Not good.

However, he did mention something the other night on his show that is, by far, the best thing I’ve ever heard him say. Here, take a look for yourself:

Again, I don’t really care for Stewart but he is on point here. What gives with the lack of Ron Paul coverage?! Look, I know that Paul’s campaign goes out of its way to spike the post-debate text message polls and stuff the audience members with their supporters, but that’s the way it is – why deny its existence? In fact, you might argue that Paul is getting the same treatment that the Tea Party received early on in their creation. Remember that? Remember when there were hundreds of thousands of people marching on Washington, DC and the media was like, “Oh? What? No, we don’t know anything about this Tea Party stuff. Are they racists?”

Why is Ron Paul getting that type of treatment? It’s bizarre. In fact, it’s the type of bizarre that makes people wonder about the media – how can every single news outlet deny the man’s existence when he’s clearly a front runner right now? Gah!

And what a decision we have to make in New Jersey politics, huh?

I think I’ve made it obvious on previous posts on this blog that I’m no big fan of Governor Money Bags (aka Jon Corzine). How this state elected a multi-millionaire to be the governor – especially when he ran on the basis of being able to understand the common man. How can a guy who doesn’t have to worry about money EVER understand what it’s like to be a regular person trying to survive in New Jersey?! Good grief!

Of course, like most statewide elections, the Democrats in New Jersey can get away with anything that they want because they have Essex and Camden counties on lock down. The amount of votes in those two counties is significant and puts the Democrats in a situation where they only need to get a few percentage points in each of the other counties to win major elections. It’s a shame, really.

But this election is different. New Jerseyans are fed up with the deteriorating state of our government and they want real change. Sound familiar? My concern is that while I’ll probably vote for Chris Christie, I’m not particularly voting FOR him, but rather against Corzine. And I’d much rather vote for Dagget or the Libertarian candidate, but I despise Corzine so much that I feel compelled to vote for the only guy who has a real chance to beat him.

A sorry state of affairs in Nw Jersey

For example, I’ve been looking at the voter results in my hometown of Mount Arlington (obsessively so). The Constitution Party received 2 votes in my hometown out of a total of 2,536 votes case. Repeat: they received 2 votes. Honestly, that’s not too bad! Mount Arlington isn’t too big and for a third party to pull any votes is impressive. Write-ins received 14 votes, Ralph Nader had 13, the Libertarians had 5 votes, the list goes on. In total, third parties received 41 votes or 1.6% of the vote.

Again, that’s not totally bad in this type of election, but if the third parties want to do better then they should be building a stronger base at the local level. For example, there were 4,387 votes cast for the Mount Arlington Borough Council (you get to cast two votes, which means a total of 5,072 votes could have been cast – some voters obviously chose not to vote for Borough Council or only cast one vote). I have to imagine that if a third party really wants to make an impact, they would spend a good deal of time and money at the lowest level of government and try to win these smaller elections. You win the local election for Mayor or Town Council or whatever, prove that your policies work at the local level, then try to expand to other local municipalities or to the county level (depending where you are in the United States).

The Republicans won in Mount Arlington and from what I can see, they’ve done a fine job of leading. They were handed the short end of the stick thanks to Governor Money Bags’ new anti-small town policies, but they’re managing. That said, their leading candidate received 24.34% of the votes cast. A third party should be able to meet that percentage if they wage a good campaign.

Or maybe there are other reasons why third parties aren’t making it in America. If I were running a third party, I’d choose a few small towns across America and use them as examples for why my party should be elected to higher offices. Hell, I’d even look at taking in disenfranchised members of the Republicans or Democrats and use them as the candidates for my party! Why not use those folks who already have name recognition and some type of rapport with the public?

But I would do more. I would hold voter registration drives and be sure to get those people who have never registered or never thought of registering. Go door to door if necessary and have unregistered voters fill out a voter registration form at the same time as they fill out an absentee ballot request. Put them on that perpetual absentee ballot program and tell them that it means they can literally vote from home – so long as they drop the ballot in the mail in time. If it’s legal (and I don’t know if it is), drop them some simple, uncomplicated campaign propaganda. Get them a button or a bumper sticker or something.

It just seems to me that third parties aren’t utilizing these very simple tactics in order to take a foothold at the smallest levels of American society. Again, maybe they are doing these things in places other than New Jersey and I don’t see it, but I have to think that third parties could be doing a better job of getting the word out about their existence and their platforms.

Constitution Party presidential candidate Chuck Baldwin and his running mate Darrell Castle wound up with close to 179,000 votes, showing even with no ads and comparatively little media attention, the message of liberty resonated with many.

The tally was a 24% increase over the party’s vote total in 2004. However, this year we were not on the ballot in California or Pennsylvania, and in 2004 those states accounted for 33,000 votes. The Baldwin/Castle ticket even grabbed 3,418 write-in votes in Texas, the highest for any write-in candidate in that state.

While the Constitution Party lists their final tally to be “close to 179,000” votes, Wikipedia lists their total for 2008 as 181,342. Not too bad, really. Both the Libertarians and Ralph Nader finished ahead of the Constitutionalists, but they got a few thousand more votes than the Green Party. More from their message:

In addition to larger percentages of votes, 20 states will remain ballot qualified meaning fewer time-consuming and costly ballot-access campaigns will be necessary going forward. This is a 33% increase over 2004.

Many people do not realize that one of the biggest hurdles that young political parties have to overcome is actually getting on the ballot! You don’t just “wind up” on the ballot – you have to actually collect signatures and petition to be on the ballot in each state. It’s not the easiest process and as the quoted message above alludes to, it’s not an entirely quick process either.

It would appear that the Constitution Party made a decent showing for a third party with no financing and no advertising in the 2008 election. America needs a strong third party at the national level – could it be this one?

The Constitution Party strongly champions the principles of government laid down by our Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, principles which have been abandoned by our political establishment. Unlike other political organizations, we do not believe these principles are outdated. We recognize that the Constitution of the United States of America is the supreme law of the land and must be enforced.

As you can see, this is a party that is strongly in favor of states’ rights and restoring the Constitution to its proper place as the pinnacle of American democracy. That may be hard to do in today’s society since so many of today’s common thoughts (i.e. equality of all peoples) are not specifically cited in the Constitution. Of course it would only take a normal person to realize that the Constitution implies equality for all people, but who wants to get bogged down in that type of argument? More from their website:

Seven Principles of the Constitution Party are:
1. Life: For all human beings, from conception to natural death;

2. Liberty: Freedom of conscience and actions for the self-governed individual;

3. Family: One husband and one wife with their children as divinely instituted;

4. Property: Each individual’s right to own and steward personal property without government burden;

5. Constitution: and Bill of Rights interpreted according to the actual intent of the Founding Fathers;

6. States’ Rights: Everything not specifically delegated by the Constitution to the federal government is reserved for the state and local jurisdictions;

7. American Sovereignty: American government committed to the protection of the borders, trade, and common defense of Americans, and not entangled in foreign alliances.

There you have the states’ rights listed as point number 6. I’m actually a big fan of point number 7 regarding American sovereignty. No, I’m not an isolationist, but I think it’s time our troops leave Japan and Germany… We could use their expertise, knowledge, and sheer manpower in other areas of the world (like Afghanistan) or right here in our own country! We forget that not only do we have the most powerful army in the world, we have the most intelligent. America could use that intelligence within our own borders.

The first two points and the fourth one are pretty much a statement of what all Americans are looking for in their federal government. No controversies there. The third point seems to be one that the majority of Americans agree with, but not the folks in certain areas of the country. Definitely not going to get a Constitution Party Mayor in San Francisco any time soon! Point 5 can become dicey as the intent of the Founders can be interpreted in a few different ways. I would assume that the Constitutionalists would be in favor of a rigid interpretation of the Founders’ intent. In some cases that might not be such a bad thing.

I joined the Constitution Party mailing list and added a link to their national party and their New Jersey state party to the links on the side of this blog. Like I said earlier, I always like keeping up with what third parties are up to – this country needs a third party to emerge as a real contender!

Funny, everyone will say Romney is done for coming in second, but Hillary is fine with third? I’ll make this short, because Iowa only proved one thing – the Republicans are in big trouble.

The energy and participation is off the charts on the Dem side. It went up on the Republican side due to the Evangelical vote. That’s great, but it isn’t enough to win a general election.

The fact is, as things stand, the Republicans don’t have a candidate that can win nationally in 2008.

This is dead on target. Obama is going to turn a lot of the established Democratic heads with the amount of younger support and independent excitement that he brings to the table in this Presidential race. And as a guy who generally does not vote for the Democrats, I’m even excited about something new coming from Barack Obama – though I’m not quite sure what his exact policies are and how they would have a direct effect (if any) on me.

It seems that the Riehl World View post is correct and that Republicans are lacking both excitement and new participation. There really is no, “Oh my God, I have to go vote for this person,” candidate on the Republican side. The only one that comes close is Ron Paul and he’s more of an old school, late 1800’s/early 1900’s conservative (we call them Libertarians today) than he is a modern-day Republican.

While on this topic, I also want to comment that if you’re paying attention and watching the Republican race you can see that the voters WANT someone to be excited about and someone to be jumping up and down over. The majority of voters were disenfranchised with Rudy Giuliani going into the race and then they discovered Mitt Romney and you saw some excitement. Then the voters learned more about Romney and how he’s more of a return to politics as usual and you saw the excitement transfer to Mike Huckabee. Now you’re seeing some of that excitement transfer to John McCain in New Hampshire, but the fact still remains that Obama is bringing new and younger voters out to voice their opinions. No one else is doing that in either party, period.