sisyphusshrugged | Ralph! (as in Wurp!)

As you may remember, Mr. Nader explained to us in the wake of the '00 election that Mr. Bush is in office because the Democrats didn't play hardball.

Mr. Nader is very upset just now, at great length, in the Washington Post. It seems the Democrats are playing hardball. (Mr. Nader also explains to us that he has turned down Republican-supplied signatures, which according to his running mate is a lie)

This summer, swarms of Democratic Party lawyers, propagandists, harassers and assorted operatives have been conducting an unsavory war against my campaign's effort to secure a spot on the presidential ballots in various states. It is not enough that both major parties, in state after state, have used the legislatures to erect huge barriers, unique among Western democracies, to third party and independent candidacies. Now they are engaging in what can only be called dirty tricks and frivolous lawsuits to keep me and my running mate, Peter Miguel Camejo, off the ballot while draining precious dollars from our campaign chest.

This contemptuous drive is fueled with large amounts of unregulated money, much of it funneled through the National Progress Fund, an ostensibly independent group led by Toby Moffett, a former Democratic congressman who is currently a partner in a largely Republican lobbying firm called the Livingston Group. By contrast, to defend ourselves from the assault, we have to draw on funds that are limited and regulated by the Federal Election Commission.

Well, except for this money

Groups allied with President Bush are encouraging their conservative members to do the seemingly unthinkable: attend a convention Saturday to help put left-leaning independent candidate Ralph Nader on the Oregon presidential ballot.

The groups -- with the encouragement of some Republican political operatives -- are telling their members that Nader would draw votes from Democrat Sen. John Kerry and boost Bush's chances of winning Oregon.

Polls show Bush and Kerry running close here, and both campaigns think the race could be affected by whether Nader makes the ballot. In April, Nader held a Portland convention that failed to attract the 1,000 registered voters required to put him on the November ballot. Democratic activists picketed the event and urged voters not to support Nader.

Nader plans to try again at 5 p.m. Saturday in Portland's Benson High School, and this time he has openly courted conservatives as well as voters who oppose Bush on such issues as the environment and the war in Iraq.

Officials from two groups that have been calling members -- the Oregon Family Council and Citizens for a Sound Economy -- said they had no qualms about trying to help Nader despite opposing most of what he stands for.

"We'd like to take a few votes away from John Kerry if it would be possible," said Tim Nashif of the Oregon Family Council, which has been making hundreds of phone calls to members urging them to help get Nader on the ballot.

The Oregon Family Council also puts out a guide for Christian voters and Nashif is a key organizer of the effort to qualify a ballot measure that would prohibit same-sex marriage in the state.

"Ralph Nader is undoubtedly going to pull some very crucial votes from John Kerry, and that could mean the difference in a razor-thin presidential election," reads a script used by Citizens for a Sound Economy in its phone calls. "Can we count on you to come out on Saturday night and sign the petition to nominate Ralph Nader?"

Russ Walker, state director of Citizens for a Sound Economy, which led the successful effort to repeal a state income tax increase approved by the 2003 Oregon Legislature, said the idea of helping Nader has been widely discussed among conservative groups and activists in Oregon.

"It's definitely an interesting scenario," Walker said. "We don't agree with Ralph Nader's positions on the issues -- he's socialistic and we're free marketers. . . . We think he'll take some of the more extreme votes from the other side."

and this money

Ralph Nader may not think he is helping President Bush with his independent run for president.

But Republicans do, and that is why they are helping him get on the ballot in the key battleground states of Arizona, New Hampshire, Michigan, Nevada, Oregon and Wisconsin and probably several more.

Ballot access fights brewing over the next few weeks are make or break for Nader, whose Green Party candidacy in 2000 threw the election to Republican George W. Bush.

Nader incorrectly does not grasp that his appeal to the far left of the political spectrum will take away more votes from Democrat John Kerry than from Bush. He still refuses to comprehend how his run four years ago siphoned off votes from Democrat Al Gore in states where the balloting was close, especially in Florida, New Hampshire and Oregon.

"If he keeps working for the Republicans like this, he will be invited to the Republican convention to speak,'' Chris Kofinis, chief strategist of TheNaderFactor.com, told me. TheNaderFactor is the main group created by Democrats to persuade likely Nader backers that a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush.

As of Wednesday, Nader is on the ballot in three states: South Dakota, Nevada and New Jersey. There are ballot-access battles in at least four states, including Illinois, and more are expected.

(Nader filed a federal lawsuit in Chicago to try to keep himself from being thrown off the ballot in a challenge fielded by Illinois Democrats. The Nader team recruited a Libertarian, Christiana Tobin, to run his Illinois petition drive. Tobin is the daughter of Jim Tobin, who for 30 years has been president of National Taxpayers United, an Illinois anti-tax organization. Illinois is seen as a Kerry state; Tobin said Republicans have not been involved.)

and this money

A watchdog group filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission against Ralph Nader on Friday, saying the independent presidential candidate is violating federal campaign laws by accepting office space and telephone service from a public charity he created.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington alleges that Nader's campaign is renting valuable space at below-market prices from Citizen Works, an activist group that supports progressive causes.

The complaint also says Citizen Works and the Nader campaign share a common receptionist and several telephone lines.

The watchdog group also filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service alleging that Citizen Works is violating its status as a charitable organization by benefiting the Nader campaign. The IRS complaint asks the agency to enjoin Citizen Works from offering any further assistance to the campaign.

"Ralph Nader seems to think that because he founded Citizen Works, he can use the organization as he sees fit,'' said Melanie Sloan, the watchdog group's executive director. ``This includes using the charity to assist his campaign. No one, not even Ralph Nader, is exempt from campaign finance and tax laws."

and this money

Last week on this Web site, Max Blumenthal broke the news that Nader's ballot-qualification petitions in Arizona were being carried by two rather interesting groups of people: first, professional petitioners also gathering signatures for the aforementioned Protect Arizona Now; second, petitioners being paid by the right-wing former executive director of the Arizona state Republican Party. The result of these efforts, according to one estimate, was that of the 21,000 or so signatories to Nader's Arizona petitions, about two-thirds were Republicans, and fewer than one in five are Democrats.

Around the same time Blumenthal's report appeared, news came from Oregon that, in its ballot-qualification drive there, the Nader campaign had openly enlisted and worked with Republicans to attain ballot status. Two conservative groups, Citizens for a Sound Economy and the Oregon Family Council, worked the phones for a week to get their partisans to sign Nader petitions -- and they explained openly that they were helping Nader for the obvious reason that his presence on the ballot (Nader got 77,000 votes in 2000 in the state, which Al Gore carried by just 7,000) could help George W. Bush win the state.

"We aren't bashful about doing it," said Mike White, the family council's director. "We are a conservative, pro-family organization, and Bush is our guy on virtually every issue."

At this point, a hypothetical. Let us suppose that John Kerry either a) was found to have been in some way in cahoots, wittingly or not, with the forces pushing a right-wing, anti-immigrant ballot initiative; or b) in some way permitted his campaign to liaise with a right-wing "pro-family" group. (I might even add a “c,” such as engaged in the simple act of granting an exclusive interview to Pat Buchanan.) In any of these cases, how many seconds do we think it would have taken Nader's jejune and puerile (and increasingly marginal, if his Green Party nomination defeat is any indication) supporters, to say nothing of Nader himself, to denounce Kerry and the Democrats yet again as apostates, soul-sellers, sinners against history, ideological slatterns, and enemies of progress?

About four.

But it's all right for Ralph to do these things, right? Because he's fighting the power, baby.

and this money

Recent weeks have brought reports of Republicans and conservative organizations in several states working to get Nader on state ballots.

In Michigan, a crucial state in a tight race, Republican Party Executive Director Greg McNeilly urged party activists by e-mail to help get Nader on the ballot, saying it's his ``fervent hope'' that Nader would siphon votes from Kerry.

In Oregon, Citizens for a Sound Economy, an antitax advocacy group founded by former Rep. Dick Armey, R- Texas, urged members to call friends to sign petitions to get Nader on the ballot. Telephone scripts supplied by the group cited ``an opportunity ... to drive a wedge through the Liberal Left's base of support.''

In Arizona, GOP consultant Steve Wark formed a political committee to raise money to help Nader qualify. A Republican activist working with the committee asked supporters to ``join me in this gallant effort to give our President the best chance possible of winning,'' and when Wark was asked whether he thought it would help Bush, he told The Associated Press: ``I would hope so. I didn't do it for my own health.' [This story also makes the point that fully 1/3 of Nader's donations from Florida come from Republican and Bush donors]

and then of course there's this money

Perhaps even more unusual is Mr. Nader's apparently unwitting alliance with Republicans in states where a small shift in voting could swing the election to President Bush or Mr. Kerry. Conservative groups have already mobilized for Mr. Nader in Oregon as well as in Arizona, where 46 percent of the registered voters who signed petitions last month to get Mr. Nader on the ballot were Republicans, almost double the percentage of Democrats or Independents, according to a state Democratic Party lawyer.

In Wisconsin, a conservative group said it was preparing to follow Oregon's example, by urging Republicans to sign petitions when Mr. Nader's signature drive begins next month.

"We'll definitely be spreading the word that we'd like to see Nader on the ballot," said Cameron Sholty, the Wisconsin state director for Citizens for a Sound Economy, a conservative antitax group. "We'll do phone trees and friends-of-friends, and those Nader events will be a great way to drive our membership to get out to sign petitions for Nader."

In the interview, Mr. Nader said he had not seen any evidence that Republicans had acted inappropriately and instead accused Democrats of "dirty tricks" to keep him off ballots. He said that while representatives of an antitax group encouraged Republicans to attend a meeting last Saturday in Portland, Ore., to help him collect 1,000 signatures, he said Democrats were "infiltrating" the same meeting merely to block other supporters from getting in.

and this money

But hope springs eternal among the Republicans, so the state GOP announced last week that it had graciously collected 43,000 signatures to place Nader's name on the ballot as an independent. Nader had planned to run in Michigan as the candidate of the old Reform Party -- once the vehicle for Ross Perot and more recently the home of Pat Buchanan. But Michigan's Republican secretary of state said she could not certify him for the ballot until a dispute between rival factions, both claiming the Reform Party franchise for Michigan, is resolved.

Nader said that he had suspended his own signature gathering because he expected to be the Reform candidate and that he would accept help from Republicans rather than risk missing the Michigan campaign. Democrats promptly accused him of being a pawn for the Bush campaign and said that they would battle to keep him off the Michigan ballot.

When I asked Nader if he had any qualms about accepting this boost from the GOP, he said, "Ordinarily, I would reject such help," but not after what the Democrats had done to him in Arizona -- and what they are trying to do elsewhere.

In Arizona, carried by Bush last time but expected to be a battleground this year, the Democrats challenged Nader's ballot petitions, and his campaign supporters conceded, saying the expense of a court fight was more than they could afford. Nader says he was a victim of technicalities -- among them the omission of a county name on one sheet of signatures -- and blamed the whole thing on Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe, who has made no secret of his desire to keep Nader out of the race.

"There is a propensity for whining, carping and dirty tricks on the Democratic side that exceeds that of Republicans," Nader told me.

But how can the longtime liberal icon rationalize being the successor to right-winger Buchanan on the Reform Party ticket? "It's almost a pro forma thing," he said. "There was not a single quid pro quo." Besides, he said, "we agree on 80 percent of the issues," including the need to curb corporate power and end the U.S. military intervention in Iraq.

The reality, of course, is that once Nader split with the Green Party, whose candidate he was in both 1996 and 2000, he had to take his support wherever he could find it. He has struggled to find enough volunteers and to raise enough money to meet the filing requirements in state after state.

But there's also no question that the Democrats have set out to make life as difficult as possible for him. Even though Nader denies it, they believe that a high percentage of the votes he gets will come right out of John Kerry's hide. And they know that in 2000, when Gore lost Florida by an official 537 votes, Nader drew off more than 97,000. So the Democrats are for restricting democracy this year.

When it comes to hypocrisy, however, the prize has to go to the Republicans. The only reason Nader is a threat to Kerry, Michigan GOP spokesman Matt Davis told me, is that his candidacy "browns one side of Kerry's waffles. Having Nader there clarifies the issues that Kerry tries to straddle, whether it be gay marriage or outsourcing of jobs."

And that's why the Republicans collected signatures for Nader, I asked. "The motivation for our effort is to clarify the issues," he said.

Won't it help President Bush? "Yes, but it will really help Michigan voters, and that is why we did it," Davis said.

and this money

The chairwoman of the New Hampshire Republican State Committee on Monday said the committee did not hire a Hancock consulting firm with GOP ties to help get independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader on the Nov. 2 ballot.

The firm, Norway Hill Associates, was criticized last week for hiring paid temp workers to collect signatures for Nader outside the Stratham dairy farm where President George W. Bush spoke on Friday. The aim allegedly was to dilute the vote for Democratic candidate, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, thereby helping Bush win the state in the upcoming election.

While denying that the state party was involved, Chairwoman Jayne Millerick said it is possible that Norway Hill Associates - whose clients have included former Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole - has been on the state party’s payroll in the past.

"It is possible, but I’d have to research it," Millerick said. "Norway Hill has been a consulting firm in New Hampshire for a number of years and has helped out a great deal of Republican candidates."

which is also, of course, this money

the revelation of the petition drive by the GOP comes just two weeks after former state Republican Committee executive director Chuck McGee pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to conspiring to make anonymous calls with the intent to "annoy or harass" the recipients, a felony that carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The charge stems from the 2002 election where hang-up calls were made to jam Democratic phone banks.

and then there's this money.

However, among Mr Nader's new supporters this election is the billionaire Richard Egan, who was appointed ambassador to Ireland after raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for President Bush. Campaign monitors say other big Republican donors have contributed as well. In Oregon, also poised for a tight contest, two conservative groups admitted telephoning supporters to help put Mr Nader on the ticket.

although that money is shy

But the Reform endorsement is part of a wave of right-wing and Republican support Nader has piled up in the past week. It makes absolute sense for Nader to inherit Buchanan's nomination: He's clearly claiming Buchanan's position as the right's favorite third-party candidate.

Last Saturday in Portland, Nader made his second attempt to get on the ballot in Oregon by holding a 1,000-voter convention. His efforts to reach the needed number were bolstered by the conservative groups Citizens for a Sound Economy and the Oregon Family Council, plus Republican encouragement. Nader campaigned for their turnout on a conservative radio talk show.

Republican support for Nader, or at least for his appearing on the ballot, is exploding all over. The Wisconsin chapter of the Citizens for a Sound Economy plans to work to get him onto that state's ballot. According to an Arizona Democratic attorney quoted in The New York Times, 46 percent of the signatures filed by the Nader campaign in that state belong to registered Republicans. Arizona Naderites are being represented by Lisa Hauser, an active Republican attorney and counsel to former GOP Gov. Fife Symington.

Wednesday, the chairman of the Florida Republican Party loosed a passionate call for Nader's appearance on the Florida ballot, calling the Democrats' legal challenge "beyond the bounds of hypocrisy."

This week, Business Week Online reported that of the $1 million raised by Nader so far, $41,000 comes from major Bush contributors. That included $2,000 from Richard Egan, who raised $200,000 for Bush -- which qualifies him, in the GOP fund-raising hierarchy, as a Ranger -- and served as Bush's ambassador to Ireland. A spokesman told Business Week it must be "a different Dick Egan," but then the Boston Globe reported Thursday that not only was it the same Dick Egan, but his son and daughter-in-law had given another $4,000 to Nader.

Once, it was Nader's Raiders.

Now, it's Nader's Rangers.

Everybody understands what's going on here, except Nader, who insists that he sees no Republican effort to bolster Bush by getting him on the ballot. Nader will, he insists, take more votes from Bush than from John Kerry, which is contradicted by every poll, and would be a considerable surprise to the Citizens for a Sound Economy and the one and only deep-pocketed Richard Egan.

Of course, this is not a new strategy for Mr. Nader

In late October, the RLC funded an advertisement that showed Ralph Nader denouncing Al Gore: "Al Gore is suffering from an election-year delusion if he thinks his record on the environment is anything to be proud of."[71] The spot ran in three states where Nader was attracting significant support: Oregon, Washington and Wisconsin.[72]

The RLC is a “527” political organization. Prior to the passage of disclosure legislation in June, it did not have to report its contributions or expenditures. Between July 1 and November 27, 2000, it raised just over $3 million and spent just under $3 million. The largest single contributor was Finn Caspersen, former chairman of the Beneficial Corporation, who gave $359,600. Caspersen also funded Citizens for a Better America, a 501 (c)(4) corporation, that conducted a $250,000 advertising campaign on Philadelphia television, criticizing New Jersey Senate candidate Jon Corzine for not releasing his tax returns.[73] Sam Wyly, one of the funders of Republicans for Clean Air, which attacked John McCain during the New York Republican presidential primary, gave $20,000. Three sugar producers B Florida Crystals, the U.S. Sugar Corporation and the Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative of America B gave a total of $275,000. Three telecommunications companies - ATT, MCI and Verizon B gave a total of $275,000.

but it's not really such a big deal

Still, other Republicans acknowledge that many in the party have mentioned that a donation to Nader may boost Bush, particularly in states where the vote is expected to be close.

"Republicans have no problem with it, if the goal is to keep President Bush in office,'' said Hoover Institution research fellow Bill Whalen, a veteran GOP strategist. "It's not pretty. But putting a guy (in the White House) you don't like is not pretty either.''

Whalen said the Republican National Committee or the Bush-Cheney campaign can't technically condone such donations, but "you absolutely want your activists to get out there and help Ralph run'' because of the effects he had on the 2000 election.

"Do the math,'' Whalen said.

Nader, who has decried the influence of corporations in the political arena, also has received more than $20,000 in "bundled'' contributions since March from GOP fund-raisers, according to the Federal Elections Commission documents that tally donations through May 31.

In fairness to Mr. Nader, he apparently avoided the corrupting influence of money on politics here

Ralph Nader's presidential campaign this week abruptly abandoned the Center City office that housed its efforts to get on the Pennsylvania ballot, leaving behind a mess of accusations and a damaged building.

The office, on the 1500 block of Chestnut Street, was emptied Thursday after a raucous scene the night before. Police were called as dozens of homeless people lined up to collect money they said they were owed for circulating petitions on the candidate's behalf.

Many of the circulators were never paid, according to outreach workers and interviews with several men who had collected signatures.

"A lot of us were scammed," said Ed Seip, 52, who said he collected more than 200 signatures for Nader.

You know who shows up a lot in stories about Nader support? Ben Stein does. Ben is the guy who said this

The mass media outlets are usually based in New York City, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., all major centers of pessimism and anger. For reasons better understood by a psychiatrist than an actor and commentator, the people in the media in these places often -- but not always -- loathe and fear their own country in many ways. This shows in their endless "Hate America" pieces on the air, showing every kind of vice and crime and sorrow, and only rarely anything good. The news stories on the nightly news in America might just as well come from Al-Jazeera as from America, that is how filled with bitterness at their own country they are. America is torturing Arabs, repressing Black people, stealing the savings of the elderly, oppressing women, denying the elderly medical care. This in a nutshell is the news from the major networks and newspapers in America.

and this (but keep in mind that in the course of his father's eulogy, Ben paid tribute to Mr. Nixon's fervent philosemitism, which according to the historical record consisted of such statements as
Nixon: Colson, he's a clever bastard. He had his office call the Bureau of Labor Statistics. . . . Goldstein. . . . I said, "Were they all Jews?" He said, "Yes. Every one of them was a Jew." Malek's not Jewish is he?

Haldeman: No.

Nixon: I want to look at any sensitive areas around, where Jews are involved, Bob. See, the Jews are all through the government. And we have got to get in those areas, we've got to get the man in charge, who is not Jewish, to patrol the Jewish -

Haldeman: [unclear]

Nixon: . . . full of Jews. Second, most Jews are [unclear]. You know what I mean? You have Garment and Kissinger.

Haldeman: And thankfully Safire.

Nixon: But by God, they're exceptions. But Bob, generally speaking, you can't trust the bastards. They turn on us.

and of course the purge of jews from the OMB (which to close the circle was carried out by one of Our Fearless Leader's most fervent supporters), so he's not exactly a shrewd observer of the seamy underside of his party)

KING: What about the right-wing talk radio anger at Kerry hyphen Clinton hyphen -- just anger anger?

STEIN: There's plenty of that. There's plenty of that. And it's very unfortunate, and it's not a good thing. But I don't see anybody comparing Clinton with Hitler. I never saw anybody comparing Kerry with Hitler. I see a lot of that when I go to the Web sites against Bush. That is a very scary thing.

It kind of upsets me that the Democrats say, oh, the Republicans are being so hard on Kerry saying he lied about Vietnam. Well, what about comparing Bush with Hitler? What about saying that the Bush family were in bed with the Nazi party? I mean...

Mr. Stein's tunnel vision undoubtedly played some part in his making this statement

After explaining that he was at the event both supporting Bush via broadcast interviews and "flogging my book," Stein admitted he also liked Nader and would probably vote for him if he got on the California ballot. "It is a futile gesture because Nader doesn't have a chance," Stein stressed. "But I like him. He is an extreme environmentalist as I also am, and he pays attention to stockholders' rights."

in the wake of this incident

Famously denied entrance to the Democratic Convention in Boston last month, Nader evidently managed to get into the Republican bash when CNN invited him to do an interview at its studio just off the convention floor. (The RNC, no doubt, didn't mind that CNN was giving him air time.) Once inside the building, Nader decided to make the media rounds, including a stop at Al Jazeera. Already in the middle of their show--which included in-studio interviews with Al Jazeera's Democratic and Republican analysts plus an Arab-American Republican delegate--the producers scrambled to rearrange things for their special, unannounced guest. His presence, while a bit of a logistical hassle, didn't seem to excite them. "He comes to us all the time," one Al Jazeera producer explained.

Once on the show, Nader, who is of Lebanese descent, spoke a few words of Arabic but delivered most of his message in English (which was simultaneously translated into Arabic for the network's millions of viewers by an Al Jazeera employee in Doha, Qatar). "I like to come and watch Republican conventions," Nader told Al Jazeera's anchor, Hafez Al-Mirazi. "It's like a corporate party orgy. Corporations, parties, hospitality suites, this isn't a government of, by, and for the people; it's of, by, and for big business."

But Nader was smart enough not to spend all of his time denouncing corporations. No doubt mindful of his audience, he took out after Israel--and the support it receives from Democrats and Republicans--as well. "The two parties provide no choices to millions of Americans who believe that the Israeli peace movement and the Palestinian movement should be supported by the U.S. government, not the military regime that thinks there's a military solution to the Palestinian conflict," he said. "People like Giuliani and the Democrats, Kerry and Bush, they're like puppets, they're puppets to the Israeli military government."

Up to this point, Mr. Stein has taken a somewhat different position on this particular world view.

Just everybody's evolving these days.

How open-minded.