ron paul: 3rd parties, endorsements & more

ron paul rejects mccain campaign's plea for endorsement
from raw story: Ron Paul held a press conference urging voters to select a third-party presidential candidate instead of Barack Obama or John McCain. The Texas congressman said that he fielded a phone call from the McCain campaign on Tuesday asking him for an endorsement... This video is from CNN.com, broadcast September 10, 2008.


gramm pressured paul to endorse mccain
from thinkprogress: After former senator Phil Gramm said that America was a “nation of whiners,” the McCain campaign claimed that its top economic adviser would no longer be working with them. However, at a press conference today, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) revealed that Gramm had recently called and pressured him to endorse McCain — an offer that he refused.

ron paul statement to the national press club
from campaign for liberty:

"The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to the doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can ‘throw the rascals out’ at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy." - Carroll Quigley – Author of Tragedy & Hope

The coverage of the presidential election is designed to be a grand distraction. This is not new, but this year, it’s more so than ever. Pretending that a true difference exists between the two major candidates is a charade of great proportion. Many who help to perpetuate this myth are frequently unaware of what they are doing and believe that significant differences actually do exist. Indeed, on small points there is the appearance of a difference. The real issues, however, are buried in a barrage of miscellaneous nonsense and endless pontifications by robotic pundits hired to perpetuate the myth of a campaign of substance. The truth is that our two-party system offers no real choice. The real goal of the campaign is to distract people from considering the real issues.

ron paul, no longer a candidate, makes a run at third-party unity
from mcclatchy: Texas Rep. Ron Paul, whose antiwar campaign galvanized an army of young people during his Republican presidential run, is now something of a third-party power broker, with both the McCain team and the Libertarian Party vying for his support.

Paul held a news conference Wednesday to present a united front of minor-party presidential candidates — independent Ralph Nader, the Green Party's Cynthia McKinney and the Constitution Party's Chuck Baldwin — on issues important to him and to declare his preferred candidate, which turned out to be anyone but the Democratic or Republican nominees.

"Presidential elections turn out to be more of a charade than anything else," said Paul, adding there was no difference between the major-party candidates, Republican Sen. John McCain and Democratic Sen. Barack Obama.

update: paul & nader on cnn