evolution

Radio talk show host Jim Bohannon notes the also-rans in the 2004 presidential election (scroll down to the 02.05.2004 entry); and one of Lawrence’s favorite causes makes an appearance.

Feb. 5: Now that Bush II:2 (2nd Bush, 2nd term) is underway, I still hear a few of you not-so-silently bleating about the outcome of the election. In fairness, we’d be hearing the same if John Kerry had won, so I thought I’d stroll through the official outcome, to see if you think the also-rans would have been any better. Finishing 3rd, with over 390,000 votes–and, like everybody else on this list, that’s below 1% of the total vote–was Ralph Nader, the new Harold Stassen of the left. Fourth place went to Libertarian Michael Badnarik, who got over 373,000 votes for anti-government views just short of a Pentagon fire sale. Fifth was Michael Peroutka of the Constitution Party, who got nearly 129,000 votes on the view that Republicans are really flaming socialists. Sixth place really is a flaming socialist, David Cobb of the Green Party, which wants to “eradicate the military-industrial complex.” Not manage it, or prune it–eradicate it, and–what? Plant trees as a national defense? Whatever, it was a view worth nearly 104,000 votes. In 7th place in the recent race for the presidency, with over 21,000 votes, was Leonard Peltier, whose ability to serve as president is somewhat hampered by his current incarceration. Eighth place went to Walter Brown of the Socialist Party with 10,187 votes, from those who, like Walter, want to withdraw all U.S. troops–everywhere. In 9th place, with 6,678 votes, is James Harris of the Socialist Workers Party, who only ran because their real nominee, Roger Calero, is foreign born and under the age of 35, doubly ineligible to be president, but still good for 5,255 votes. We go to 11th place, where Thomas Harens of the Christian Freedom Party got 2,339 votes by proclaiming that voting for Kerry was a venial sin. Even Karl Rove didn’t think of that. Next, in 12th place, is Socialist Equality Party candidate Bill Van Auken, who got 2,088 votes, and whose website admits, in a burst of uncharacteristic minor party candor, that he wasn’t going to win. But Billy, you beat out Prohibitionist Gene Amondson, who only received 1,895 votes, thanks in part to factional fighting which could lead some of them to drink. Fourteenth place goes to John Parker of the Workers World Party–1,159 votes for a group reputed to have a violent orientation. Charles Jay of the Personal Choice Party was chosen by 867 voters for 15th place, and in 16th place is Andy Andress–715 votes–about whom we know merely that he once ran for congress on the slogan “Honesty.” And lest we forget, with 3,379 votes, which would have beaten out half a dozen of these honest to goodness presidential contenders, was “None of the Above.” Bush and Kerry are looking better all the time.

By the way, right now Jim is interviewing Capt. David Rozelle of the US Army, who lost his right foot to a mine in Iraq — and volunteered to return to the fight. National Review Online talked to Capt. Rozelle a while back; that’s worth a note as well.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 17th, 2005 at 21:20 and is filed under devolution, politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.