[VDARE.com Editor Peter Brimelow writes: Is “Managed Democracy” —by which an autocratic elite keeps power while retaining democratic forms—coming to an America near us? Neil Kumar, who is primarying an incumbent Republican Congressman in Arkansas on the issue of an immigration moratorium, recently discovered that he has to put up $15,000 for the privilege, an exorbitant sum in a poor state and also for Neil personally (he’s a law student). In a similar but smaller vein, the SJWs who control the Loudoun County VA schoolboard were recently able to derail dissent to their imposition of anti-white Critical Race Theory directives by limiting public access to the meeting because of a wholly imaginary fear of “violence.” All of which reminds me of my frustrated efforts to induce American Renaissance’s Jared Taylor to run for Congress in 2016. (Partly because his brilliant questioning of candidates in the previous cycle.)
Jared does not take direction well, but the real barriers to his running were institutional, as he outlines in this article he claims he originally sent me back then (I claim he forgot to hit “send.”). But the problem is still with us and getting worse. Jared also wants me to add a Sherman Statement—he is definitely not available for a draft. See what I mean about taking direction?]
Written in 2015
Donald Trump is running way ahead of everyone else in the Republican primaries. Why? He made immigration control his number-one issue. He would build a wall to keep out illegals, kick out the ones who are already here, and at least temporary stop all Muslim immigration. This is why Republican voters love him.
Would the same appeal work in a Congressional election?
I have thought about running in Virginia’s 10th Congressional District. It stretches from the Washington D.C. suburbs, where I live, to the West Virginia border, and includes the historic towns of Winchester and Leesburg. The district is still two-thirds white, and most of the non-whites are Hispanics, who don’t vote.
The incumbent, Congresswoman Barbara Comstock, is about as useless a Republican as can be found in Washington. She claims to be a conservative, but this tortures the language. She started in politics as a Democrat—as an intern for Senator Edward Kennedy. She has been in government nearly all her adult life, and is the perfect machine politician who stands for nothing.
And she has just endorsed Marco Rubio. He, of course, was one of the notorious Gang of Eight senators who drafted a bill in 2013 to Amnesty eleven million illegals and bring in 20 million more immigrants legally. Marco Rubio now claims to favor border control over Amnesty. Do you believe him?
If anything, Barbara Comstock is worse. Conservative Review and NumbersUSA give her grades of “F”—and that is exactly what she deserves. Just go to her website. She hawks American flags, for heaven’s sake, but you won’t find a single policy position or statement of principles. It’s all blather, press releases, and pictures of Barbara.
My district deserves better than this stuffed blouse, so I looked into what it would take to run either in the Republican primary or to get on the ballot as an independent.
You would think that a country that brags about “democracy” and “freedom” would make it easy for the people to run for office. You’d be wrong!
You have to file reams of papers and pay a $3,500 filing fee, but the biggest obstacle is collecting what are called “petitions of qualified voters.” You’ve probably seen this being done: people at shopping centers with clipboards asking for signatures. In Virginia, you need to get the signatures of 1,000 people who say they think you ought to have a chance to run. All 1,000 have to be registered to vote in the district in which you’re running. The election bureaucrats check every name and address, so they suggest you collect 1,500 just to be safe. That’s a lot of signatures.
And all those names will be public.
If I wanted to run in the Republican primary election, the deadline for turning in the “petitions” would be March 15. If I ran as an impendent, the deadline would be June 14.
But it’s complicated. Signatures have to be collected on special, legal-sized forms, printed front and back. Each form has to be signed by the person who collected the signatures, and then notarized. All the forms are open to inspection, so if volunteers help gather signatures, their names are public knowledge too.
There are people who would be willing sign the petition and to get signatures for me, but most would be fired from their jobs if it became known. Making these names public is like abolishing the secret ballot: You can’t discreetly support a controversial candidate.
Once you are on the ballot and have a campaign going, you then have to file constant financial reports with the Federal Elections Committee, accounting for every penny that comes into your campaign and every penny that goes out. There is a huge amount of back-office work on a campaign; that’s why there are campaign managers, campaign staff, campaign headquarters, etc.
There’s no way I could run for office without a lot of help—even though I think I’d be a good candidate. I’d have great fun debating Ms. Comstock. Imagine her trying to defend against an all-points attack on race and immigration.
What’s more, if you are an official candidate in a federal election or primary, you pay rock-bottom rates for radio campaign ads that broadcasters can’t censor. Imagine hearing this on your drive to work:
Diversity? No, thanks. I like being around white people, and I bet you do, too. It’s natural, normal, and healthy. Vote for common sense. Vote for Jared Taylor.
Or how about:
Donald Trump wants to stop Muslim immigration. So do I. Muslims want special meals and school holidays, they take prayer breaks at work, they want women-only hours at swimming pools, prayer-rooms and foot baths—and some of them want to kill us. Let’s keep them out.
Imagine the media hysteria this would stir up. The National Public Radio story on the campaign alone would be worth the bother of running.
VDARE.com Note: That's what didn't happen, because of our Managed Democracy. It's instructive to note what did happen in VA-10, thanks to Mainstream Republican Comstock, through VDARE.com headlines:
In 2018, Comstock lost to a Democrat for demographic reasons—of course she blamed Trump.
And the final backstabbing chapter—after the Mostly Peaceful Protest of January 6, Comstock wanted Trump impeached.
Jared Taylor [Email him] is the editor of American Renaissance. You can follow him on Parler and Gab.
