Report on the 2008 CP Convention

I'm not going to bore my readers with the specific details of what happens at a national convention every four years. Yes, the platform was updated and the other committees met, but the real exciting stuff mostly happened toward the end of the convention when the nomination process began. However, there was some fighting within the platform committee (which I was appointed to) regarding certain planks and I will mention that later as it ties into one of the candidates. Whatever the case, I enjoyed my time there and I'm glad that I was able to make a contribution as a delegate.

The two leading candidates for the Constitution Party's presidential nomination were Alan Keyes and Chuck Baldwin. In my humble opinion, the former is a political opportunist who was looking to hijack our Party to use it for his own purposes and then discarding us after the election. On the other hand, the latter is a gentleman who has been with our Party for long time and truly represents our platform. Some may consider my statements about Keyes to be harsh, but I believe they represent the truth.

To be fair, I sat in Keyes' hotel room along with a half-dozen other Party activists and listened to what he had to say. I'm a fair man and I wanted to give him a fair hearing before making up my mind. Yet I didn't hear anything remotely compromising coming from Keyes. He didn't want to meet us halfway on the issues with which we disagree. I suppose he just expected all of us to be seduced by his eloquent words and gestures. It was almost patronizing in a way.

Howard Phillips used his time at the podium to expound upon the reasons why the delegates should select Baldwin over Keyes. He was very worried that Keyes might actually walk away with the nomination. Phillips rightly asserted that nominating Keyes would be the death of the Party. I have personally seen several communications just from our state party affiliate alone which indicated that many of our members would leave the Party if Keyes became the nominee. A good number of people criticized Phillips for making his speech, but I think he was right on target. What he said needed to be said for the benefit of the Party.

Keyes fundamentally disagrees with us on a number of important issues: he supports the Iraq War, wants to keep us in the UN, supports foreign aid, wants to reinstate the draft, believes that we should have a permanent presence in the Middle East, and a number of other neocon agenda items. He also supports the so-called "Fair Tax" (an insidious national sales-tax) whereas our Party supports tariffs and excise taxes as a viable alternative to the income tax. Needless to say, he is out of touch with us on some very important issues. It was almost insulting how he came into the convention downplaying those differences and then arrogantly assuming that he would walk away with the nomination.

To make matters worse, a group of Keyes supporters were in the platform committee and tried to fundamentally alter those parts of the platform where Keyes disagrees with us. The whole thing was so shameless. Yet despite all of his efforts, Keyes lost almost 3 to 1 among the delegates. Indeed, the official numbers I got yesterday from the national Party officials are as follows:

Chuck Baldwin -- 384

Alan Keyes -- 126

Needless to say, it was a thumpin' and a pretty bad one at that. Clearly the delegates overwhelmingly rejected Keyes and they had every good reason to do so. All of us heard his speech, but the vast majority of us remained loyal to principle rather than accepting a "big name" candidate. As I mentioned in a previous posting, I absolutely refuse to vote for any candidate who supports this unjust, unconstitutional war in Iraq. And I was far from the only delegate who held that conviction.

I am proud to stand behind our nominee, Chuck Baldwin, as we head into this general election season. He proudly and unapologetically supports our platform. He's a man of integrity who treats even his opponents with the utmost respect. I'm getting increasingly excited about campaigning for Dr. Baldwin this year and I look forward to going around Virginia promoting him as our nominee for president. He's got my vote--I hope he gets yours!