John Cox

As a novice, Cox is under the mistaken impression that presidential campaigns are about ideas. ~Matt Labash

As a friend to no-hope presidential candidates everywhere, I have to applaud John Cox for undertaking what has to be one of the more pointless presidential campaigns in recent memory.  Even running on the Constitution Party ticket will get you some already-established ballot access, but to run a more or less solo protest campaign against the powers-that-be, well, that’s simply awe-inspiring.  Truly, it is.  Quite a few people know who Ron Paul is, regardless of what they think about him, and he can get some funding from a small but devoted group of supporters.  Mike Gravel at least has been elected to office, which gives him a certain “legitimacy” in the eyes of the media that normal citizens do not possess.  John Cox is truly building from scratch.

John Cox can be forgiven if he works on the assumption that campaigns are about ideas.  Pundits, who know better, are constantly talking about the ideas and proposals that candidates are offering, or complaining when they are failing to offer any “new” or “interesting” ideas, and the main candidates themselves encourage this illusion by saying, as Brownback does all the time, “our ideas” will win the election.  Actually, as Samnesty well knows, you win elections with votes, and as I have tried to argue many, many times, voting and policy ideas have almost nothing to do with each other.  But everyone is constantly talking about ideas, especially on the GOP side, such that it was even the boast of President Bush last year before the midterms that the GOP was the “party of ideas.”  It is tempting for a disaffected Republican to believe that this supposed “party of ideas” should actually embrace conservative ideas and should then even enact conservative policies. 

Where Jon Cox is at his most admirable is when he says, in all sincerity, “I’m just a believer in the U.S. Constitution.”  Unfortunately, that is a serious drawback for any candidate trying to compete for the GOP nomination.