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How I Evaluate Political Candidates By Chuck Baldwin (To subscribe to my columns at no cost, click here.) As everyone on the planet knows, next Tuesday, November 5, 2024, is the day of America’s national elections. This includes, of course, the presidential election, every seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, 34 U.S. Senate seats, 11 gubernatorial races and countless hundreds of State, county and municipal elections. As this will be my final column before next Tuesday’s elections, I will devote this column to identifying the issues by which I personally judge political candidates. And unlike many who seem to think that we are obligated to vote for the lesser of two evils, I’ve never voted in an election when I have not left some races blank. I made a decision decades ago that if I determine that both candidates for a particular race come short of the liberty principles upon which my convictions are determined, I will not vote for either candidate. I firmly believe that not voting for an anti-liberty candidate, who I know will be an enemy of those principles, is more honorable than voting for such a one—regardless of party affiliation. Furthermore, I believe every ballot should have a “Neither/None of the above” option. If they did, it would dramatically change who gets elected and who doesn’t, which is why the political elite will never allow such an option to exist. Here are the issues with which I evaluate political candidates. And since this year’s election includes the presidency, I will proffer a brief comparison of the two presidential candidates on each issue. 1. The Life Issue I immediately reject any candidate that is not genuinely pro-life. And the real test of whether a candidate is pro-life is not his or her rhetoric saying, “I’m pro-life.” That’s a cheap cliché that usually is nothing more than an enticement to the pro-life electorate to vote for the candidate without the candidate having to actually do anything to prove his or her professed belief. The real test for whether a candidate is truly pro-life is: Does that candidate enthusiastically support a personhood bill or constitutional amendment stating that human life exists from the moment of conception? That’s where professed GOP “pro-life” politicians reveal their true ambivalence—or even hostility—to the life issue. For example, here in Montana two years ago, the Republican Party had a Republican governor and a Republican supermajority in the legislature. And it was the GOP leadership in this State (most notably the Republican Speaker of the House) that would not even allow a personhood amendment to be presented to the legislature for a vote. And this identical story could be told in virtually every State in the Union. Most Republican legislators, governors, congressmen and senators are pro-life in name only. Kamala Harris: Obviously, Harris is a radical pro-abortion zealot. Donald Trump: Trump has no real convictions about the life issue. He has vacillated back and forth on abortion in speech after speech. He may not be a radical pro-abortion zealot like Harris, but neither is he an enthusiastic advocate for the life of the unborn. But to his credit, though his Supreme Court appointments are weak in several areas (especially Fourth Amendment issues), they did help overturn Roe. I have a DVD message in which I delve deeply into the scriptural and scientific reasons why a fetus is a living human being from the moment of conception. The message is entitled The Case For The Life Of The Unborn. 2. The Second Amendment: the right to keep and bear arms Once again, I immediately reject political candidates (from either party) who are wishy-washy on protecting the Second Amendment. Harris: On this issue also, Harris is a rabid anti-Second Amendment zealot. Trump: He claims to be pro-Second Amendment, but he’s not. We must never forget Donald Trump’s emphatic public statements to take the guns first, go through due process second, referring to his absolute support for the radically unconstitutional Red Flag gun confiscation laws. In my DVD package entitled Aggression, Revolution, Anarchy And Gun Control Package (containing six messages) there are two messages dealing specifically with the right to keep and bear arms from a scriptural perspective. Those two messages are: A Biblical Portrait Of The Righteousness And Requirement Of Bearing Arms The Attack Against Our Guns And The Christian Duty To Repel The Attack We also carry a book that is co-authored by my constitutional attorney son Tim and myself entitled To Keep Or Not To Keep: Why Christians Should Not Give Up Their Guns. 3. The First Amendment: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion, Freedom of the Press The First Amendment in our Bill of Rights is not first for no reason. The liberties protected in this amendment are society’s most sacred. Sadly, neither party in Washington, D.C., gives a hoot in Hades about the First Amendment. Both parties adamantly and unabashedly try to censure anyone who condemns the genocidal mass murders of the State of Israel. Both parties try to censure anyone who supports the right of individuals or companies to choose to not do business with Israel. Both parties try to censure anyone who does not support the War Agenda in Ukraine or anywhere else in the world, for that matter. Harris and Trump are two peas in a pod on the First Amendment. Both want to silence the voice of the other. 4. The Fourth Amendment: The Surveillance Society, Domestic Spying, Police State, etc. Here, again, there is virtually no distance between the Elephants and Donkeys in Washington, D.C. The same is true for Harris and Trump. Both are firmly in the back pockets of America’s surveillance/industrial complex. Look no further than how both Biden and Trump (and Harris) treated Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. 5. Medical Mandates Once more, I find no significant difference between Harris and Trump on this issue. It was Trump who first shackled the American people with a presidential executive order which was the catalyst for medical mandates that ordered forced vaccinations, forced mask wearing, forced social distancing, forced school closings, church closings, business closings, etc. He even used the U.S. military to expedite the Covid vaccines under Operation Warp Speed. Joe Biden followed suit. The dismal economic condition of the United States today is directly related to the three years of America’s Marxist lockdown due to the Trump/Biden medical mandates. I realize that Robert Kennedy Jr. is supporting Trump. He obviously feels that Trump is the lesser evil. But that doesn’t cut it with me. Trump’s public statements that he does not support forced vaccinations are in direct contradiction to what he did in 2020. His actions speak so loudly, I cannot hear a word he says. 6. The Warfare State: the wars against Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Ukraine, Iran, ad nauseam Here once again, there is almost no difference between Harris and Trump. The main difference is that Harris would take America to war with Russia over Ukraine, while Trump would take America to war with Russia over Israel. Remember Trump’s murder of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, who was the political equivalent of America’s vice president. Remember, too, that it was General Soleimani who was one of the three Arab leaders who defeated al Qaeda and Isis. The U.S. was never at war with al Qaeda and Isis. The U.S. created al Qaeda and Isis as an excuse to fight Israel’s wars in the Middle East. In the U.S. Congress there is only ONE party, and it’s the War Party. Both Democrats and Republicans are in the hip pocket of the military/industrial complex. 7. The Woke agenda: the forced normalization and acceptance of transgenderism and unnatural behavior in the U.S. military, in business and in society in general Harris: She is a radical proponent of the woke agenda. Trump: He may not be a radical proponent of the woke agenda, but, again, he has no real convictions on the issue. He and Melania have spent millions of dollars courting woke voters. 8. Energy: the Green New Deal and global warming agendas Here is another issue where there is almost no daylight between the two parties in Washington, D.C., or most State governors. Most of them are fully on board with the green energy agenda. Harris: She is a radical pro-Green New Deal tyrant. Trump: He called the Green New Deal a Green New Scam and vowed to boost production of oil, natural gas and coal. He also promised to roll back federal funding for EPA climate change regulations. So, on this issue, there does seem to be significant differences between the two presidential candidates. 9. Illegal Immigration This is another issue where there seems to be a distinct difference between Harris and Trump. Harris is as bad or worse than Joe Biden on U.S. facilitation of illegal aliens into America. I think Trump sincerely wants to curtail illegal immigration into America. My concern with Trump on this issue is how he intends to approach it. As already stated, Trump has as many police state predilections as Harris. How many constitutionally protected liberties will Trump trample to enforce his immigration policies is a genuine concern for me. 10. Support for Zionist Israel Harris: Kamala Harris is married to a Zionist Jew, and she refused to allow pro-Palestinians a voice at the Democratic National Convention this year. As with almost every politician in Washington, D.C., Democrat and Republican, Harris is bought and paid for by the Israel lobby. (The military-industrial, surveillance-industrial, Israel complexes are one.) If she becomes president, there will not be any significant change to U.S. financial and military support for Israel’s ethnic cleansing, genocidal mass murders and land theft in Palestine. Trump: Donald Trump is the most radical Zionist to ever become America’s president—with Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson close runners-up. Trump’s daughter and son-in-law, Ivanka and Jared, are high-level Zionist Chabadists. In addition, some reports state that Donald Trump secretly converted to Judaism in 2019. Zionist billionaire Miriam Adelson has given one hundred million dollars to Trump’s campaign this year. If Trump wins the election, he will enthusiastically help Benjamin Netanyahu slaughter millions of Palestinians and Arabs and do his best to help the antichrist Zionists achieve their dream of a Greater Israel, which will mean the attempt to conquer and occupy Arab states such as Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia—and destroy Iran, of course. At the very least, there will be very little difference in U.S. government policy toward Israel under Harris or Trump. I’ve always contended that our State and local elections are far more important than the national elections. At the end of the day, our liberties will be won or lost at the State or regional levels—NOT at the national level. Washington, D.C., is a cesspool, no matter which party has a majority. It is as corrupt as any villainous empire in world history. Our nation’s capital has become an alien power, thoroughly controlled in both domestic and foreign policy by the Israel lobby. Except for Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and a handful of others, one of the first things every congressman or senator will do upon arriving in their office in Washington is sign a pledge to always support the State of Israel. In effect, our U.S. Congress is mostly composed of foreign agents. And when it comes to the Oval Office, the only question is, which candidate will take us to global nuclear war faster? And you can flip a coin with the answer to that question. So, once again this year, I will be leaving my ballot empty in the presidential race. That’s no surprise to me. I haven’t voted for a presidential candidate since I voted for Ron Paul in the 2012 Republican primary elections—albeit, I would have voted for Constitution Party presidential nominee Darrell Castle in 2016 had he been on the Montana ballot. © Chuck Baldwin |
