Abstinence Is Best

debate October 11, 2000: Winston-Salem, NC

Moderator: "Is there any difference?"
Gore: "I haven't heard a big difference right in the last few exchanges..."
Bush: "Well, I think it's hard to tell."

The code phrase for the second Presidential debate was "I agree".

Well, Ron did not agree.

Twelve times during the debate in Winston-Salem, North Carolina George W. Bush and Al Gore used a variant of the phrase "I agree with you". Twenty-eight more times they used other words to let the national television audience know they were in agreement on everything from foreign policy to trigger locks to "less filling" (over "tastes great").

With that many "agreements," was it really a debate? Would Ron have made the gathering more edgy? More derisive? Bush even stopped to call his and Gore's agreements a "great love fest". Ron wondered aloud, "Is this the dawning of the Age of Aquarius? I think it is the Crap of Taurus."

Of the night's debate, Green party candidate Ralph Nader opined, "This misnamed debate was an interminable tedium of platitudinous dittos, garnished by relentless evasions and marinated in cowardly escapes from challenging the entrenched corporate interests."

Ron agrees with Nader here, but was not sitting next to Nader on the sidelines for the same reason. Nader was barred from the debate facility in Winston-Salem. Ron chose not even to be in the same state.

After the deplorable reception he received during an airplane layover in Charlotte, NC early in September, Ron was quoted as saying he'd never return to North Carolina. He said that the "toothless hicks should be able to better provide for a future President and his staff," and called his treatment "intolerable." (See article "Charlotte's Web")

Ron stood fast to his promise and actually spent the day in Atlanta, Georgia campaigning against flying the American flag over sacred Confederate sites.

He simply abstained from the debate. He just could not return to North Carolina and participate in an event after the ruckus in Charlotte. The critics were puzzled. Ron's constituency was not.

"I like a man who sticks to his guns," said Elaine Nesbit of Easton, Pennsylvania. "I baked him some lemon squares in support of his stance on this issue."

Ron acknowledged receipt of said lemon squares and thanked Mrs. Nesbit for her support and tasty treats. (The staff agreed: the lemon squares were delicious.) He also thanked the rest of his followers for their understanding of his principles in this matter.

"I wasn't going to let those grit-eating hillbillies get the best of me." He concluded, "I am grateful that my supporters grasp the reasons for my abstinence from the debate. I will voice my positions on key issues through other venues."

Posted by Webmaster at October 11, 2000 07:27 PM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://ron4president.com/cgi-bin/mt32/mt-tb.cgi/176