This guy is a piece of work! Some of what he says may be right, but he's become such a wack job there is no way I would vote for him!
Ralph Nader Enters Presidential Race
By HOPE YEN,
AP
Posted: 2008-02-24 11:48:06
Filed Under: Elections News, Nation
News
WASHINGTON (Feb. 24) - Ralph Nader said Sunday he will run for president as a
third-party candidate, criticizing the top White House contenders as too close to
big business and pledging to repeat a bid that will “shift the power from the few to
the many.”
Nader, 73, said most people are disenchanted with the Democratic and
Republican parties due to a prolonged Iraq war and a shaky economy. The
consumer advocate also blamed tax and other corporate-friendly policies under the
Bush administration that he said have left many lower- and middle-class people in
debt.
“You take that framework of people feeling locked out, shut out, marginalized
and disrespected,” he said. “You go from Iraq, to Palestine to Israel, from Enron to
Wall Street, from Katrina to the bumbling of the Bush administration, to the
complicity of the Democrats in not stopping him on the war, stopping him on
the tax cuts.”
“In that context, I have decided to run for president,” Nader told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Nader also criticized Republican candidate John McCain and Democrats
Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton for failing to support full Medicare
for all or cracking down on Pentagon waste and a “bloated military budget. He
blamed that on corporate lobbyists and special interests, which he said dominate
Washington, D.C., and pledged in his third-party campaign to accept donations
only from individuals.
“The issue is do they have the moral courage, do they have the fortitude to
stand up to corporate powers and get things done for the American people,”
Nader said. “We have to shift the power from the few to the many.”
Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, speaking shortly before
Nader’s announcement, said Nader’s past runs have shown that he usually pulls
votes from the Democratic nominee. “So naturally, Republicans would welcome his
entry into the race,” the former Arkansas governor said on CNN.
Nader also ran as a third-party candidate in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. He is still loathed by many Democrats who call him a spoiler and claim his candidacy in 2000 cost the party the election by siphoning votes away from Al Gore in a razor-thin contest in Florida.
Though he won 2.7 percent of the national vote as the Green Party
candidate in 2000, his percentage dropped to just 0.3 percent as an
independent in 2004, when he appeared on the ballot in only 34 states.