Note what the Dodd campaign has said about college-age kids who've been showing more enthusiasm for the Obama candidacy than college students have shown about any presidential candidate since Eugene McCarthy's anti-Vietnam war candidacy in 1968 [Clinton, incidentally, was one of the many students at Massachusetts colleges who went to New Hampshire to campaign for Eugene McCarthy].
Dodd on Iowa students who have become so into the process that they're willing to cut short their winter break solely to come back and caucus in the state where, by the way, they're registered to vote. You can't vote absentee in the caucus. If I went to school in Iowa or New Hampshire or Nevada or pretty much anywhere else that has representation , I'd be registered there too. After all, I live at college for more than 2/3 of the year. As it is, Republicans have chosen to continue to disenfranchise D.C. residents, so I vote absentee in Princeton, New Jersey where I can actually have a say.
“I was deeply disappointed to read today about the Obama campaign’s
attempt to recruit thousands of out-of-state residents to come to Iowa for
the caucuses. Given that the Obama campaign once said they
‘absolutely condemn any attempt to fraudulently influence the caucuses,’ we had
hoped they’d follow the Dodd campaign’s lead in working to protect the
integrity and spirit of the caucus process.
“‘New Politics’ shouldn’t be about scheming to evade either the spirit
or the letter of the rules that guide the process. That may be the way
politics is played in Chicago, but not in Iowa.”
They need to listen to what Howard Dean said about young people at the YearlyKos convention this past August.
So what, you might say? Where are the young people going to go? The Republican party?
In most years, all that would happen is that they wouldn't vote. This is bad enough; we can't afford to turn off young people; the ideologies shaped today will likely stay with them for the rest of their lives.
However, this year, there's a worse danger that comes in the form of Ron Paul. Ron Paul has a huge following among young people; he's the overwhelming leader on Facebook among Republican candidates, and he's widely expected to make a third-party run after he inevitably loses the GOP nomination.
What attracts young people to Paul?
1. His Opposition to the Iraq War
2. His Opposition to the Drug War
3. His Opposition to Taxes
That should be scary enough, having young people get involved in a campaign that's based primarily on eliminating the government and sending us back to the 1880's robber-baron era.
But it gets worse. Ron Paul's campaign is the #1 choice of white supremacists. And the Paul campaign chooses to embrace them. They have refused to return a $500 donation from Don Black.
Don Black is probably the 2nd most influential white supremacist in the U.S. after former Republican state Representative David Duke (also a Paul fan).
From Wikipedia:
Don Black ([1]) (born July 28, 1953) is an American white nationalist neo-Nazi. He is the founder and current webmaster of the "Stormfront" forum and former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). He was convicted in 1981 for attempted armed overthrow of the Dominican government in violation of the U.S. Neutrality Act.
And the rank-and-file white supremacists are just as gung-ho about Ron Paul. The prospect of young people's political ideologies being shaped by a campaign full of white supremacists, is, to say the least, terrifying.
