How Rand Paul is manipulating the electoral process
You probably haven’t heard that Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) just changed the electoral process in Kentucky to help himself. How did he do it? He followed “The Golden Rule.” He who has the gold, rules.
Simply put, Senator Paul the son of retired congressman Ron Paul, wants to do what his father failed to do… become president. I don’t believe he has a chance, but just running for president looks good on your resume.
Anyway, Senator Paul made the unfortunate mistake of becoming senator in the wrong year. The reason that we have so many senators running for president is not that they deserve the job, but the timing is right for most of them. Why?
As you know, presidential elections are every four years; representatives every two, and senators, every six.
The trick is to be elected as senator so that the presidential race that you want to run in is not coincident with your senatorial reelection race.
In other words, you get to keep your senator’s job and run for president at the same time. That only works if your reelection is not in the same year. Senator Paul’s is!
That’s why it’s not common to run for president as a congressman or woman, as you cannot run for reelection for the House job. The chances of winning the presidential election are slim, so you’re likely to have retired yourself by aspiring to the presidential slot.
Congresspeople are far more likely to run for a senate job as it’s a statewide position and relatively affordable and attainable. Why? The campaign is statewide, not nationwide.
The trick is to live in a state where the primary system (invented by the political parties) lets you run for both jobs at once. I can’t think of one that allows it.
In Kentucky like elsewhere, you can only run for one office at a time, so unless Senator Paul could change the system to suit himself he could not be on the primary ballot for both the senatorial reelection and president.
He has accomplished that by persuading the Republican Party in Kentucky to change the way that presidential candidates are “voted” for. They are changing the system so that a “caucus,” or special interests group will choose him and not the general public in the primary. It will cost him some of his gold, but that’s what donors who want favors are for.
In this way, if he doesn’t get to be chosen to run for president in November, he can continue to run for reelection as senator in November. Nice.
How did someone in Kentucky or Washington figure this out? They probably read some of my articles about how the primary system really works.
I was famous for a week or so in Washington last year, so I was told, and a lot of people read what I wrote. Getting elected Is all about the primary system, and has little to do with what the public wants. The public are pawns in the game.
I didn’t have the gold, so didn’t win where I ran. I wasn’t willing to be corrupted or hand out favors, so raising money was very hard.
The same type of thing happened in Michigan in the last cycle. We were collecting signatures so I could run in Michigan’s 14th district, and had planned to convoy there from Atlanta at the last minute to collect any shortfall.
It was a dreadful winter in the mid-west so collecting signatures was very, very hard. Just before we left, we found that to collect valid signatures collectors had to be registered Michigan voters. We weren’t, so we gave up and I moved on to the Hawaii primary. It was too late for Plan B.
I wrote a story about what happened in the same election cycle, involving Congressman John Conyers (D-MI) that you can read here. The upshot is that Mr. Conyers was caught using non-voting collectors, so his nomination signature petitions were insufficient.
He also followed “The Golden Rule.” He petitioned a judge who ruled that that part of the Michigan law was invalid, and he won reelection.
In retrospect we should have driven up to Michigan.
Unfortunately for all of the presidential candidates, whoever gets the job will regret it. Why? We headed for a currency meltdown in ~2018-19 that will shake the foundation of our nation. Whoever is president will get the blame for the massive mistakes made by George W. Bush and Barack Obama. It’s another Golden Rule… he who rules gets the blame.
The Golden Rule has two edges and you can cut yourself using it.
What’s the fix? Simple. If you formally register for one political job, you have to resign from the current one. But if you have the gold, you get to rule irregardless of the rules. You make them up as you go.
Don’t you remember the rhetoric… “… we’re a nation of laws.” It sounds good, but not true because of selective enforcement of those rules. Sad to say, nothing changes.
