Constitution Party Still Whining to Courts; Candidate Deleting Attacks

The South Dakota Constitution Party continues its futile search for an activist judge to give it preferential treatment under South Dakota election law. The Constitution Party is asking the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn Judge Roberto Lange's decision that the Constitution Party failed to follow the legal requirements to place candidates on South Dakota's statewide ballot.

The only point of this appeal is publicity. The law is solid, as is Judge Lange's ruling. Secretary of State Chris Nelson has already drawn the ballot order. The only Constitution Party candidate you'll see on the South Dakota this November is Lori Stacey, who will get 1% of the vote for Secretary of State.

Speaking of Lori, her lawyers must be too busy writing up the ballot appeal to bother with her faux-legal grumblings. Last week she posted a threat to sue "a particular blogger" for libel. I merely mentioned that threat here on the blog Saturday. (O.K., I mentioned it, then laughed at it.) I also left some blogging advice and recommended a lawyer in Stacey's comment section. By Monday morning, that threat had disappeared Stacey's Sioux Falls Conservative Examiner blog.

Interestingly, Stacey had replaced that post with a gripe about South Dakota Right to Life's choosing to endorse Republican Jason Gant for Secretary of State rather than herself. "SD Right To Life chooses partisan politics over principles," read the headline, dated August 29. This morning, that post is gone, too. Politifi scraped up the opening lines here, as did Worldnews.

Google result for Lori Stacey's now-deleted blog post on Jason Gant
and the hypocrisy of SD Right to Life, 2010.08.31, 09:37 CDT

I can't wait to hear Lori Stacey in the debates against Gant and Ben Nesselhuf, just to hear her start every rebuttal with, "No, wait, never mind what I said two minutes ago. I didn't really say that."

I would honestly enjoy the rise of a serious third party to challenge America's two-party system (or, arguably, in South Dakota's case, the one-party system). Alas, the Constitution Party demonstrates at every turn they don't have the chops to fill that serious role.