Where are they now?

     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.
       

Rules for blogging: check those sources!

Slate's Farhad Manjoo has some commonsense rules for making a go of blogging. One you wouldn't think people need reminding on: link to primary sources.

This one struck Waldo from the get-go. The more political the blog, the more likely an excerpted quote, or an explanation missing easy verification means the current blogger is "interpreting" the original source. If you find you have to chase an original source back more than one link- once again- be wary. Way too often government and think thank reports will be quoted without linking, especially in dead-tree papers. It pays to take the time to run the report to ground and see the context in which the quote appears.

Here's an example our friend The Delaware Libertarian put up back int eh campaign season. While it involves a Waldopost, the point he's making is how another blogger and Waldo could read the same original interview and come up with diametrically opposed comments on it:

THURSDAY, JULY 3, 2008

It was the best of the blogosphere, it was the worst of the blogosphere....

What's really intriguing is how different posts get spun at different blogs, even though people usually have the ability to click through and check for themselves.

I've come to believe that probably fewer than 5-10% of readers--especially those who believe in the slant taken by the blog in question--ever click through to determine whether stories are being reported accurately, or if quotations are taken out of context.

Here's my case study for today, based on the interview that occasionally-in-the-public-eye-for-a-few-seconds LP Veep Candidate Wayne Allyn Root gave to Queerty in San Francisco.

Eric Dondero's Libertarian GOPer sandwiches in one Root quotation into this characterization of the interview:

Libertarian VP Candidate Wayne Root blasts Affirmative Action in Interview with Gay Magazine: Calls for Free Market-based diversity

Wayne Root has been accused in the past as having a heluva lot of Chuztpa. He tells it like it is, even if it may not jive with what certain individuals or groups want to hear at the time.

In the latest edition of Queerty, an major on-line magazine for Gay/Lesbian Americans, Root doesn't back down. In response to a question on the issue of special rights for Gays and Minorities, he equates government-forced Affirmative Action to "Big Brother Socialism."...

[Root quotation]

Also in the interview Root outlines the libertarian stance on Gay Marriage, at variance with the liberal Gay Rights Agenda of special rights. Root says, Government should stay the hell out of the issue of Marriage altogether.

That Root must have put it to them queers supporting that liberal Gay Rights Agenda of special rights.

On the other hand, Waldo characterizes the interview like this:

Libertarian veep Wayne Allyn Root, who recently made it onto Bob Barr's website, has surfaced for an interview- of all places- with the blog Queerty. It's worth reading to see how someone acquainted with gay rights asks the right followup questions. Watch Root- like Barr-stake his flag on marriage equality as a states' rights question, reassuring the South they'll never have to deal with it, while oozing his way around why he and Barr don't want a full repeal of DOMA.

Actually, having read Waldo's version first (which leaves Root looking like a faux-Libertarian Dixiecrat), it took me a few minutes to be sure thatthey were both talking about the same original post.

So how did the Waynster actually deal with gay marriage in the original?

AB: Switching gears here, getting a little more gay, what’s your stance on DOMA?

WR: Well, my stance is pretty simple. First of all, I believe it’s none of the government’s business to decide marriage at all. It’s a private ceremony or a religious ceremony. A church has a right to define it privately and if a church wants to ban - if the Catholic church or the Protestant church wants to say that two people of the same sex can’t get married, they can do that. It’s a free world and it’s a private enterprise. But, then, you have a right as a gay man or a lesbian woman to go and get married in a private ceremony by somebody who will marry you. It’s not a government’s job to license marriage. The government is a busy body. They try to get involved in people’s live and control us. The real answer is that religion shouldn’t in any way be involved in government and the government shouldn’t in any way license or get involved in religion and therefore I would fight to the death for anyone who is religious to practice their religion and I’d fight to the death for anyone who is not religious to not practice their religion. I’m not coming down on anyone’s side. I’m just saying the government should stay out of the process.

AB: Right, but part of DOMA is that the federal government may not recognize same-sex marriages, even if a state like Massachusetts or California does recognize them. What is your stance on that specific part of DOMA?

WR: Well, as much as I’d like government to be out of it completely, I’ve always been a states’ rights person. If you can’t progress on a federal level, at least you can get it inch-by-inch on a state-by-state level. I think it’s basically good for the people, if they have to be decided at all, first of all - like I said, I keep coming down on the side of fewer laws in general and the less government, the better, state or federal - but if it has to be decided, at least let’s get progress on the state level. That’s what I say about gay marriage or medical marijuana or online gambling. If Massachusetts or California and other progressive states legalize gay marriage, I say “great” and you as a gay person may want to go live there and feel more free, that’s great. If someone’s very deeply religious and they don’t want gay marriage and they therefore want therefore to choose to live in Alabama, Georgia or states with a more religious bent who don’t want to legalize it, then I say more power to those people who want to live in Georgia or Alabama.

So does Wayne rebuke that nasty ole queer agenda? Actually, what he seems to do is (a) accept Bob Barr's idea that Libertarianism equates with States-Rights [see Steve Kubby for a thoroughly Libertarian refutation of that particular notion]; (b) and if a state that is progressive [which means not religious to Wayne] wants gay marriage, fine. Just don't come down to good old religious Georgia or Alabama where we keep out negroes ... oops, I mean our faggots ... in line.

So in Wayne Root's America, the majority of voters in any state get to define the rights of American citizens, and if you don't like that decision you can just get the hell out. We'll provide the crosses to light your way.

This, everyone will be pleased to know, is the Libertarian stand on gay marriage--at least according to Eric Dondero, Wayne Allyn Root, and Bob Barr.

So my conclusion from all this (aside from the fact that Wayne should go back to online gambling) is: if Waldo presents a link, you can be pretty sure the original post has been correctly characterized. If Eric Dondero puts up a link--you'd better go check for yourself.

Wayne Allyn Root's alive and well and had a fabulous time at the San Francisco Pride Parade

Libertarian veep Wayne Allyn Root, who recently made it onto Bob Barr's website, has surfaced for an interview- of all places- with the blog Queerty. It's worth reading to see how someone acquainted with gay rights asks the right followup questions. Watch Root- like Barr-stake his flag on marriage equality as a states' rights question, reassuring the South they'll never have to deal with it, while oozing his way around why he and Barr don't want a full repeal of DOMA.

Three weeks out and for the Libertarians, Farce is widening its lead over Tragedy

Last week NYT had a profile of Wayne Allyn Root, the Libertarian veep Babar the Libertarian can barely stand being in the same room with. 

Apparently Root won the nomination, and went home. And stayed there.

But he plans to inflict himself on his party for the next twelve years. He says education is a civil rights issue, which is odd, because he doesn't, in general, recognize civil rights.

Babar is hardly working any harder than Root: he only has five events set through the end of October.

Rove says Astroturfers need to remain "authentic"

Turdblossom has advice for the Teabaggers:

My advice to them is to keep their distance from any single party and instead influence both parties on debt, spending and an over-reaching federal government. Allowing third-party movements to co-opt the tea partiers' good name, which is happening in Nevada, will only serve to elect opponents of the tea party philosophy of low-taxes and fiscal restraint. It could also discredit the tea party movement.

A small fraction of the tea partiers' leadership are ambitious individuals who haven't been able to hold office in either the GOP or Democratic Party. Some are from fringe groups like the John Birch Society or the remnants of the LaRouchies. Others see the tea party movement as a recruiting pool for volunteers for Ron Paul's next presidential bid.

If tea party groups are to maximize their influence on policy, they must now begin the difficult task of disassociating themselves from cranks and conspiracy nuts. This includes 9/11 deniers, "birthers" who insist Barack Obama was not born in the U.S., and militia supporters espousing something vaguely close to armed rebellion.

 "Keep their distance from any single party"?

One of the salient features of the baggers is that they are overwhelmingly Republican. This is a classic Rove headfake, urging the GOP's raging, racist haters to keep their distance- for their own good- in the guise of influencing other parties. How many others are there? The Libertarians? They sold their souls in '08 by nominating Bob Barr and Wayne Allyn Root. The Consitutionalists and American Independents of the Alan Keyes asteroid belt?

Please. Rove and the other white guys who are organizing their own, parallel RNC know the Baggers are useful idiot for when they need to toss some red meat to the base. A grass-roots movement isn't one that takes its marching orders from Dick Armey.

Bob Barr hedges his bets

Hell hath no fury like an historian with Internet access, and that's a good thing. We've been slagging newly-minted Libertarian presidential hopeful Bob Barr for some time, mainly because he's an all-purpose nimrod and nobody with a moustache has been elected president since 1908.

But The Delaware Libertarian has been having at The Defense of Three Marriages Bobster for a couple of days now, documenting how he's been sitting on the party's national committee for two years while running a PAC that supports Republicans in races where there are also Libertarian candidates. First-class nimrodism, Waldo says.

Hell's bells, just being named Saxby Chambliss woulda got us beat up nine ways from Sunday in high school.

In the meantime, the Libs are getting some TV face time: Ballot Access News says-

FOX Business Network Hosts Libertarian Presidential Debate

May 14th, 2008

FOX Business Network will host a televised debate between two contenders for the Libertarian presidential nomination, Mike Gravel and Wayne Allyn Root, on May 16 (Friday), at 8:10 am (eastern time). There will be a 10-minute session which ends at 8:20; then there will be a second session, also 10-minutes, that starts at 8:40. Bob Barr was invited into this debate, but he declined.

Also, Reason Magazine hosts a 3-person debate on May 20 in Washington, DC, at 4 pm eastern time. That debate will not be televised, but will include Gravel, Root, and Barr.

Anyway, she was busy mining for the core functions of government.

 .

 Dissed, both of 'em

Not a good CPAC for SC Governor Nikki Haley, alas.

She wasn't one of the 48 "featured speakers, who included luminaries like actor and comedian Steven Crowder; Katie Kiefer (not identified as anybody); former libertarian goofball and 2008 VP nominee Wayne Allyn Root; and Chrystal Wright, editor and publisher of conservativeblackchick.com."

She wasn't among the scores more who sat on panels in the 18-page program (even Dinesh D'Souza, who had to resign his university presidency after getting caught adulterizing at a Christian conference in Spartanburg last year, was on the program).

The governor polled behind Sarah Palin in the annual conference straw poll. Palin got 3%.

Mrs. Haley was part of a 14% lump of candidates called "Other." Over sixty names were written in on the ballot.