This interesting article at U.S. Politics blog explains the law on which presidential candidates get Secret Service protection. It is significant that the candidate must be seeking the nomination of a party that got at least 10% of the vote in the last election. That standard is lower than the current 15% standard used by the Commission on Presidential Debates.
The article says no non-incumbent presidential candidate in the 2012 election received protection until February 2012. By contrast, in the 2008 election, candidate Barack Obama first started receiving protection on May 3, 2007, according to this New York Times story.
Doom for candidates who can NOT instantly shoot off their mouths and get higher ratings in the moron polls ???
Could folks like Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Lincoln get enough ratings in New Age politics to get protection ???
i.e. more and more like Roman Empire DOOM politics — all sorts of Roman emperors getting killed and replaced by other killer emperors ???
Yes, the line of succession in the later stages of the Roman Empire was the guy with the biggest army usually became Emperor.
Didn’t the Secret Service take part in the arrest of Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala in front of the CPD debate in 2012? Or was that a different set of goons?
I’m fairly certain it was not the Secret Service that did that. Their primary job is to protect the individuals they are assigned to protect, and it would be a distraction for them to arrest someone. Probably local police did the arresting.
Ah. Still, this just highlights the absurdities of our country’s system; the ruling party candidates get top-notch protection, while opposition candidates of parties that didn’t get 10% of the vote last time around, but still have national scope, get thrown out of debates or even arrested for demanding to be included.
Probably the Gestapo…
It’s 10% vs. 15%, but it’s also past-election-result vs. current-polling. So I’m not sure that it counts as an easier threshold to meet. A Libertarian or Green could at least theoretically poll 15%, but under this policy nobody except a Republican or Democrat can get Secret Service protection in 2016.