Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
Rich Burkett has, for the third time, announced he is seeking nomination for the U.S. Congressional seat from Indiana's Third District.
But this time, he will be on the Reform Party ticket.
"I'm not going to win this election," said Burkett. "The only way I'm going to win is if a lightning bolt hit Holtz and a lightning bolt hit Roemer, and the heavens open up and God comes down with some kind of message. And I don't think that's going to happen."
Democrat Tim Roemer is the incumbent Burkett is hoping to unseat, and Democrat Dan Holtz and Dewey Conley also are candidates.
That being said, he has hopes that someone will come along later that will have a chance at winning because of what Burkett does in this election.
"We welcome Democrats, Republicans and Independents. Particularly we welcome those who have lost faith in both political parties and still retain faith in the ballot box. This will be their chance to be part of a better party and a better America.
"I'm not certain we need a third political party, but we sure need a second one," he said.
Burkett ran in 1994 with no campaign budget and a group of "grass-roots" amateurs against Roemer. However, he was still able to take 45 percent of the vote.
"I was never in the race just to be a congressman," he said, "but to oppose those things that I saw as destructive to the future of a free people and to show that America and all her people are still capable of achieving individual and collective greatness."
Burkett believes the political parties no longer truly exist. Instead, he said there is only one party, which he calls the Incumbent Party. Because the scales are tipped in the incumbents' favor, he said, the odds are that anyone who challenges them will be unsuccessful. All the incumbents have to do is "go along" with whatever the higher powers say.
It is this go-along attitude that caused Burkett to loose faith in people like U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich. "If you get too confrontational, you get edged out of the picture," Burkett said. "Roemer knows what's going on but he likes his job. Dan Holtz doesn't even know the questions, let alone the answers.
"At some point Reform Party principles will begin to break the stranglehold of the Incumbent Party on American politics."
The issues, according to Burkett, are not what gets covered by most of the media. He mentioned how the Chinese government has bought a naval base in San Diego, adding that the Japanese were stupid to bomb Pearl Harbor when all they had to do was buy it.
He said the $40 billion the United States paid Mexico to aid the "bubble" in Mexico's economy should have been avoided. He claimed the government knew about the bubble but that they needed to "prop up the Mexicans."
If the $40 billion had not been sent we might lose some of the cheap labor and undercut union jobs, he said.
"I'm not accusing anyone of being stupid, I'm accusing them of hiding the pill on the American public," said Burkett.
In fact, Burkett is surprised that Democrats, the "friends of the union," aren't doing everything they can to see that the agreement fails. That might save a few American jobs, he says.
"But that's not important," Burkett said sarcastically. "What is important is whether oral sex constitutes adultery. Let's cover that in excruciating detail."
