You've been wondering what happened to Wayne Allyn Root, haven't you?
I thought not.
Root ran for the Libertarian Party's presidential nomination four years ago.
Here's one impression of him from the time:
LP contenders Wayne Allyn Root, Bob Barr and Mike Gravel, in Washington Tuesday for a forum hosted by reason magazine, made their pleas for their adopted party's nom just days before its Memorial Day weekend convention in Denver.
"I'm the Ronald Reagan of the Libertarian Party," Root, who has a wrestler's build and a mobster's tailor, told reporters before the start of the event. He rattled off his credentials: Vegas odds maker, infomercial pioneer, best-selling author.
"I'm kind of an MTV guy running for president, and so I think I could catch fire with the youth movement in this country," Root added. "What Ron Paul started, I could finish. I'm the frontrunner, I don't think there's any doubt about that."
After Barr arrived late, the 30-minute forum began with the candidates's two-minute opening statements. It had the feel of a speed date.
Gravel railed against the "War On Drugs." Barr, who served four terms in the House, talked about a "rebirth of freedom." And Root won over the crowd with a political bombshell. During a dinner with Karl Rove two years ago, he told Bush's brain: "If you allow the United States Congress to ban [Internet] poker, what you're going to do is destroy the entire Republican revolution. Karl Rove laughed it off, and the Republican revolution ended."
And another:
Instead the delegates opted for another member of the party's conservative wing. Worse yet, the conservative they picked was Wayne Allyn Root, a man with the deportment of a Ronco pitchman with a squirrel in his pants."
'Root's speech is light on policy, heavy on biography, ending with the story of his mother clinging to life while he rushed to visit her in the hospital. "Wayne is on the way, they kept saying," Root remembered. "When I got to that hospital room I heard the greatest sound I ever heard: Meep, meep, meep. She was still alive!"
Root, running second to former GA GOP congressman Bob Barr, worked a deal with Barr to be his running mate, and thus was the Dream Team of 2008 born, even though, "I had a feeling that he was going to sell me some Ginsu knives," says another delegate when it's over. "But ... I don't know--maybe this is what we need right now?"
Root had high ambitions:
I visited Root at his suburban Las Vegas home back in May. He is certainly well off, having built a sports-handicapping business that he says led him to politics. (The Founding Fathers "loved gambling," he says.) But politics isn't his only passion. Before we could begin talking about the Libertarian Party, he started selling me on his lifestyle. He takes 100 vitamin supplements every day. He and his kids never drink cow's milk, just rice milk and spring water. "I meditate, exercise, pray and do yoga every day," he says. "If I had a staff of 20, they couldn't do the work I do."
All that bluster makes him seem more like a telemarketer or talk-show host than a politician, and he tells me he'd at least like to get a nationally syndicated radio show out of this presidential campaign.
He also announced himself the front-runner for the 2012 LP presidential nomination. “Bob Barr and I are going to get a million to three million votes this year,” he predicted, between bites of chicken. “In 2012 I expect to duplicate Ross Perot’s number of 19 million. In 2016 I expect to be a credible third-party candidate, and in 2020 I plan to win.”
They got 523,686 votes. Since then Root's morphed into a "libertarian-conservative" with states rights activist tendencies, and he's not running for president this year. The Libertarian Party still lists him as its only "potential candidate." He's got a column at the standard-issue GOP site The Daily Caller. Still no radio show.
And last night he was on Live On Sunday Night, It's Bill Cunningham, a bilious radio talk show. He motor-mouthed his way through several long screeds (was Cunningham off doing the Sunday crossword?), said he may run in 2016, and announced he has a new website called Root for America. According to it, he's one of Bill Cunningham's three favorite guests. His blogroll has two sites, one of which is the libertarian Cato Institute, now under a takeover siege by the decidedly non-libertarian Koch brothers. The site still turns up in Google listed as his campaign website, though he's not running for anything.
I thought not.
Root ran for the Libertarian Party's presidential nomination four years ago.
Here's one impression of him from the time:
LP contenders Wayne Allyn Root, Bob Barr and Mike Gravel, in Washington Tuesday for a forum hosted by reason magazine, made their pleas for their adopted party's nom just days before its Memorial Day weekend convention in Denver.
"I'm the Ronald Reagan of the Libertarian Party," Root, who has a wrestler's build and a mobster's tailor, told reporters before the start of the event. He rattled off his credentials: Vegas odds maker, infomercial pioneer, best-selling author.
"I'm kind of an MTV guy running for president, and so I think I could catch fire with the youth movement in this country," Root added. "What Ron Paul started, I could finish. I'm the frontrunner, I don't think there's any doubt about that."
After Barr arrived late, the 30-minute forum began with the candidates's two-minute opening statements. It had the feel of a speed date.
Gravel railed against the "War On Drugs." Barr, who served four terms in the House, talked about a "rebirth of freedom." And Root won over the crowd with a political bombshell. During a dinner with Karl Rove two years ago, he told Bush's brain: "If you allow the United States Congress to ban [Internet] poker, what you're going to do is destroy the entire Republican revolution. Karl Rove laughed it off, and the Republican revolution ended."
And another:
Instead the delegates opted for another member of the party's conservative wing. Worse yet, the conservative they picked was Wayne Allyn Root, a man with the deportment of a Ronco pitchman with a squirrel in his pants."
'Root's speech is light on policy, heavy on biography, ending with the story of his mother clinging to life while he rushed to visit her in the hospital. "Wayne is on the way, they kept saying," Root remembered. "When I got to that hospital room I heard the greatest sound I ever heard: Meep, meep, meep. She was still alive!"
Root, running second to former GA GOP congressman Bob Barr, worked a deal with Barr to be his running mate, and thus was the Dream Team of 2008 born, even though, "I had a feeling that he was going to sell me some Ginsu knives," says another delegate when it's over. "But ... I don't know--maybe this is what we need right now?"
Root had high ambitions:
I visited Root at his suburban Las Vegas home back in May. He is certainly well off, having built a sports-handicapping business that he says led him to politics. (The Founding Fathers "loved gambling," he says.) But politics isn't his only passion. Before we could begin talking about the Libertarian Party, he started selling me on his lifestyle. He takes 100 vitamin supplements every day. He and his kids never drink cow's milk, just rice milk and spring water. "I meditate, exercise, pray and do yoga every day," he says. "If I had a staff of 20, they couldn't do the work I do."
All that bluster makes him seem more like a telemarketer or talk-show host than a politician, and he tells me he'd at least like to get a nationally syndicated radio show out of this presidential campaign.
He also announced himself the front-runner for the 2012 LP presidential nomination. “Bob Barr and I are going to get a million to three million votes this year,” he predicted, between bites of chicken. “In 2012 I expect to duplicate Ross Perot’s number of 19 million. In 2016 I expect to be a credible third-party candidate, and in 2020 I plan to win.”
They got 523,686 votes. Since then Root's morphed into a "libertarian-conservative" with states rights activist tendencies, and he's not running for president this year. The Libertarian Party still lists him as its only "potential candidate." He's got a column at the standard-issue GOP site The Daily Caller. Still no radio show.
And last night he was on Live On Sunday Night, It's Bill Cunningham, a bilious radio talk show. He motor-mouthed his way through several long screeds (was Cunningham off doing the Sunday crossword?), said he may run in 2016, and announced he has a new website called Root for America. According to it, he's one of Bill Cunningham's three favorite guests. His blogroll has two sites, one of which is the libertarian Cato Institute, now under a takeover siege by the decidedly non-libertarian Koch brothers. The site still turns up in Google listed as his campaign website, though he's not running for anything.
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