Opinion: Brian Moore, the Socialist candidate for president, is more popular than ever
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Campaign 2008 has been a fierce fame-making machine, albeit for notoriety that can be most fleeting.
Yet Brian Moore, the Socialist candidate for president of the United States of America and the latest to bask in the media glow, has seen his 15 minutes stretch on for a couple of weeks. And he’s hoping for quite a bit more.
It all started a couple of weeks ago, when the Republican ticket began to paint Barack Obama as a ‘socialist’ and the ‘redistributor in chief,’ after the Democrat made his now famous remark to Joe ‘the Plumber’ Wurzelbacher about ‘spreading the wealth around.’
That created an opening for Moore of Spring Hill, Fla., who finds the Republicans lacking in credibility and Obama badly wanting when it comes the true collectivist spirit. The former HMO executive and Socialist Party USA presidential nominee has been in nearly constant demand in recent days.
On Monday, he was giving yet another radio interview, this one to a station in St. Louis. He earlier had been featured by the Chicago Tribune, Fox News, St. Petersburg Times, the Nation and the New Republic, to name just a few.
The 65-year-old physical fitness fanatic’s biggest splash came last week on ‘The Colbert Report.’ Host Stephen Colbert greeted him as ‘Comrade Moore,’ and when the obscure candidate insisted Obama was not a socialist, Colbert retorted, ‘What do you mean, he wants to redistribute the wealth. That makes him a pinko, right?’
Moore . . ..
. . . . chuckled.
He explained in an interview with The Times that true socialism would require a more dramatic change, one that would not require big government but would put workers in charge of the nation’s wealth.
‘Citizens can then share in the profits and redistribute the profits from a military economy into a social service and infrastructure economy,’ Moore said.
The Socialists -- Moore and running mate Stewart Alexander, a Riverside car dealer -- said they will appear on the ballot in eight states, including Florida and Ohio, but not California.
Moore dropped out of seminary as a young man. He joined the Peace Corps. After working in the health industry he said he helped nonprofits bring healthcare to Latin America.
He said he regularly swims and plays pickup basketball and has never smoked, leading him to speculate that he is ‘healthier than Obama is.’
Moore described the Republicans and Democrats as being inextricably linked to corporate America, like ‘tweedledee and tweedledum,’ and predicted that the economic crisis would finally open Americans to another way.
‘To me it’s a watershed,’ Moore said. ‘It’s opened up the eyes of America of the weaknesses of capitalism. There has never been so much publicity about socialism in the last 70 years.”
-- James Rainey
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