Taken from the May 3, 2024 edition of the World Affairs Brief, in the following text, the word I refers to Joel Skousen.
After I had joined the race for president in the party, an anti-abortion activist who had run for president in prior years under various banners including as a Democrat, a Republican and as an independent, decided to try the Constitution party this year to take advantage of its ballot access in 13 states and others to come.
His name is Randall Terry, the founder of Operation Rescue. He has financial support from many pro-life groups around the country, which helped differentiate him for those who normally run for third party office who have no financial or organizational backing. He ran with the promise of producing short TV commercials for the party, with the caveat that local state parties would have to come up with the airtime fees, which hardly anyone is capable of doing.
Apparently, he felt that this television advertising draw was not enough to overcome my lead in delegate preference, so he began (unbeknownst to me at first) to attack me during his presentation time at the various state party conventions which take place prior to the national convention.
Those of us who didn’t have the time or money to fly out to each of these small state meetings, usually with less than a dozen people in attendance, introduced ourselves by a zoom call. I would give my extensive background and experience in law, government and foreign affairs and then leave the call. Mr. Terry apparently showed up to a lot of these meetings in person, and after I had addressed them, he would attack me as a person “opposed to any mention of God,” which party members who are Christian would be horrified to hear.
I had come up with an abbreviated 7 page platform for the party to provide an alternative to the 40 page long 2016 party platform that few people had the patience to read due to its length. It was circulated to the various states as something that would be considered at the platform committee meeting which took place at the convention last Thursday.
Referring to my abbreviated platform he would say, “Mr. Skousen has purged any mention of God in the platform and turned it into a Godless platform.” He even repeated this charge in his presentation of his candidacy at the national convention. I was the only one he chose to attack out of the 6 candidates.
I requested a minute from the chairman to rebut this charge, which was granted. I said that it was very unfair to have made these charges behind my back at other party meetings without providing me an opportunity to respond, in order to lock up votes before the convention. I assured them that “no one here is more God fearing than I,” and that I didn’t “purge” anything but wrote this abbreviated platform from scratch, following the guidelines of the constitutional fathers to avoid even the appearance of a “religious test” in the platform. The founders differed in their specific religious beliefs and knew that it would be highly divisive to take sides in religious matters. Instead, they formed a constitution that protected all religion from government interference. That was also my intent in what I wrote.
But what I said could not undo the damage he had already done. Because of the expense of small, relatively poor party members flying all the way out to Salt Lake City for the national convention, the party allowed even one delegate from each state to represent all the allowable votes from their local party who did not come to the convention to vote. Thus, Randall Terry had wrapped up more votes than I before the convention from people who were turned off by his inference that I was anti-God.
Those delegates who had already made up their minds back in their respective states, were not in attendance and not able to hear my speech or rebuttal and thus not able to make an informed choice. So in the end, most of the votes were already fixed and the final vote put me in second place.
But that’s not the end of the story. There were a lot of objections to Mr. Terry’s tactics and approach as well as to the short but offensive TV commercials that he presented to the convention, promoting the notion that “there is blood on your hands” if you in any way support abortion, combined with grim pictures of dead fetuses. He vigorously presented his view that everyone who is silent or opposed to showing such images were effectively supporting abortion. Several of the state delegations feared such tactics would turn people off to the party and many felt I had been unjustly demeaned by Mr. Terry’s attacks and didn’t want to support him despite the majority vote.
So currently there are 4 or 5 states currently considering refusing to put Mr. Terry on the ballot and placing me on instead. They will be penalized by the party for defying the vote at the convention, but apparently feel strongly enough about these two issue to do this anyway. I’ll keep you posted.
The following update to Skousen’s presidential campaign was issued on the May 10, 2024 release of the World Affairs Brief.
I will be speaking at Freedom Fest 2024 in Las Vegas this year, the largest conservative/libertarian conference in America. It is happening on July 10-13 at CAESARS FORUM conference center (3911 Koval Lane, Las Vegas). This year you will get to meet Javier Milei, the libertarian president of Argentina and hear about his battle to dismantle the socialist state there, along with many others in the liberty movement, including a breakout session with me. Subscribers get a $50 discount (use discount code EAGLE50).
My topic will be “The Conspiratorial History of the Deep State and its Effect on the Coming Election.” Along with the Nevada delegation promoting my candidacy, and you’ll get to meet my Vice Presidential candidate, Col. Rik Combs (Ret) who has been active in Missouri politics for many years, combating the establishment and its political corruption.
Campaign News: This week, the Utah Constitution Party and its Nevada affiliate, the Nevada Independent American Party, both voted to put Joel Skousen on their state’s ballot for president instead of Randall Terry, who both states felt they could not in good conscience support.
Last night, New Hampshire also voted to put me on the ballot. 4 or 5 additional states are considering doing the same due to their confidence in my comprehensive knowledge and views on political and world affairs. Stay tuned. For those interested, here is the link to my Keynote Speech at the Constitution Party Convention–which is not your typical campaign speech.