Topic: Election 2008
Principled-But at What Cost? The list of reasons Libertarians have against certain candidates is long. Should we relax our principles during the General Election, or insure we lose every time, but hold our heads high that we were voting our principles?by EJ Moosa
(Libertarian)
Monday, August 11, 2008
As I sit with Libertarians(and many Conservatives who would be Libertarians-if only they could win), I often walk away frustrated, sad, and well, depressed. The conclusion is we will never make headway in the Presidential Race.I am starting to believe that they have the correct conclusion.
Libertarians seek the "perfect" candidate. That candidate agrees with all of the issues that the Libertarian voter is concerned about. Republicans and Democrats go about it with the one issue concept-whatever my MAJOR issue is, the candidate that supports it will get my vote.
I have no doubt that Libertarians have put more thought, more research, and more soul-searching into determining who they should support. But they seem to do just as much in deciding that they will not support the Libertarian candidate if they find anything that they disagree with in that candidate's past.
So I must ask you "How is this approach working?" My answer- It's not.
So in the General Election this fall, the conservatives will support McCain, the liberals will support Obama, and the Libertarians? Not Barr.
Yet, of those three candidates, Barr will most closely represent what Libertarians believe. So how is this a winning strategy? "Not about winning", you say? It is for me.
Because I know that once a Libertarian-leaning candidate gets enough support, the next election cycle we will see even more Libertarian-leaning candidates and platforms. But if Libertarians will not even support a Libertarian candidate, why would anyone even consider moving in that direction?
I appreciate the principled approach more than most. But the time to stick to your principles is in the selection process of the candidate for your party. After the selection process, by turning your back on the candidate, you are harming your party and benefitting the other parties.
In any battle, the key is to be able to survive to fight the next day. Not only do we risk being weaker after this General Election, we risk not surviving at all.
Is it possible for me to sit down and convince myself that Barr is a worse alternative than McCain or Obama? No. Am I happy with Barr as the choice? No. Do I want to see the movement weaker after the election than it was before the election? No.
No candidate is perfect. Libertarian standards for their candidate are the polar opposite of those for the Democrats or Republicans. But we have to play this election game as they have defined it, until we have the power to change it. Today, we have no power at all. We may spend our money, burn our money, and discuss our ideas, but we have no political power.
Playing the election game as we would like it to be played, rather than as it must be played to win, only insures one outcome-that we will lose.
All the principle in the world cannot change that.
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The views expressed in this
article are those of EJ Moosa only and do not represent
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Posted By: Walt Thiessen
Date: 2008-08-12 05:03:02
There is a false assumption in your argument. You assume that voting for Barr is about winning because he's not the perfect candidate, that this will somehow make him more acceptable to the masses. That's not true. Libertarians haven't been failing to win because they're too principled or because they're too picky. Libertarians have failed to win because they're a third party and experience all of the down sides of being a third party.
Those (like you) who have been arguing for years that what we really needed was an experienced non-perfect politician like Bob Barr running on the LP ticket in order to finally win (or at least to experience a break through) fail to fully understand this reality. You think that Barr has a much better chance of winning than a "pure" candidate such as a Harry Browne. You're wrong.
This election is actually a very important election for the LP, because it will prove once and for all that this ideal of pragmatism that you follow is nothing but a red herring. I predict here and now that not only will Barr not win, not only will he not get 1 million votes, he won't even top Harry Browne's 465,000 votes in 1996. And that should be the final, deciding factor in determining the falsehood of the idea that we need to abandon looking for "pure" candidates in favor of looking for political experienced "unpure" candidates for President because of "practical" or "pragmatic" reasons.
Practicality and pragmatism (or the lack thereof) have nothing to do with winning. They have to do with posturing. Let 2008 be the year when posturing finally shows its true, losing colors.
The Libertarians via the Libertarian Party picked Bob Barr. Bob Barr was not running against Harry Browne. He was not running against Badnarik. He was not running against Ron Paul. And Bob Barr got the nomination.
Even I can predict Bob Barr will not win the general election. And how many votes he gets will not matter. The dissection after the election will blame everything from Ron Paul to Bob Barr to voting against McCain or Obama being the most important.
The false logic is that you will get a Libertarian candidate that will ever make more than 50% of the Libertarians happy, and therefore supportive. Libertians are not one or two issue voters. Libertarians are proving that the ywill not support the Libertarian candidate even if the other candidates are clearly less libertarian.
I have been a Libertarian for 18 years. I have discussed this issue at length with Libertarians and non-libertarians. Even if you consider it a "red Herring", it still has to be dealt with and not ignored.
Bobb Barr is running against John McCain and Barrack Obama. My question to you remains- Which candidate will represent the Libertarian ideals most closely from 2009-2012? How do I explain to non-Libertarians that the Libertarians at large will not support their own candidate? The "herding cats" reference about leading the Libertarian Party seems to be true, unfortunately.
Whether you like it or not, these are our choices in this election cycle. I do not like it. But that is the choice.
My choices are to support Barr, and try to help the party amass enough votes so becomes more attractive in the future, or as you suggest, withhold my vote, and weaken the party so that it somehow changes so drastically in 2012 that it has a brand new appeal.
So I will predict now that the Libertarian Party will not change much between now and 2012, but the party will still be here. We will be faced with the same issues, and the same "red Herring."
Barr does have support in the state of Georgia. He may get more votes than you expect.
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