Iraq Veteran Against the War member Adam Kokesh, who briefly interrupted McCain’s acceptance speech, is a big supporter of the anti-war Republican Ron Paul. Paul participated in the Republican debates and ripped his fellow Republicans for supporting wars and expanding the American empire. He also called for more deregulation of just about everything — the airline industry, health care, and even went so far as to oppose mandatory immunization for children.
Sadly, Paul won a large amount of support from young people, progressives, and anti-war activists who were fed up with the two parties that are both pro-war, pro-corporate, and anti-civil liberties.
The fact that someone who opposes the minimum wage, has made racist remarks past and present, hates unions, opposes immigrant rights, and doesn’t believe in evolution could gain the support of many progressives says a lot about how politically weak and organizationally almost non-existent the American left is these days.
I don’t know Kokesh personally, but I see his endorsement as another example of someone who was pulled to Paul’s campaign for lack of anything else. Paul, for the record, voted against expanding education benefits for returning GIs and against providing housing assistance to very low-income veterans. As a result, Paul has earned himself a dismal 41% rating from the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. When your candidate’s rating on vets issues matches Bush’s IQ, you have a problem.
Not only has he voted against veterans, he’s also an opportunist. In his announcement that he would not endorse McCain, he said that “the strongest message can be sent by rejecting the two party system. This can be accomplished by voting for one of the non-establishment, principled candidates.” Funny that he calls on voters to reject the two party system, because is part of it — he’s a Republican.
Then there’s the fact that his congressional district gets its fair share of federal dough. There’s a word for this. It’s called hypocrisy.