Take a look…
…at Evan McMullin. He’s running for president.
If you’re determined to vote third-party, he could be of interest.
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
…at Evan McMullin. He’s running for president.
If you’re determined to vote third-party, he could be of interest.
A new poll shows Evan Mullin in 1st place in Utah.
Evan McMullin – 31 percent
Donald Trump – 27 percent
Hillary Clinton – 24 percent
Gary Johnson – 5 percent
http://fox13now.com/2016/10/19/new-poll-shows-evan-mcmullin-beating-trump-clinton-in-utah/
If I lived in Utah I would not hesitate to vote for McMullin.
Neo,
The “Team McMullin” campaign drew my interest as a 3rd option with its stated purpose of rolling over the 2016 campaign into an independent conservative movement distinct from the GOP.
That piece accords with my recommendation for a Right-side 3rd option to compete in the 2016 election in the near term not with a realistic expectation of actually winning POTUS in 2016, but to use the setting for the long-term purpose of establishing a GOP-independent conservative social activist movement. A Right-side Gramscian march that will permanently compete for social dominance throughout the arena versus the establishing alt-Right activist Gramscian march and the well established Left activist movement.
In the context of a permanent competitive movement, I remain interested in the McMullin campaign’s progress.
But.
In terms of his 2016 presidential candidacy, Evan McMullin disqualified himself from my vote by failing the same litmus test that disqualified Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
McMullin’s chief calling card within his over-all branding as a principled conservative departing from a Trump-corrupted GOP is his center-right Republican national security platform and background, including “House GOP policy director”.
Therefore, McMullin’s position on Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) is particularly dismaying as both a poor reflection of his judgement and as a window to the evident misunderstanding of OIF’s grounds in GOP inner circles.
Excerpt from McMullin’s speech on national security at Georgetown University (21SEP16) –
https://www.evanmcmullin.com/honoring_our_founding_principles_promotes_america_s_national_security:
Again, keep in mind that McMullin’s lead credentials are his national security platform and background.
Yet contrary to McMullin’s characterization of President Bush’s decision as a “misguided…mistake”, the “justification” for enforcement with Iraq was plainly stated through 3 consecutive administrations as Iraq’s mandated compliance with the UNSCR 660 series.
The OIF decision was substantively and procedurally correct. The US case versus Saddam is in fact substantiated. Saddam was evidentially in categorical breach of the Gulf War ceasefire in his “final opportunity to comply” (UNSCR 1441).
Contra McMullin, Saddam’s UNSCR 687 breach regarding WMD was established by UNSCOM, decided by UNSC, confirmed by UNMOVIC at the decision point for OIF, and corroborated post hoc by ISG: “ISG judges that Iraq failed to comply with UNSCRs … the Iraqis never intended to meet the spirit of the UNSC’s resolutions”.
Contra McMullin, Saddam’s pre-OIF “suspected” terrorism in fact underestimated Saddam’s terrorism. Saddam’s UNSCR 687 breach regarding terrorism was confirmed by the IPP findings on Saddam’s “regional and global terrorism, including a variety of revolutionary, liberation, nationalist, and Islamic terrorist organizations” that included “considerable operational overlap” with the al Qaeda network.
The OIF decision was not made in “haste” (McMullin), but rather at the conclusion of a decade-plus process that exhausted the alternatives until it finally reached the red line of Saddam’s “final opportunity to comply” (UNSCR 1441) in 2002-2003.
Whatever subjective opinion McMullin holds of the 3-administration US policy of strictly enforcing Iraq’s full compliance with the Gulf War ceasefire mandates, President Bush’s decision for OIF objectively was correct on the facts according to the operative enforcement procedure for the “governing standard of Iraqi compliance” (UNSCR 1441).
McMullin should be the one presidential candidate who upholds the ‘Why We Fight’ of OIF because every national security principle he purports to champion manifested with the US-led 1990-2011 UNSCR 660-series enforcement, most of all with OIF and its peace operations.
Yet it’s plain McMullin is unfamiliar with the decade-plus controlling law, policy, and precedent of the Gulf War ceasefire enforcement and, in the operative context, the determinative facts that triggered enforcement with OIF.
McMullin omits mention altogether of the cornerstone UNSCR 688 humanitarian mandates and thus overlooks Saddam’s “systematic, widespread and extremely grave violations of human rights and of international humanitarian law by the Government of Iraq, resulting in an all-pervasive repression and oppression sustained by broad-based discrimination and widespread terror” (UNCHR) in OIF’s justification.
Consistent with his omission of UNSCR 688, McMullin’s criticism of a “lack of clear objectives once it began” exposes his ignorance of the law-and-policy framework that defined the OIF peace operations (eg, section 4 of the 2002 AUMF, section 7 of the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, statement of the Atlantic Summit, UNSCR 1483, etc) which included the basic UNSCR 660-series compliance process, which the recent “House GOP policy director” is apparently unaware of.
Simply in terms of political strategy, McMullin repeats the mortal strategic error committed by Jeb Bush responding to the Megyn Kelly, May 2015 “knowing what we know now” hypothetical on Iraq, which discredited GOP leadership on national security and set the stage for Trump. Worse, he doubles down on JEB’s disqualifying mistake.
McMullin seems unconscious that disclaiming the Iraq intervention and stipulating the (demonstrably) false narrative of OIF disqualifies the very center-right national security principles he purports to champion. The OIF stigma, based on the false narrative that McMullin stipulated, has been the keystone premise of President Obama’s radical deviation of US foreign policy that has undermined American leadership of the free world.
McMullin’s fundamental misconception of OIF is mystifying. The law and policy, fact basis of the Iraq intervention’s justification is not complicated. The US led the enforcement of Iraq’s mandated compliance with the Gulf War ceasefire as headline news for over a decade while it progressed to its coda with OIF. President Bush’s decision is a straightforward fact pattern that’s easily understood from a readily accessible, plainly stated law, policy, precedent, fact record.
Yet the one 2016 presidential candidate who clams to champion all the principles embodied by the Iraq intervention and therefore should grasp the ‘Why We Fight’ of Iraq, plainly does not know. McMullin’s failure on the OIF litmus test is disqualifying for a prospective Commander in Chief.
I hope Team McMullin is sincere about and successful establishing a permanent GOP-independent real competitive conservative movement. But as for Evan McMullin, he disappointed me.
Oops. Fix:
The law and policy, fact basis of the Iraq intervention’s justification is not complicated.
But Evan McMullin has other problems, like being over 40, bald, and unmarried. At least Trump has some great hair (for his age), plus a seriously hot wife (and hot ex-wives). And his name rhymes with Egg McMuffin. Is Mayor McCheese going to run for President next? At least that guy has held office before.
@Eric – I think we are at a point where we need to explore your concept of activism and what it means at an individual level, since we missed the boat this election.
Perhaps you can lead a discussion on that?
Eric,
A third party or independent candidate winning only a handful of EC votes is a big deal. If EM wins in Utah and GJ in NM it is a really big deal.
He is on the ballot in VA and will get my protest vote as Hillary is expected to carry my state by a lot .
KLSmith,
McCullin is on the ballot in Iowa. I may vote for him, but will vote for GJ if he looks like the most likely 3rd party candidate to win the most votes, although McCullin would be my first choice.
The “Gramscian march” is a fraud in execution.
I don’t doubt there were masterminds who wanted such a thing to occur, but in practice the march is the result of the incentives of many individuals.
That is why it’s been so effective and the responses are so ineffective: because the Gramscian march is executed by market mechanisms, but the response is centrally-planned.
You will continue to fail against it until you stop thinking like a leftist.
Neo, I don’t think you’re aware of the future consequences of how happily many republicans are supporting 3rd parties.
Just think that if Trump loses, he can make a 3rd party and take with him half of the republican votes.
And what would you say then? Maybe it’s unfair because such a 3rd party would damage republican chances in future elections? Congrats, you have already given him the perfect excuse to dismiss that claim.
IF McMuffin wins in Utah, that state will be forever branded as full of idiots. Sorry.
Yann:
There was never any doubt that Trump and/or his supporters might form a third party if he didn’t get elected. In fact, one of the main reasons (in my opinion) that the GOP didn’t kick him to the curb at some point during his candidacy, when they realized he might win the GOP nomination, was the very deep fear that he might then run as an Independent or some third party and cause them to lose with whoever they had nominated in his place.
So I fail to get why you think that someone voting third party would make that situation worse, when it already has been fully and clearly present from the start, in the attitude of both Trump and his followers. It was an act of destructive genius on his part to run under the GOP banner this year rather than as third party in the first place, as I would have expected originally.
Finally. I was wondering when you would take note of Evan McMullin. He has my vote.
Neo,
I don’t doubt it. But if republicans wouldn’t have supported 3rd parties during this elections, they could claim that a new 3rd party from Trump would help Democrats to stay in power.
Now they can’t complain for Trump doing in the future something they already did. Once you give up you legitimacy card, you don’t get it back.
Maybe Trump could have win the election with republican support, maybe not (it seems almost sure that he’s gonna lose). From Trump’s point of view, the best scenario was winning the election, of course, but in case of losing it, it was much better to lose without the support of Republican Party than to lose with it, because this is gonna give him much more freedom and legitimacy in the future.
Perhaps you can lead a discussion on that?
Talking about it doesn’t do any good, and Eric’s particular branding is a bit too technical and not designed for mass production.
It’s easier just to look at organizations that can coral many many humans together in one goal. Disaster relief from various churches. ACORN or ACLU type common interest organizations.
If you don’t like their politics and thus refuse to learn from your enemy, then in this case, consider the church that Evan M is loyal to. They are known for a number of high level organizational efforts, top down and bottom up. How do they accomplish organized effort, if as Sharon and others say, people are too busy with job and family in life?
Because it’s volunteer work. If you don’t volunteer, the work doesn’t get done. So does that mean people have to protest on the streets every day or week? Well, do the Mormons protest on the street every day or week for disaster relief or do they just go there in person to reconstruct disaster areas?
Do the Southern Baptists need to lodge formal and unofficial protests in Africa, to send their missionaries there, funded and organized by a central confederacy style hierarchy? I haven’t seen any news of these protests.
If you don’t show up to do the volunteer work, then you aren’t “active”. If you aren’t active, then the activists will take control of the organization and thus the funding.
Eric has his view on activism and I have my own, they aren’t necessarily all that different. I’m just used to managing average and sub average humans, since I understand why they don’t get it.
Someone in Berkeley (believe it or not) actually suggested this guy to me and while I had heard of him I had never seriously considered him. Of course, he won’t win but if he makes a dent it might secure the place for a third party, or a new version of the GOP (called something else) if the GOP is dead or wrecked by Trumpism. Because the GOP might be. Wrecked I mean…
I am going to look into him further. Plus regardless of the above it gives me an out since I don’t really want to have to explain voting for Clinton for the rest of my life to other conservatives, or even to myself, unless I feel I have to. Of course a lot of them are voting for Clinton, notable conservatives. But I would rather not if there is any kind of alternative. Johnson does not ring my bell. And I cannot vote for Trump under any circumstance. I would vote Clinton over Trump at this point and pick the devil I know vs. the devil I don’t know. Someone on Ricochet said it is between a criminal (Clinton) and a madman (Trump) and of course, he said the only sane choice is the criminal. The madman cannot be in the office of the presidency period. The criminal, or at least this one, is cool as a cucumber and can steer the ship. The debates showed me that if nothing else.
Anyway, checking him out.
Utah is 60% Mormon if I recall correctly.
The Mormons do not vote as a church block, the way black liberation theologians do under the Leftist plantation enforcers like Jackson or Sharpton.
Reid, for example, is a Mormon. Check out that little “accident” of his and correlate to Mormon history, for something interesting. That type of “accident” has happened before. Reid is for homosexual marriage, which is against his Church’s policies and hierarchy. Specifically Prop 8 was it in California.
The reason why they are called Mormons and not Christians, is because Mormon is one of the prophets in the Book of Mormon, the author or scribe at least. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, is mostly concerned about how to create Latter Day Saints, meaning perfected humans, same as the Cathars of old tried to obtain. Other Christian sects or those who prosecuted the early Saints, chasing them to Utah, denied their Christian lineage or loyalties. And if you are not Christian, you can be stoned or burned or killed, nobody will care. That’s how it was with the Salem witches and with various purges in Europe. All of it is merely heretical and corrupted derivations of the Christian Gospel, but it’s designed to appear as if it is the True Gospel and doctrine. Burning witches wasn’t the true gospel, and even the clerics and scholars back then who stopped it, knew it wasn’t the true gospel.
Mormon is just a prophet, like Isaiah or Jonas, or John the Baptist. Jesus Christ still has a higher theological hierarchy and ranking.