The Freepers are now claiming that Obama was once a member of the "New Party" and that this somehow proves he's a secret radical and covert Communist aiming to infiltrate American politics.
Their evidence?
A couple old archived web pages from the New Party claiming Obama as a "member." October 1996 Update :
Running to Win : The Key Races
...
Illinois: Three NP-members won Democratic primaries last Spring and face off against Republican opponents on election day: Danny Davis (U.S. House), Barack Obama (State Senate) and Patricia Martin (Cook County Judiciary).
This has lead Townhall, RedState and Free Republic into a tizzy,
convinced that this is going to bring Obama down.In June sources released information that during his campaign for the State Senate in Illinois, Barack Obama was endorsed by an organization known as the Chicago "New Party". The 'New Party' was a political party established by the Democratic Socialists of America (the DSA) to push forth the socialist principles of the DSA by focusing on winnable elections at a local level and spreading the Socialist movement upwards. ...
After allegations surfaced in early summer over the 'New Party's' endorsement of Obama, the Obama campaign along with the remnants of the New Party and Democratic Socialists of America claimed that Obama was never a member of either organization. The DSA and 'New Party' then systematically attempted to cover up any ties between Obama and the Socialist Organizations. However, it now appears that Barack Obama was indeed a certified and acknowledged member of the DSA's New Party.
<snip>
... it appears clear that as of 1996, the New Party and its parent organization the Democratic Socialists of America considered Barack Obama to be their guy--one of a handful of avowed socialists running for office at any level in the United States. It strikes me that Obama has some explaining to do.
Um... I'm aware of the New Party. It wasn't some scary Leftist organization:
New Party (USA)From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The New Party was a third political party in the United States that tried to re-introduce the practice of electoral fusion as a political strategy for labor unions and community organizing groups. In electoral fusion, the same candidate receives nomination from more than one political party and occupies more than one ballot line. Fusion was once common in the United States but is now commonly practiced only in New York State, although it is allowed by law in seven other states. The party was active from 1992 to 1998. There had been an earlier New Party in 1968 that ran Eugene McCarthy for President.
The New Party was founded in the early 1990s by Daniel Cantor, a former staffer for Jesse Jackson's 1988 presidential campaign, and by sociology and law professor Joel Rogers as an effort to break with the largely unsuccessful history of left-leaning third parties in the United States.
The party could best be described as social democratic in orientation, although party statements almost invariably used the terms "small-d democratic" or "progressive" instead. Its founders chose the name "New Party" in an effort to strike a fresh tone, free of associations with dogmas and ideological debates.
After a false start in New York, the New Party built modestly successful chapters in several states. Some of these chapters — such as those in Chicago and Little Rock — had their main bases of support in the low-income community organizing group ACORN, along with some support from various labor unions (especially ACORN-allied locals of the Service Employees International Union). Other chapters — such as those in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Missoula, Montana, Montgomery County, Maryland, and Dane County, Wisconsin, received institutional support from a variety of other labor unions and community organizations. These chapters built local political organizations that ran or endorsed candidates, primarily in local non-partisan races but with occasional forays into Democratic Party primaries or (more rarely) traditional third party-style independent candidacies as well. The party's chapters elected or helped to elect dozens of candidates,
including Barack Obama's 1996 run for the Illinois State Senate. <1> Party chapters were also active between elections, pressuring elected officials to pass legislation on issues such as living wages and affordable housing.
Left-wing critics of the New Party, such as supporters of the Green Party, argued that the New Party was merely a pressure group on the fringes of the Democratic Party, rather than a genuinely new political party. New Party leaders argued that classic third-party strategies were doomed to failure, but that the Democratic Party was too entrenched and undemocratic to be a useful institution for "small-d democrats" either, even if they could succeed in taking it over, and so a new kind of organization was needed.
Although the party's founders hoped to foster a shift toward electoral fusion, thereby making a multi-party electoral system possible in the United States, they were not successful in doing so. Their hopes rested largely on the U.S. Supreme Court case Timmons v. Twin Cities Area New Party. In 1997, the Court rejected the New Party's argument that electoral fusion was a right protected by the First Amendment's freedom of association clause.<2>
This 6-3 decision marked the first time that the Court enshrined the two-party system as a fundamental feature of the US electoral system.After the Timmons case, the New Party quickly declined. Several chapters — initially, those chapters not connected with ACORN — disaffiliated. Perhaps the only and certainly the most successful surviving local chapter, known as Progressive Dane, remains active and relevant in Dane County, Wisconsin. Cantor and other key staff members left to found the Working Families Party of New York (1998), an organization which has had considerable success in building a New Party-style organization within New York state, and which is now exploring possibilities for expanding into other states.
Although the New Party has been effectively defunct since the late 1990s, a website still exists.
So... basically, what this amounts to is that Barack Obama once got the endorsement of a group whose mission was to push for electoral fusion... a system so frightening and Stalinist that it was used throughout U.S. history and is still in effect in 7 U.S. states, including New York. Get that?! Barack Obama is a radical, Muslim terrorist/Pan-African/Liberation Theology/Socialist/Communist/Stalinist/Atheist who wanted to allow some minimal third-party competition in the political sphere!
Scary.Epic. Fail.
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