{news} (ACTION) RESPOND TO ANTI-NADER & ANTI GREEN PARTY EDITORIAL

[Tim McKee]

courant.com/news/opinion/editorials/hc-nader.artfeb10,0,5335292.story          Courant.com                    It's All About Ralph                                                                            February 10, 2008
                                  
         
           Nearing 74 and still on the political fringe, Ralph Nader knows he's never going to be president of the United States. But that is not stopping him from preparing for a fourth long-shot run at the White House.

 Once again, the spoiler role.

 Mr. Nader, a Winsted native who still uses the family home there as his official voting address, announced recently that he's forming an exploratory committee to test support for his candidacy. Naturally, he doesn't have anything good to say about any of the candidates who have been campaigning for the past year.

Imagine that.

 In a month or so, Mr. Nader says he will determine whether he has enough support and money to run. We bet whatever support pops up will be sufficient in his mind.

 He's drawn to this quadrennial troublemaking like a moth to a flame. Once one of this country's most admired and effective figures as a public-interest lawyer, author and organizer, Mr. Nader has become a crank and a nag, a Narcissus who seems to believe that if he hasn't said it, it hasn't been said.

 But it has.

 Mr. Nader's message is not new. It is, broadly, that big corporations are parasites who control our lives and send Americans' good jobs overseas and that the current crop of elected leaders should be held accountable if not impeached. 

It has been repeated in one shape or another by other candidates, especially Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio and former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina. But that populist, class-warfare message didn't resonate with voters, and Mr. Kucinich and Mr. Edwards dropped out. What makes Mr. Nader, who is even harsher and more divisive, think he'll have any greater success? 

 Mr. Nader says everybody has a right to speak and a right to run for president. That's true, of course. And everybody has a right to trash his own legacy.

 Another Nader campaign would be all about ego. The once-admired consumer advocate has become Connecticut's Harold Stassen — the boy governor of Minnesota who became a national laughingstock because he didn't know when to quit. 

 
     
          Copyright © 2008, The Hartford Courant


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***********************************************************************
  Tim McKee
  Manchester CT
  Home-860-643-2282
  Cell-860-778-1304
  Tim McKee, is a National Commitee member of the Green Party of the United States and is a spokesperson for the Green Party of CT.
  BLOG- http://TheBigGreenPicture.blogspot.com/

       
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