Will the Libertarian Party Field A Candidate Against Presidential Candidate Rand Paul?

[Wolfgang Bohringer]

What I imagine is that no party or movement should be a cult for a personality. The no-draft provision is there to protect the LP from being raided by Republicans or Democrats creating a phony groundswell for their candidate. If that were the case, McCain people could have joined the LP en masse and drafted McCain the LP candidate...

Ironically, a self-confessed McCain person raided the convention in 2008 and won the VP nomination.

As the poster Helmuth above points out, these things are really there for the taking. All that has to happen is for a very small number of QUALITY people to be inspired.

I first saw it in 1998 in Clark County Nevada when all we needed was about 300 people to take over the county and state republican parties to try to nominate Aaron Russo for Governor. They canceled votes, cheated, bussed in ringers, and committed all the crimes we saw them do against Ron.

Of course it would be better to have somebody actually seek the minor party's nomination rather than have to draft him. But when you got somebody like Ron Paul on TV promising to say No to the generals and bankers, it was a once in a lifetime opportunity and would have been a way to tell the provisional candidate that his inspirational qualities were lacking. If Gary Johnson was as good or better than Ron, he could have been a better candidate than Ron Paul. He's like Rand and just about every Libertarian that ever ran for anything--still a little scared of what people will think and what might happen if the fed doesn't bail out the banks and the generals don't get their money.

By having a guy running for a major party presidential nomination talking hardcore libertarianism on national TV, 100 times more progress was made toward the cultural advancement of libertarianism than the LP and any other project that I've seen in 50 years.

[Peace&Freedom]

Whatever, third parties exist in order to ensure that there is a legitimate choice C on the ballot, and not to give two party choices A and B an extra line. I can live with a faulty nomination on line C now and then, just knowing that a fair process free of A and B exists is a superior situation than a standby coronation. Ron Paul's campaign advanced the movement, no doubt, but it's mainly because the educational efforts of the LP and grassroots over the last few decades set up and seeded the harvest that has come post 2007.

[helmuth_hubener]

Whatever, third parties exist in order to ensure that there is a legitimate choice C on the ballot, and not to give two party choices A and B an extra line. I can live with a faulty nomination on line C now and then, just knowing that a fair process free of A and B exists is a superior situation than a standby coronation. Ron Paul's campaign advanced the movement, no doubt, but it's mainly because the educational efforts of the LP and grassroots over the last few decades set up and seeded the harvest that has come post 2007.

So for you being a third party has value in and of itself. And it probably does.

But for many of us, the main motivation is liberty. The whole point of having an LP (for us) is to advance our ideas of liberty. If it's not doing that, then, to us, it's not doing anything for us. It's not a useful tool. It's just junk and a waste of time.

So for us, this third party exists not, as you say, to ensure choice on ballots, but instead to advance the cause of libertarianism. That is why it exists. If it doesn't do that, it might as well not exist.

[Peace&Freedom]

That's exactly what I said in the last sentence of my above comment. The cause of libertarianism was advanced precisely because it proceeded independent of the statist controlled establishment parties, which is what set the stage for Paul to break through in the first place. I have advocated for a grassroots based infrastructure for the liberty movement, dependent on neither the major of minor party apparatus, to avoid the pitfalls of both.

The value a third party has in itself is largely as a principled vetting system for real liberty activists, not neutered sort-of liberty people in a major party, who will cave to the special interests as soon as elected. But in order for the LP to serve that function, it has to exist truly separate from the two party universe.

[philipped]

That's exactly what I said in the last sentence of my above comment. The cause of libertarianism was advanced precisely because it proceeded independent of the statist controlled establishment parties, which is what set the stage for Paul to break through in the first place. I have advocated for a grassroots based infrastructure for the liberty movement, dependent on neither the major of minor party apparatus, to avoid the pitfalls of both.

The value a third party has in itself is largely as a principled vetting system for real liberty activists, not neutered sort-of liberty people in a major party, who will cave to the special interests as soon as elected. But in order for the LP to serve that function, it has to exist truly separate from the two party universe.

So what you're basically saying is I should tell some of my registered DEM young friends to become active in the county DEM party and push the philosophy of liberty there, and in the GOP as well?

[helmuth_hubener]

The value a third party has in itself is largely as a principled vetting system for real liberty activists, not neutered sort-of liberty people in a major party, who will cave to the special interests as soon as elected.

So did you push for the LP-NY to put someone on the ballot other than Bob Barr? Or did you just go along with that?

[RandallFan]

The Libertarian Party peaked in 1980 (with Koch as VP) with 1.00% of the vote. Gary Johnson got 0.99% against the biggest of big government candidates Romney and Obama.

The Libertarian Party also won't get any surge in third party votes because the main issue that could drive third party voting into 2%-10% is amnesty or free trade agreements at the moment, depending on how the war on ISIS expands.

[fr33]

If Rand fails, but wins more support than liberty has ever had, how is that 12 years wasted?

When in history has liberty ever had as much momentum as it has now? Or as easy a target?

He'll have done what his father did. Meanwhile the party he is in, is still a fascist freedom hating party.

As far as your historical question goes, statism is probably a relatively new thing for humans. The anti-statism folks of history mostly didn't have the benefit of recorded history.

[fr33]

Face it, the LP is a joke and a burden on liberty

I have to disagree with the burden. Aside from from only 1 or 2 local elections, Democrats and Republicans are the face of injustice in the next election. There isn't a Republican or Democrat running in state and national offices that is worth a $#@!. I'm going to vote for every Libertarian on the ballot.

[TheTexan]

This issue definitely has important strategic voting considerations. We definitely need to discuss this further, so that our very important votes are not wasted.

[r3volution 3.0]

apparently, libertarians aren't as superficial as you are.
they don't care what you do for a living, they care what your ideas are.
You are an example of the general populations superficiality.
An example why the LP will never win. the problem is the superficiality of the minds of people, not the LP running waitresses.

There's nothing wrong with my plan to jump off a cliff; the only problem is that gravity is in effect.

The superficiality of voters is, like gravity, a fact of nature; it will never change.

Any plan which refuses to recognize this fact of nature is a bad plan.

[Christian Liberty]

So did you push for the LP-NY to put someone on the ballot other than Bob Barr? Or did you just go along with that?

I didn't know anything about politics back then, but thinking back on it... Bob Barr was terrible. And while Mary Ruwart was objectively good on 99.9% of issues, getting her into a national debate of any kind would be one of the stupidest things the liberty movement could do, IMO. So stupid that I'm surprised nobody in the mainstream parties made sure it happened. Ruwart has defended the legality of child porn which is NOT something we want stupid people to be able to identify libertarianism with.

[Peace&Freedom]

So what you're basically saying is I should tell some of my registered DEM young friends to become active in the county DEM party and push the philosophy of liberty there, and in the GOP as well?

I'm suggesting one have liberty people be prepared to run as either a Republican or Democrat in an open seat situation, as the best solution to getting more liberty people into office. If a seat in a Democratic district opens up, run a Ron Paul Democrat in the primary, and if a seat in a Republican district opens up, run a Ron Paul Republican in the primary.

If you can't find either in a given race, go to the LP and fund a candidate to run in the major party primary (perhaps in addition to their running third party). Use the local LP, CP, TP and CFL universe as the vetting system for new candidates, and as a coalition base for liberty activists. Our support infrastructure should be grassroots based, outside the trappings of either major or minor parties, so we can use the strengths of both, without being bogged down by the disadvantages of both. We don't have to necessarily nest in or be dependent on a major party structure, just opportunistically seize upon each open seat primary and election case where victory is more probable.

So did you push for the LP-NY to put someone on the ballot other than Bob Barr? Or did you just go along with that?

The problems with Barr did not fully emerge until over the course of his campaign, at which point we were stuck with the nominee.