Chuck Baldwin (Constitution Party) Implies Our Soldiers are “Lunatics”

American Conservative Daily ^

[mnehring]

p>Well, you can add another candidate I won’t be voting for in November to my list; Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution party who has all but pulled a John Kerry and insulted our troops by inferring that they are part what he calls the “lunacy” of the Iraq War. By correlation, if the mission is “lunacy” than those that are willingly supporting it and singing up for the job must be “lunatics”.

Baldwin decried “the bi-partisan complicity that has allowed the illegal, immoral, unconstitutional war that has resulted in the slaughter of four thousand American soldiers and untold innocent Iraqis”. Baldwin went on to point out “If elected, I will end the lunacy that sends Americans abroad to guard the borders of Iraq, while leaving our borders wide open, inviting illegals to plunder the wealth and good will of American citizens”. Baldwin’s remarks were interrupted by a number of thunderous standing ovations making it clear his message resonated with the party faithful.

Of course I assumed that the Constitution Party would appoint a candidate with such a position and quite frankly it is actions like this that keep people from voting for their candidates. Instead of being unhinged and adopting liberal talking points, the Constitution Party should step back, take a deep breath, reread the Constitution and come back down to Earth.

To call the Iraq War “unconstitutional” places Baldwin in the same camp as Ron Paul in terms of being “loony” himself since the Constitution clearly states that Congress declares war and there is a resolution on record, for anyone that cares to read it, authorizing the use of force (i.e. war) against Iraq for their (at the time) continued violations of the ceasefire agreement and associations with terrorist organizations.

Baldwin’s “lunacy” puts him squarely in the camp of not being qualified to be Commander in Chief of our military and thus not qualified to be President. Thus the Constitution Party, for all its good ideas, regulates itself to being nothing more than another hopeless also-ran.

[Wallace T.]

The Republican Party was a “third party” in the 1856 and 1860 elections in the sense that with the breakup of the Whigs and the sectional fracture of the Democrats, the nascent GOP competed with rivals like the Know Nothing and the Constitutional Union parties to become the second party. After the 1860 elections and ever since, the Republicans filled the position that the Whigs and Federalists had previously held as the main rival to the Democrats. It was the political genius of Abraham Lincoln and his associates to thread a coalition of Free Soilers, moderate abolitionists, mercantile and manufacturing interests, and rural and middle class Northerners of British colonial, German Protestant, and Scandinavian backgrounds into a party that won the Civil War and remained the dominant party in American politics for 65 years following Appomattox.

[wideawake]

the nascent GOP competed with rivals like the Know Nothing and the Constitutional Union parties to become the second party

There was no competition.

In 1856 - its first national election - the GOP seated 90 Congressmen, the Know Nothings 14 and the Unionists did not yet exist.

In 1858 the GOP seated 116 Congressmen, the two minor parties that would eventually combine to become the Unionists seated 15 and the Know Nothings 5.

[wideawake]

Few people like to admit today that TR exhibited some protofascist tendencies when he was out of power.

[SoCalPol]

Good post.
When I have posted exposing this same type of extreme to leftwing views of the third party folks, their answer is, I made it up.
Facts get in the way of their thinking.

These people are sucked in the same as the Obama folks.
Most children outgrow the all or nothing mentality, but
not the third party voters.

[Designer]

"Wasn’t my conclusion, that was the author of the article."

Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution party who has all but pulled a John Kerry and insulted our troops by inferring that they are part what he calls the “lunacy” of the Iraq War."-J.J.Jackson

You should have credited the author in the first place.

BTW: What is your "conclusion" if not what you have implied by your post?

[Wallace T.]

Because our political system is a derivative of the British system, there was a natural tendency for there to be two parties, despite George Washington's admonitions against factionalism. After the Glorious Revolution of 1688 ended the unrestrained power of the monarch in Britain for good, the Tory and Whig parties have alternated in power. With the rise of the Labour Party to prominence in Britain in the 1920s, it rose to one of the two top berths and the Liberal Party sank to permanent third party status. For well over three centuries, the mother country has had a two party system, although with third parties stronger than in the U.S. The same is true of Australia, Ireland, Canada, and New Zealand. The parliamentary system prevalent in the other Anglospehere nations allows for more room for third parties than our own establishment, but even in those countries, the strongest third parties, such as the Bloc Quebecois in Canada and the Scottish Nationalist Party in Britain, are ethnically and regionally based.

It was not preordained that the Republicans would become the second party. It was a matter of the party having better leadership (Lincoln), more popular ideas (free soil, protective tariffs), and a broader base (no anti-immigrant or anti-Catholic positions) than its rivals. Without these elements, the Republican Party would have fallen into the same dust bin as the Populist, Progressive, and American Independent Parties of later times.

However, no institution, including the Democrats or Republicans, is permanent. Both the Whig and the Federalist Parties fractured in the early days of the Republic. Given a set of circumstances, either or both major parties could unravel as the respective coalitions fall apart.

[Designer]

"America First, had it been accurately named, would have been called Hitler First."

How can you two be so Patriotic and yet so wrong?

Could it be that you are simply uninformed?

[mnehring]

You should have credited the author in the first place.

Usually posting a link to an article is a good indication that it is not a vanity.

What is your "conclusion" if not what you have implied by your post?

IF you take this statement in context with other other statements that Baldwin has made, then one can draw the conclusion that he has nothing but contempt for our troops who freely choose to take part in a mission he doesn't like. He has implied before they were war criminals, so it takes little to conclude that the excuses some make for what he meant here are nothing more than folks trying to rationalize in their own minds an overall attitude he has.

[Designer]

"He has implied before they were war criminals, so it takes little to conclude that the excuses some make for what he meant here are nothing more than folks trying to rationalize in their own minds an overall attitude he has."

Oh, I see.

Thanks.

[mnehring]

Could it be that you are simply uninformed?

Have you ever bought into a 'business' by someone using lines like: "change your life", "stay at home", "friends helping friends", "you can be your own boss", "are you tired of working for a j.o.b.", "do you want to be financially free"? Has the description of this business ever involved a pyramid or used the term binary, multi level, or network?

You imply we are uninformed because we don't buy that what many third parties, like "America First" sell are the same thing their packaging contains. Have you considered that you may be as informed about these parties as folks who buy into MLM 'businesses' are about the true nature of that business?

[big'ol_freeper]

Anybody who would vote third party is stabbing the troops in the back anyways, by contributing to an Obama presidency. If I was still on active duty I would rather be called a “lunatic” and serve under John McCain than to be subjected to B. Hussein Obama.

[StAnDeliver]

ha HA ha...noobs...

[mnehring]

Barr’s baggage, which seems to basically boil down to working with the ACLU on privacy rights issues, is a lot less than Juan McCain’s.

How about Barr, during his stint at the ACLU, fighting to prevent local law enforcement from arresting an illegal immigrant or handling anything to do with illegal immigration?

[johnthebaptistmoore]

With the presently unknown political makeup of the next Congress, it’s actually “fuzzy math”. :)

[Baron OBeef Dip]

ha HA ha...idiots...

[Baron OBeef Dip]

How about Barr, during his stint at the ACLU, fighting to prevent local law enforcement from arresting an illegal immigrant or handling anything to do with illegal immigration?

How about McCain-Kennedy?

This is an argument you cannot win with me. I have already made a personal, extensive list of "cons" for both McCain and Barr...and McCain's negatives were much, much more extensive.

[Designer]

"Have you ever bought into a 'business'.."

Hmmm...Sounds as if you may have been stung in the past, and I'm sorry about that.

My reference to not having all the facts was intended to start you thinking about your present position, and the posibility that your perceptions of the facts may be skewed somewhat.

IOW: My understanding of the America First Party had nothing to do with giving sucor to Hitler and the Nazis, but rather to maintain our traditionally neutral position in world affairs.

Same thing now: Some people, inclulding Baldwin, don't want our military doing the work of another nation, particularly if our own nation's vital national interests are not at stake.

For that he gets crucified?

Charles Lindburgh was simply a Patriot. When our country joined the war, he went on to teach flyers for the military.

[wideawake]

Could it be that you are simply uninformed?

Not in the case of the America First Committee.

Charles Lindbergh was the AFC's national spokesman and effective leader.

He was a frequent visitor to Nazi Germany and spoke in favor of the regime until the passage of the Nuremberg Race Laws (when he just stopped talking about how great the "New Germany" was in public).

He gave a famous speech against intervention in Los Angeles just a few months before Pearl Harbor proclaiming that he opposed intervention because its true purpose was not really to help the UK but to ultimately defeat Germany. Apparently it was the defeating Hitler part of the whole proposition that really irked him.

Then he gave his famous Des Moines speech in which he proclaimed that the Jews controlled the American mass media. Does that comment remind you of any European dictator around 1940?

[SunkenCiv]

Note: this topic is from 7/14/2008. Thanks mnehring.