Topic: Presidential Campaign 2008
Ron Paul supporter Chuck Baldwin runs for President "I will say it straight out: any Christian or conservative who supports John McCain has no principles left worth defending!" - Chuck Baldwinby George Dance
(libertarian)
Friday, April 25, 2008
On Apr. 10, Charles O. "Chuck" Baldwin, Vice-Presidential candidate for the Constitution Party in 2004, made a last-minute entry into the race for the CP's 2008 Presidential nomination. The CP picks its candidate tomorrow at its convention in Kansas City.
Baldwin is not only a late entry into the race, but seemingly a reluctant one. As late as Mar. 25, he had made no decision to run, telling Miller Politics then that "I have no inclination that this is God's will for me." However, on Apr. 10, still with no word from God, he "allowed my name to be placed in nominatioin, trusting that God will reveal His will accordingly."
There is speculation that Baldwin allowed himself to be drafted to stop the candidacy of Presidential candidate Alan Keyes, who recently switched from the Republican Party to the CP to seek its nomination. Some CP members are reportedly alarmed by the prospect of a Keyes candidacy, as many of his positions are inconsistent with party policy -- in particular, his support of the Bush administration's war in Iraq.
Baldwin, on the other hand, holds foreign policy views similar to Ron Paul. He is a long-time supporter of Paul, and tried to draft Paul for the CP nomination in 2004 before going onto the ticket himself. This time around he has championed Paul's candidacy for the Republican nomination, writing favourably about him many times in his weekly column.
Like Keyes (and like most of the CP membership), Baldwin is a deeply religious man. In fact he is not only an evangelical but also a pastor, of Crossroad Baptist Church in Pensacola, FL. However, he has been a strong critic of other evangelicals, for their support of both President George W. Bush and Bush's newly-designated successor, Sen. John McCain:
For one thing, a sizeable number of believers allowed President George W. Bush to redefine their Christian principles almost out of existence. They willingly looked the other way while Bush betrayed his word (not to mention the Constitution) and catapulted conservative principles into outer darkness. To the point, that they can now even support someone as liberal as John McCain and still call him a "conservative."
I will say it straight out: any Christian or conservative who supports John McCain has no principles left worth defending!
Can anyone remember when George W. Bush ran for the White House in 2000, promising the American people that he would pursue a non-interventionist foreign policy? So much for that promise.
George W. Bush has orchestrated the most meddlesome, interventionist, and nation-building foreign policy of any President in modern memory. And Christians became his most vocal supporters. Now, John McCain gets in front of international television and jokes about bombing Iran, and once again, Christians stand up and cheer.
Christians have swallowed the Bush/McCain Kool-Aid as surely as did the followers of Jim Jones. They are drunk with denial and deception.
Similarly, Baldwin has excoriated evangelicals for largely ignoring Ron Paul's candidacy:
Maybe today's evangelicals are more concerned about being accepted by the GOP establishment than they are supporting principled, conservative candidates. After all, Paul's willingness to openly oppose his own party has caused him to be blacklisted by party loyalists and apologists. Therefore, it might be that our illustrious evangelical leaders are unwilling to be identified with Paul lest they share the same ostracism.
Another reason might be that today's evangelicals are extremely shallow in their discernment. They seem to love Republican candidates who wear religion on their sleeve. Whether the candidate walks the walk does not seem to matter near as much as whether he talks the talk....
Another trap evangelicals seem to fall into is the puerile desire to "pick a winner." Wanting to be sure that they are seen dancing with the last man on the floor, evangelicals are trying to figure out who that man will be so as to be ready to receive their invitation to the dance. And since they don't expect to see Ron Paul issuing dance invitations, they have already written him off.
While Baldwin has done little or no campaigning, he is expected to do well, and may even be able to stop Keyes. He enjoys strong support from many CP activists, such as Kevin Thompson (who blogged back in 2007: "is there a better presidential candidate than Ron Paul? Yes. That man is Chuck Baldwin.")
Personally, I admire Baldwin and would like to see him win. But it is an open question whether that would help or harm the rEVOLution. On the one hand, a Baldwin candidacy may be able to break through to the evangelical community which ignored Ron Paul, taking crucial southern and midwest votes away from John McCain and his sycophant (and likely running mate), Mike Huckabee. On the other hand, it may do no more than divide and fragment the rEVOLutionary vote among himself, Libertarian Bob Barr, and possibly Ron Paul as well.
In any case, that's not for me to decide. Whoever's decision it is -- God's, as Baldwin believes, or solely that of the CP delegates already assembled in Kansas City -- we'll know it by tomorrow.
Stephen Gordon, "Miller Politics interviews Chuck Baldwin," Third Party Watch, Mar. 27, 2008. http://thirdpartywatch.com/2008/03/27/miller-politics-interviews-chuck-baldwin/
Trent Hill, "Baldwin Follows up on Announcement," Third Party Watch, Apr. 17, 2008. http://thirdpartywatch.com/2008/04/17/baldwin-follows-up-on-announcement/
Kevin Thompson, "Ron Paul and Chuck Baldwin," Here I Stand, Nov. 7, 2007 http://kevinjthompson.wordpress.com/2007/11/07/ron-paul-and-chuck-baldwin/
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UPDATE: Eric A. Garris posted on lewrockwell.com April 26, at 10:11 AM: "The Constitution Party just overwhelmingly defeated the warmongering neocon Alan Keyes by nominating Chuck Baldwin, 383 to 125."
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Chuck Baldwin is a very admirable man from all I know about him. I've been reading his columns, on and off, for years now.
I refused to vote for George Bush in either of the last two elections. I could see what a liar he is, in advance, because while planning to swear on a bible to uphold and defend the constitution, his public platform clearly stated in advance his specific plans to violate it!
I continue to be mystified that so many can look at that kind of blatant behavior and not see it, or deliberately ignore it.
I wish Mr. Baldwin Godspeed, and thanks again for the news!
Ok Ron Paul did not appeal to Evangelicals, because Evangelicals are not Libertarians! They are Authoritarian Statists who think that they know everything. These are the same liberty-challenged nonrandians that think that thier standards should apply to everyone. Think about it. Abstinance Only, FCC letters, and Anti Gay marriage. These people are far from libertarianism. Why else do you think that Ron Paul lost did not win?
Lloyd: Some evangelicals are statists: for example, Pat Robertson, who would like to see the U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights replaced with an explicitly theocratic, Christianist fundamental law (a position that Huckabee has been openly pandering to in this election.)
But not all of them are. Baldwin isn't, obviously, and neither is Paul. Nor is any constitutionalist (by which I mean, someone who believes in the ideology of constitutionalism, not just CP members). Ideological constitutionalists believe in the form of government established by the original US Constitution, which was not statist at all but, I'd say, in the libertarian quadrant (though not of course at the top).
What all Christian evangelicals are is moralistic - sometimes that gets called 'authoritarian' too, and it can be confused with statism: not just by its critics, but its followers (like, I suspect, Robertson and Huckabee). But moralism and statism are not the same thing.
(To back up that last point, let me give you a non-Christian, but atheist, example: Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism. Objectivism is highly moralistic - it dictates how one ought to behave, every day, in every decision and every action - but it is the antithesis of political statism. Ayn Rand was also an ideological constitutionalist, and indeed in areas like her advocacy of laissez-faire capitalism went beyond constitutionalism to libertarianism.)
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