Socialist Candidate Constitutionally Ineligible To Be President
By Glenn Church | Related entries in 2008 Election, 3rd Party
(A series on little-known Presidential candidates)
The McCain campaign has made socialism a buzzword in the last week. However, if they want to find a real socialist, they need to look no further than the Socialist Workers Party.
The SWP is on the ballot in Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Iowa, Louisiana, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Vermont, and Washington. Their candidate is 39-year-old Roger Calero. Calero was also the 2004 nominee. He collected 10,791 votes in 14 states.
In several states, Calero had to have James Harris fill in as a surrogate nominee because Calero is constitutionally ineligible to be President. Calero is not an American citizen. He was born in Nicaragua, although he does have permanent resident status. Harris is once again the surrogate nominee for Calero in 2008. If the SWP won, that could make for an interesting constitutional crisis. However, that is one scenario no one needs to worry about for this election.
The SWP was formed in 1938 as a pro-Trotsky faction after its members were kicked out of the Communist Party on the orders of Stalin. Since the 1980’s, the SWP has drifted toward Fidel Castro style Marxism. The SWP has called Castro’s Cuba “a shining example for all workers.â€
Calero and his running mate, Alyson Kennedy, want to shorten the work week with no cut in take-home pay. They also want an emergency halt to farm and home foreclosures, a massive infrastructure rebuilding program with union-scale wages, withdrawal of all U.S. troops in foreign countries and, of course, normalization of relations with Cuba.
Calero was convicted of a felony for the sale of marijuana in 1988. In 2001, he was arrested after reentering the United States and threatened with deportation because of the conviction.
(from Foolocracy.com)
This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008 and is filed under 2008 Election, 3rd Party. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
