarian Party’s nominee in 1988?
Rep. Ron Paul: Well, it was an activity that I considered very important. I was also very much aware that third parties are under a great handicap because the laws are written by Republicans and Democrats which make it virtually impossible to compete because you can’t get into the debates [and] you spend all of your time and money trying to get on the ballots. The monopoly wants to be protected.
But nevertheless I still spent approximately a year traveling the country talking about the things I thought were important to me which is individual liberty, and the Constitution, and balanced budgets and all of the things I still talk about; and quite frankly all the things that conservative Republicans claim they believe in. So it’s not so strange… But the vehicle I used back in 1988 was the Libertarian Party and today it’s the Republican Party. I’ve been in Congress for ten terms and am going into my eleventh term as a Republican.
KWN: Why do you think the Republican Party suffered such losses in 2006 of libertarian voters who normally would align themselves with GOP?
Rep. Ron Paul: Well, just going around the country, I wouldn’t claim that I know the answer to that, we ask people when we go around the country why do you think this is happening and why they think that is happening and people do polls, and you can have your personal opinions. But my impression from having talked to a lot of people, and it was probably more impressive in New Hampshire because the wipe-out was so great in New Hampshire, the answer was: “The War, The War, The War.” It wasn’t deficits and the entitlements [which] bother me a whole lot, there are a lot of things that bother me: the size of government and the government’s intrusion into privacy and these are various things that we are supposed to be opposed to [like] the Department of Education. But in New Hampshire and elsewhere it’s always the war. It didn’t mean that they took a position; their reason was that the war is why Republicans did so poorly.
KWN: Some people in the Democratic Party have contended that they should be actively targeting these libertarians who normally vote Republican. Do you feel there is a risk of a significant number of defections in the longterm, and do you feel that the Democratic party is a viable option for these kinds of voters?
Rep. Ron Paul: I think philosophically that could be the case because freedom has been split in two parts. Civil liberties and foreign policy seem to be more libertarian in the Democratic Party and economic policy is more libertarian in the Republican Party. But if you look at the overall rhetoric, the Republican Party and their platform are much more libertarian than the Democrats. The Democrats are welfarists you know. They don’t even pretend to worry about deficits. Republicans at least say, “well, we don’t like deficits”, but then they go and do them anyway.
But I think that the image of the Republican Party is that it is more open to freedom’s ideas in the positions they hold but do not always follow through on. And I think that’s why it’s going to be much more popular if there are a lot, and I am discovering that there are a lot, of individuals who are independent and moderate and some in the Democratic Party that are much more likely to look to the Republican Party in order to get this message heard.
But the difficulty there is that this [2008] is going to be a tough year. Because the economic problems that exist, and are going to get worse by next year, plus the war that probably won’t be over by next year…it’s going to be blamed on the Republicans. That’s why I have predicted that if we even want to be in the game at all next year we have to change the policy. There is just time for a change in our foreign policy and in our attitude on what we should be doing in the Middle East.
KWN: Has your pro-life position ever brought you into conflict with other libertarians?
Rep. Ron Paul: You know, it’s surprising, not a whole lot. I mean, they disagree but there is a Libertarian for Life organization. Ironically and interestingly enough it is run by someone who claims to be an atheist. Yet the woman is very friendly and we talk a lot and have worked together. She actually uses Ayn Rand as a defense for her position — individual responsibility argument. My defense of pro-life as a libertarian is that killing a live fetus that is viable and can breathe and has a heartbeat and brainwaves; to kill that fetus is an act of aggression, and that [is against] the whole principle of libertarianism.
It’s a tough problem to deal with. There’s a minor split in the Democratic Party, a significant split with Republicans, and a major split within Independents. Everybody has a disagreement on it. And that is why the answer can be found in our traditions and in our Constitution, because there is not going to be one answer. I don’t endorse a national police force for curtailing abortion. I think it should be done by the states and the states would handle it differently. I even believe there should even be a difference between the day-after pill and the day before birth protection. These difficult things should best be worked out by local governments.
What I don’t like is the federal government, either through a law or a court order like Roe v. Wade [which] the Supreme Court did, and have a national solution, and writing legislation [regarding] what you can do in the first trimester, the second trimester, and the third trimester; writing laws which have really torn this country apart. That is why I call for the repeal of Roe v. Wade and no police force in Washington.
But I think that most libertarians hear that story and say, “that it doesn’t sound too threatening to me”. Even others in the Democratic Party and the Republican Party who are pro-abortion aren’t overly offended by that.
KWN: Being from Texas, the issue of illegal immigration must be one that you have thought about in some depth. What is your opinion of the Senate immigration compromise?
Rep. Ron Paul: Well, from what I know of it I wouldn’t support it because I do believe that even though they won’t call it amnesty it really is because they are rewarding people who came here illegally. There are some definite things in that bill that actually further promote the Security and Prosperity Partnership, and that’s part of the continuation of the NAFTA plan to unify the three countries into the North American Union and have a single currency. So they are incrementally moving in that direction. I strongly oppose that. The people who like amnesty and the obliteration of borders are also very much involved with the move towards a North American Union. There is a growing number of people who are discovering this issue, not in Washington, but outside of Washington and are objecting to this.
Recently the Senate and the House in Texas overwhelmingly, with just a few dissenters, voted to put a moratorium on this so-called NAFTA highway that is suppose to go from Mexico to Canada and really open up the doors to this integration which is a lot more than just trading with other countries.
KWN: You have stated in the past that you feel that it is imperative that free trade is fair trade. This doesn’t seem to be an issue that registers that highly with the American public. What do you think Americans are not understanding about this issue?
Rep. Ron Paul: Well, it’s a mixed-bag because some, including my friend Pat Buchanan, are protectionists. They like to put on tariffs and they believe in protectionism, and they not embarrassed. But that is an old fashioned mercantilistic idea that you should tax American people when they want to spend their money buying cheap products from overseas. They ought to have a moral right to do it. Economically, it’s beneficial for everyone to get the best price from wherever. That is what free trade is all about.
But the so-called free traders in Washington, who promote Fast Track, NAFTA and WTO, they are promoting international government. They are promoting “managed trade.” They are promoting a government body where you go to get permission to put on tariffs.
And it’s also a government that can come back and put pressure on us. For instance, we have already had to change our tax code because the WTO instructed us to, that we would be literally kicked out if we didn’t follow the rules. So our Congress and our President were obligated, we had to change our tax laws which literally raised some taxes on some of our corporations.
So that’s the part that I don’t like. I don’t like another level of government above our federal government. I’m annoyed enough with the status of our federal government let alone having another one. I don’t want that. That to me isn’t free trade. Free trade is allowing you as an individual to spend your money any you want. I shouldn’t be taxing you in order to manipulate what I think is better for the overall economy.
KWN: How would you overhaul our nation’s tax system?
Rep. Ron Paul: Well certainly I’d get rid of the income tax. The overhauling of the tax system is very difficult unless you overhaul the entire principle of government. You can’t really do a good job in just eliminating the income tax and reducing taxes unless you change the role of government. As long as the American people accept the idea that we should and we have the authority to police the world and that it’s a good idea, then is going to be hard to cut spending. And as long as the majority of the people think the government should take care of all of us from cradle to grave, then it’s not going to happen.
But since it’s not likely to happen soon, what I’m fearful of is that this country’s going to go bankrupt and the younger generation is going to suffer the most because they are the ones that don’t have any savings and have to work to take care of everyone who has retired. I’d reduce taxes eighty-percent if I had the size of government I wanted. The bigger job is reducing the size of government.
KWN: How do you envision the future of your campaign? What lies on the road ahead between now and the Iowa Caucuses?
Rep. Ron Paul: Well, I think we continue to do exactly what we are doing. We are pleasantly surprised that even though we started off slowly it has sort of exploded with the attention we have gotten with the debate. The Internet has served us well. Fundraising has accelerated. We’ll continue to do the same thing and if the funds keep coming in as they have been we are going to be able to hire more personnel and just do a better job.
Our biggest problem has been that we have just been so overwhelmed with emails and phone calls and interviews and invitations that we haven’t been able to keep up. Some people have been annoyed with us for not being efficient enough. And yet that is a good sign because it would be terrible if there were two [people] in the office and they weren’t busy. So things are going well.
Regardless of who you’re supporting, I think we can all appreciate this story from the Des Moines Register:
Brownback woos Vietnamese
By TONY LEYS
REGISTER STAFF WRITERU.S. Sen. Sam Brownback made his pitch Saturday evening from an unusual spot.
Over his right shoulder stood the U.S. flag. Over his left stood the yellow-and-red flag of the old South Vietnam.
Brownback, a dark-horse Republican candidate for president, held out his arms, palms up. “I need your help,” he said.
Sixty Vietnamese, most of them refugees, sat in Quyhn’s restaurant on Des Moines’ north side, listening intently as the Kansas senator talked about his support for religious and political freedom around the world, including in their communist-controlled homeland. He recalled how he traveled to Vietnam in 2004 to demand the release of a prominent priest jailed for speaking out.
“One of the first freedoms is what you do with your soul,” he said, as a young woman translated.
Brownback asked the audience members to stand if they fought on the United States’ side during the Vietnam War. About 30 gray-haired people stood. Then he asked how many were imprisoned for it after U.S. troops left their country. Twenty-four stood again.
“I’m impressed with your courage and honor,” he said.
Brownback asked them to support him in the Aug. 11 GOP straw poll in Ames, which will be a nationally publicized test of campaigns’ strength.
Anh Huynh, 42, of Ankeny and president of the Vietnamese Catholic Community, said afterward that about 6,000 Vietnamese live in the Des Moines area. Most of them are U.S. citizens, tend to vote Republican, and know about Brownback’s work for human rights in their homeland, he said.
This was Brownback’s fourth Iowa event of the day, and it was his biggest crowd. He smiled afterward when asked if he thought the audience members would help him win the nomination. Many of these people were imprisoned for their belief in freedom, he said. They might not support him, he said, but they’ll support somebody.
“They fought to vote,” he said. “They bled to vote.”
Rudy Giuliani
Fred Thompson
John McCain
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Think Republicans can cobble together an electoral majority by holding all of the red states in 2008 while ceding all of the blues to Democrats? Think again:
This is a huge deal. North Carolina is changing the way that it allocates its electors in the electoral college.
So why does this matter? Because instead of the GOP almost certainly getting 15 electors, it will only get 9, with the other 6 going to the Dem, working off the congressional delegation allocation.
The Dems could probably do this in Arkansas and Louisiana too. Those are states that still have Southern Democrat majorities in the state legislatures and Democratic Governors.
Very, very clever.
So that’s 6 southern electoral votes that will likely end up in the Democratic column next fall. If the Dems enact a similar bill in Arkansas or Louisiana, they could gain more. And Arkansas is endangered anyway due to the likelihood that its former First Lady will head the Democratic ticket. Meanwhile, polls show Hillary leading in West Virginia, Iowa, Ohio, New Mexico, and Missouri appears to be about to go native as well. And all GOP candidates not named Rudy lose Florida to Mrs. Clinton.
Put simply, we can’t win in 2008 without at least a few states that voted for John Kerry in 2004. We simply cannot. The red-state strategy is over. It’s time to start playing for the nation again.
