NewParty.org Calls Barack Obama a "member"

OK, so I've read a lot of stuff that reaching many different directions on the whole “Obama is a Socialist” stuff and much of it is just conjecture at best. The problem with a lot of conjecture is that you end up getting overloaded with crapy information and as a result make a similarly opinionated jump,

“Oh, there is so much crap out there, it therefor must not be true, so I won't entertain the thought of it!”

when the reasonable response seems to be,

“So far, everything I have read is crap and based on that information Obama doesn't seem to be a socialist.”

That feels like a reasonable response. Why would i say that? Because unless someone can produce something that seems like legitimate evidence of such a connection, then there is no reason to believe it. Just because he wants to “spread (your) wealth around (through a government mandate)” and that seems fairly socialist in nature, doesn't mean he is himself a socialist. Fair enough. Oddly enough, reading some posts on a few news articles I came across a link to the wayback machine (this was a quick little link buried deep into some posts.) In an effort to ensure the information doesn't mysteriously disappear, I have grabbed a screenshot of the page, which is viewable below. To understand what you are looking at requires a little explanation. Check out the image and read more below to understand what you are looking at.



So this is a very bland looking web page that has a New Party logo at the top. The address for this is...

http://web.archive.org/web/20010306031216/www.newparty.org/up9610.html

Back when I worked for the Experimental Aircraft Association as we were doing various research around our websites we would use the wayback machine to review the progress and changes to various web sites of interest. The reason it looks very simple would have everything to do with the way the wayback machine archives web pages to reduce the overall size of the archive. To keep this simple, the page might have looked slightly more fancy when it was originally published, but in the archive here, we can at least read the content of the page, which is the important part.

Let's break it down. First from what we see here, the wayback machine archived this New Party website page March 6th, 2001, even though it refers to an October 1996 news items on their website. The page is from the website newparty.org which, according to domains.whois.com was purchased some time in 1995. Unfortunately the owner of the site employed a “proxy” registration service which keeps us from knowing who is actually behind the site / owns and manages the site itself. Based on the “page not found” messages as well as the domain registration itself, it appears that the site was and is hosted on the godaddy.com web hosting service. So, enough about the site itself. What does this page tell us really?

Admittedly, one has to make a few assumptions. I want to be upfront about that because we are dealing with a fairly serious topic here that raises serious questions about Democrat Presidential Candidate Barack Obama. It is one thing to ague about agreeing with his political agenda but another thing entirely to raise questions that propose a reasonable doubt about his denial of New Party affiliation.

In an effort to keep this review reasonable I will attempt to keep the assumptions separated from what appears to be the facts. Here are my assumptions:

1. This article appears to be a press release on the 1996 fall campaign races and an itemized list of New Party (NP) candidates.
   
   
2. This article seems to make a distinction between (1) NP backed candidates, (2) candidates that sought NP nomination and (3) actual NP members.
   

Let's get on to what appear to be facts that we can draw from this article.

1. The New Party backs Democrat and Independent candidates. That is fairly vague, but simply validates what we are looking at. The New Party actively promotes something called “fusion” which, with a limited cursory understanding by me, seems to mean that New Party candidates are able to retain their New Party membership while running for office under another ticket. This might not sound too significant at first glance. Imagine if a Republican ran for office and was concurrently promoted as a Rotarian or an Elks Lodge member. The idea here is that they are appealing to Republicans AND specifically to a demographic of people who are affiliated with those clubs. Doesn't seem like a big deal, does it? But being a New Party member isn't the same as belonging to the Elks or the Rotarian. The Elks and Rotarian are not political parties. The New Party is a political party. So the idea with fusion is that you retain your affiliation to the New Party and at the same time can run under a different parties political ticket. The real question is, “Did Obama do this?”
   
   
2. Under the Illinois section of this article, the New party website claims that Barack Obama was one of three New Party members who won Democratic ticket primaries. So, according to the official New Party website, the New Party are claiming that Obama was a member of the political New Party and actively involved in the “fusion” agenda.
   
   
3. The last piece of evidence worth examining is our “control group” meaning the group that creates the contrast between how they classify Obama with regard to other types of New party candidates. Said another way (in the form of a question) , “Does this demonstrate that Obama is actually a member or is he just someone the New Party was backing?” According to fightthesmears.com the New Party did support Barack Obama, but it was unsolicited. But according to the research uncovered by Clintondems.com website Barack sought New Party endorsement, attended and participated in meetings of the Chicago New Party, and signed a contract with the NP promising “a visible and active relationship with the NP.” (fightthesmear.com seems to possibly have some propoganda issues, if the assertions and links provided by the clintondems.com are true.)
   
   So, for fact number 3, take a look at the New York section of the article image included above. Here, rather than referring to the three New York candidates as NP “members”, they are simply referred to as “backed” in their races. At the same time review the Minnesota section, where the Progressive Minnesota candidates are referred to as having “sought (NP) nomination.” So, in summary, there seem to be candidates that “sought NP nomination”, candidates that are “backed” by the NP, and candidates like Barack Obama who were “members.”
   

fightthesmear.com is correct that Obama has run as a Democrat in his political career, but this is absolutely deceptive reporting because they are ignoring the “fusion” agenda which is still promoted by newparty.org today, and validated by the above image of the article archived at the Wayback Machine. You will also notice at the top of the fightthesmear.com site that the Obama campaign claims that they do not wield politics that smear, but in this politically deceptive article they immediately leave behind any real or reasonable facts and spend two thirds of the article smearing Stanley Kurtz. That is what we like to call “the pot calling the kettle, black.”

In conclusion, either Barack Obama and his 1995 state senator campaign manager Carol Harwell are telling lies or the New Party is misrepresenting it's relationship to Barack Obama in this above article. Between this article and the research done by the clintondems.com site, I believe there is more than a reasonable doubt that Barack Obama had a legitimate, sought after connection with the New Party as a member, enacting “fusion” agenda.

My personal commentary: If history repeats itself, the Obama camp will (1) soon admit to the New Party connection, and even though they have been denying it until now Obama will claim that he was always clear about his willingness to work with them on common goals. Then because of revealing information like this, they will (2) attempt to minimize Obamas involvement. Eventually, like in the case of his pastor, Dr. Wright, and a slew of other shady characters, Obama will have to (3) find a way to distance himself from the New Party by renouncing the connection.

As a reminder, please do not shoot the messenger. I am trying to be fair with my assessment of these revelations here. Don't be mad at me for revealing the affiliations of Obama. If you are upset, direct your queries to the campaign of Barack Obama.