The Chairman is Not Amused.
In the aftermath of his surprise announcement last week that he was dropping out of the gubernatorial race, Mike Protack told the News Journal in an article this morning that he would not be endorsing or campaigning for Bill Lee, but he would like to help out the aging liar, John McCain.
Mike, you might as well help out Lee, since from the sound of things, you are no longer welcome in the Independent Party of Delaware. Chairman Wolfgang von Baumgart still has not heard from Protack, five days after his surprise announcement, and he is not happy.
“I had a gut instinct I shouldn’t be there [at the candidate’s forum at the JCC last Thursday],” von Baumgart said Monday. “And for [Protack] to publicly kiss up to the Republican chairman would have been unnecessary public humiliation. To be blindsided — to walk in there, expecting to see our gubernatorial candidate, hoping he would win the debate and all of a sudden he folds … we avoided public humiliation at that spectacle.”
Uh, no you didn’t Wolfgang. Even if you weren’t there, my first thought after hearing the news was “hahahaha, the IPOD just got what they deserved.” It serves you right for this to happen to you and your party.
Von Baumgart said the move “reflects more on Mr. Protack than it does on the party. … The party is a very appropriate vehicle. We have free ballot access and we offer that to alternative candidates. Maybe it was the fact that we don’t have massive resources, if he expected 600 troops to man the barricades. But a campaign does not control a political party.”
No, it reflects on your party for underhandedly choosing Protack in the first place. Third parties don’t have armies of supporters or money. All they have is principles. That is why third parties exist in the first place. For those with purist principles cannot tolerate being a member of a major party because in doing so they feel they compromise their principles. In choosing Protack, the IPOD abandoned their principles.
Say what you will about Liz Allen, a former member of the IPOD, but at least she has the courage of her convictions, and she stood up to Wolfgang and the IPOD when the party screwed her and other party members over.
“Third parties don’t have armies of supporters or money. All they have is principles.”
Excellent point, DD. Wolfgang’s a super smart guy, but this time he got completely suckered in by the prospect of having a candidate with name recognition, and of getting the Indies onto the debating platform with the Republocrats.
A bit of clarification and a bit of fact also.
First, the IPOD which is a long story. When I withdrew I made it clear the IPOD had great ideas and some great people but it was not a vehicle from which to run a campaign . In four months of trying we could not get the IPOD to organize itself in any way. Ask Wolf how many district chairpersons he has or what communications operations he has? The answer is none.
The night of the debate the IPOD chairman told our campaign he was unavailable and I called and emailed the Chairman several times with no response in the days before and after the primary. During the summer there were several instances when we could not get a response and the days before and after the primary were critical.
There was no underhandedness in the nomination process, ask Chancellor Chandler.
As for endorsements. I asked the Republican leadership what I could do to help. I said I would help in any way which would make a difference. We discussed helping McCain’s effort and some issues work for the GOP. There was no request to me for supporting the Lee race in any way, hence no endorsement.
Well It’s a shame but totally predictable, that the IPOD has joined the many victims of Protack’s naked ambition and arrogance.
IPOD can join folks such as Valihura, Lee, and Protack’s own wife, as victims of his smears and slimes necessary to explain away his incredible run of election failures (4 and still counting).
Let’s be clear that Protack has once again been rejected overwhelmingly by voters in this state. In Prozac land this type of failure is always someone else’s fault and never Mikey’s. Thus it is time to throw the newest victim under the bus. Welcome to the club IPOD.
Chancellor Chandler’s decision Mikey simply means you barely passed the legal muster of Delaware’s liberal election laws. It does not mean you did nothing underhanded. The fact is your whole political career is a constant sampling of underhanded actions, smears and lies.
As for your not endorsing Lee, This is the expectation of any decent Republican after the primary. No one should have to ask you for it. A REAL MAN would congratulate the overwhelming winner of the primary and help the party move forward. Every decent party member regardless of where they stood before the primary does this including John Carney and John Daniello on the Democrat side.
Only a confused, bitter, incompetent dolt could refuse to do this. Mike you join the ranks of Ruth Ann Minner in this respect. I would call you the Ruth Ann Minner of the Republican Party but Minner at least has won elections.
THE IPOD STRIKES BACK …
The communications down-time to which Protack refers occured when we were responding to the plaintiff’s lawsuit, out putting up his signs, catching up on other party work, responding to another bogus SLAPP suit and dealing with sleep deprivation. [ I avoid cell phones as much as possible because I don’t want brain cancer, although I’ll go for wireless Internet when I scrape the cash together.]
Eventhough I am no stranger to writing and research, expecting legal breifs plus two major environmental policy statements on short notice was a little too much. Protack’s candidacy was, admittedly, an experimental failure [ How many filiments did Edison try before developing the incandescent light bulb and how many rockets blew up on the launch pad before a successful space shot ??? ]
It is also ironic that the purported courageous freedom-fighter (and her sock puppets) who you so enthusiaticly glorify was asked early in the game to chair the convention commitee. This would have given her unprecedented control over the time, place, conduct and agenda of the IPOD 2008 State Convention, but, she blew it and now, she’s history. During the apex of the controversy, I received only two communications from party members. Currently, four people are doing 99% of the party’s work with limited resources in a hostile environment. ( So much for your alleged “Screwover” Theory. ) We inherited a disorganized situation for our predecessors and it was not easy to start from scratch in an election year.
Protack did not exactly “throw us under the bus”. More accurately, he jumped off the bus and landed on his head. Fortunately, we rid ourselves of some other excess baggage
( including D&R operatives ) in the process.
The IPOD needs talented thinkers and workers, dedicated to the greater public interest — not whiners, complainers, ax-grinders,opportunists, sabateurs, conspiracy theory kooks, paranoids and right or left-wing extremists. 40 district chairs and corresponding committee people are needed immediately. Unfortunately, the intellectually deficient and polluted contemporary environment indicates that there is a shortage of political talent in Delaware.
This is not the first time that the party was betrayed by self-seeking adventurists. Sims and his “new recruit” were classic examples and a former district chair defected to John Adkins.
Then, there was a low-level clown who brazenly thought that he could influence me with a cabinet position, women and other favors if I dumped Protack and placed “his” candidate on our ballot and inimidate me with veiled threats if I didn’t. Accordingly, I told him to “shove it”.
Someone else called me up in June and loudly demanded that the IPOD immediately cease recruiting candidates and “ordered” me to waste my time soliciting a long list of Democrats for fusion candidacies.
That’s just for starters. If I told you about the grossest fraud and rip-off, perpetrated by a self-seeking opportunist with an inflated resume’ , purple brick production would suddenly increase in Delaware. [ So, ____, don’t force my hand with anymore provocation, arrogance, deception and indirect threats. Beware of your own crew. The un-seawothy ship that you sink may be your own. ]
Most of our critics aren’t fit to be precinct capitains let alone State Chairs. When it comes to the nitty-gritty of original thinking, creativity and real-world hard work, they inevitably fall flat on their two faces. They loudly feign outward strength with their bombast and bluster, but lack the real talent required to accomplish anything of lasting significance.
The IPOD stands forthrightly behind the Einsteinian principle that it takes a greater consciousness to solve a problem than the consciousness that caused it. Accordingly,
we’ll stack up our Platform against the D&R
platitudes anytime and I’ll personally debate Daniello and Ross on radio or TV with one hand tied behind my back and pebbles in my mouth.
Our curent level of our opposition is a tribute to our significance. The special interest controlled “major” parties can’t stand to see any competition to their intrenched douopoly and propagandized stranglehold on power.
The choice is clear. Continue to drink their KOOL-AID and be frog marched down the path of a centalized corporate-colectivized regime
demanding your utter subsrevience or declare your independence and vote them out of power
in the name of individual freedom and Liberty.
In the face of 13 T$ (and rising ) national debt, corporate sepecial interest domination of our goverment and an unsustainable economy, look to your own parties — not ours — for repression,
deception, corruption and hypocricy.
Very few of them are worth voting for, although
there are some outstanding exceptions (few and far between). Our free ballot access exists for the benefit of potential public interest candidates as an alternative to the D&R status quo. Protack had his chance to rise to greatness, but instead, found Jack Markell much too intellectually intimidating and crawled back to his GOP abusers. ( A candidate cannot ultimately control a political party and he knew the exact situation going in.) He was a slick talker but, ultimately turned out as mere flash in the pan. It would have been a waste of time and gas to travel two-hours each way to hear his pathetic premature concession speech on (of all days) 9/11. The “appropriate vehicle” was our ballot status and our platform. He has only himself to blame. ( Remember Ross Perot ? )
In order for a popular alternative party to ultimately prevail, it must first achieve critical
mass and adequate resource levels. This requires, ab initio, greater individual involvement and committment. No one person can even pretend to be able to accomplish this single-handedly, especially in the face of adversity and perfidy.
Who among you will rise to the challenge?
Wolfgang von Baumgart,
State Chairman, IPOD
(302) 945-2646
ipodosc@yahoo.com
Copies of the IPOD 2008 Platform will be e-mailed upon e-mailed request even to D’s and R’s incapable of original thought. IPOD welcomes bright, new and highly-motivated talent if we can find any in a post-modern era of apathy and superficiality.
[ Please pardon any typographical errors. This is my first draft.]