Thread: Get these candidates a map

Get these candidates a map
Voters want directions to NAFTA Highway

By Dorgan, Liebowitz
Monitor staff


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Jul 22, 2007


Republican presidential candidates, this is for you. You may not have heard of one of the hottest topics among GOP audiences in New Hampshire: The NAFTA Superhighway, a road that some claim is being built to connect Canada and Mexico - a step, they say, toward erasing all borders.

To explain, we'll throw to Texas Rep. Ron Paul, the 1988 Libertarian Party presidential nominee who is now running an upstart campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.

Last fall, in a feature on his House website called "Texas Straight Talk," Paul wrote that the road's proponents want to build a "10-lane colossus the width of several football fields, with freight and rail lines, fiber-optic cable lines, and oil and natural gas pipelines running alongside".

And that's not all, says Paul: "The ultimate goal is not simply a superhighway, but an integrated North American Union - complete with a currency, a cross-national bureaucracy, and virtually borderless travel within the Union."

To make his case, Paul points to highway expansions in Texas. Additionally, he describes the formation of a North American "Security and Prosperity Partnership" with Mexico and Canada, which he said is advancing secret plans for a superhighway.

A spokesman for the Federal Highway Administration says it's plain untrue.
"There are a number of sources that are misinterpreting information into this urban legend of a NAFTA superhighway," said spokesman Doug Hecox.

The SPP website (spp.gov) features a "Myth vs. Fact" page about the partnership and goes into some detail about the rumors, explaining that some states are building highways, but that "the U.S. government does not have the authority to designate any highway as a NAFTA Super Highway, nor has it sought such authority, nor is it planning to seek such authority."

Be it fact or myth, candidates are taking the question. In his column last fall, Paul predicted that "the superhighway will become a sleeper issue in the 2008 election" - and that much, at least, appears to have come true.

At an American Legion post in Alton on Memorial Day, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney took two questions on the purported superhighway, which questioners said was going to involve huge free-trade-zone in Kansas. Romney seemed baffled. First, he replied that there are already highways connecting Canada and Mexico.

Then, he passed the mic to former representative Jeb Bradley, who gave some background on trade zones and more.

Romney spokesman Craig Stevens said the road comes up at town meetings second only to immigration policy.

"He's addressed this in all of his town halls recently," Stevens said. "We believe it's urban legend."

But, Stevens added, Romney does not back the idea. "He does not support it," he said. "He wouldn't support it."

At the New Hampshire Technical Institute in Concord this month, a woman asked New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani about the "road around America." She said she'd heard they mayor's consulting firm was involved in building - and, she said, it might come through New Hampshire.

Giuliani responded: "First of all, I don't know what you're talking about. The road around America? Road around America?"

Woman: "I know it's a strange question."

Giuliani: "It is!"

The former New York mayor softened his stance, saying he doesn't about everything that everyone at his firm does. But Giuliani reassured the woman: "Well, you can vote for me because I don't know about it!"

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