New York Magazine has this lengthy story about Americans Elect, by John Heilemann. There is not a lot of new material in this article, but the author, having interviewed leaders of Americans Elect, clearly believes that if Ron Paul wanted the Americans Elect nomination, he could obtain it. This contradicts some commentary that believes that leaders of Americans Elect can stop any proposed presidential candidate they don’t like.
It is discusting that you are stealing an article and headline from a real news source to generate traffic. You should be ashamed of yourself.
First of all, I have no idea what Rodney is talking about. This post led me to go visit the NY Magazine web site, thus generating traffic for them.
Second, for Ron Paul to become the Americans Elect nominee, he would have to agree to participate in their nominations process and select a running mate by mid-May. The Republican primaries will still be going on at that point and it would damage his position in the GOP to join up with AE. He would have to forget about speaking at the Republican convention, for example.
#2, all good points. However, Ron Paul recently said that speaking at the convention isn’t all that big a deal. Not so many people even watch the national conventions of the major parties anymore, because they have become so scripted they are boring. Most of the networks don’t cover them all day long, as they did in the past. Furthermore, no one will ever be allowed to make a speech if that person doesn’t promise to endorse the nominee, and I tend to doubt Ron Paul will want to endorse the eventual nominee.
Why would Ron Paul want to accept their nomination when he could win the Libertarian, or Green Party nomination?
It appears Response #1 was posted by someone who simply made a mistake. As for the Green Party Voter asking, “Why?” I think it is the point of this blog as a whole, “BALLOT ACCESS.” The nominee for Americans Elect will be on the Ballot in all 50 states.
Richard, as someone who obviously follows Ballot Access news, and for a number of years, what is your take on the efforts and success of Americans Elect in attaining access to date? My understanding is that this, ballot access, is one of the primary obstacle in mounting a national campaign.
The assertion that AE Leaders can stop any proposed candidate is false and comes from those simply trying to undermine the AE effort, when in fact the provision is in place to prevent a “Donald Duck” or the like Nominee.
It appears a scare tactic aimed to frighten both Republicans and Democrats, that there is some type of hidden AE agenda to subvert “their” party by nominating a particular AE candidate.
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@GreenPartyVoter Ron Paul has no chance of winning the Green Party’s nomination. For both technical reasons – he is not on the California Green Party primary ballot, which represents a significant portion of the delegates, for one – and philosophical reasons. Points of common ground like ending wars and auditing the Federal Reserve could only take him so far. He would also have to give up PAC support, which I doubt he would do. Maybe he could win the Virginia Independent Green Party support, but the Indy Greens won’t have delegates at the actual Green Party convention.
@Philip It’s money, pure an simple. Any party could get on the ballot in every state with $20 million. Easily.
Details on the AE process can be found here: http://static.americanselect.org/sites/files/official-documents/ae_candidatebookv2proof6-2_0.pdf
The AE leadership cannot nix a candidate they don’t like. If a candidate has already been a Governor, Senator, Congressman, General, Cabinet Member, public-traded CEO, etc, he/she is “automatically qualified” and just needs a certain number of “support clicks” (think Facebook likes) to go on the primary ballot. There’s no requirement for candidate consent to be on the primary ballot, so it’s very likely that Paul will qualify and get enough votes to be in the top six eligible to go to the convention. At that point, he’d need to decide if he consents or not. He’d also need to choose a running mate who has either (1) been a registered Democrat since January 2008 or (2) is an independent of “differing ideological perspective.”
AE’s success would require its online voters (“convention delegates”) to be a representative sample of the November voters, or at least a sample of the centrist majority. My belief is that Paul can’t win a convention like that. But if the convention is stacked with Paul voters, he’ll get the nomination, siphon off some votes from the GOP nominee, and help re-elect Obama.