The Libertarian Party of Georgia has qualified twelve candidate to run for office in their state. At the top of the ticket is John Monds for Governor. Monds received over one million votes in his race for Public Service Commissioner District 1.
The Libertarian Party of Georgia on Tuesday officially entered the 2010 campaign season when party leaders placed a dozen candidates on the November ballot.
Libertarians in Georgia do not hold primaries, but choose their general election candidates at a convention in April.
“Today is a historic occasion for the state of Georgia, as well as the Libertarian Party of Georgia,” said Daniel Adams, chairman of Libertarian Party of Georgia. “We just qualified our first full statewide slate, including the first African-American candidate for governor and the first female candidate for lieutenant governor on the general election ballot.”
The full list of candidates is:
- Chuck Donovan, U.S. Senate
- John Monds, governor
- Rhonda Martini, lieutenant governor
- David Chastain, secretary of state
- Don Smart, attorney general
- Kira Willis, state school superintendent
- Kevin Cherry, agriculture commissioner
- Shane Bruce, insurance commissioner
- William Costa, labor commissioner
- James Sendelbach, Public Service Commission District 2
- Brooke Nebel, state House District 51
- Brad Ploeger, state House District 59
JT, you may not have noticed, but while Prof. Phillies is a very bright fellow on some levels, he generally will not engage when his inconsistencies are exposed.
One gets the impression in this thread that DADT was a conservative scheme, and the noble liberals want to abolish it. It was a policy instituted by Clinton, whom most liberals I’ve seen point to as a good president, even in the liberal camp, despite some non-liberal actions.
Near as I can tell, Phillies seems to have established same-gender marriage, abortion and DADT as his litmus tests. While I personally would largely agree with my understanding of his position on marriage; mostly agree with it on abortion; and am still somewhat ambivalent on DADT, it seems dysfunctional to use these single issues as litmus tests. A lot of Ls and liberty lovers and leaners line up on the other side on these matters, and while I don’t agree with them, I still consider them to be on the team.
I’ve pointed this out before to GP, and he has not engaged or elaborated on what he means. Are Ls who disagree with him on these three issues not L? Should they be excommunicated? Should they be barred from running for office on the L line? Something else? Thus far, deafening silence in response.
Odds are high that he won’t explain himself. But, then, those who are paying attention will likely agree that his explanations to date for narcing to the FEC over a bookkeeping error are nonsensical.
Of course, today is a new day, and the good professor has yet ANOTHER opportunity to set the record straight.
To err really is human, to forgive divine. Candor makes that process a LOT less painful, near as I can tell.
perhaps we should “FIX” what’s wrong instead of “fox”ing it….
Libertarian candidates could really set themselves apart and expose the other candidates for what they really are if they’d ask the other candidates the same questions that I am.
When I can I ask the following…..
“Like most people, I place very little faith in words spoken by any politician or political hopeful. We have been lied to so much by politicians from both sides that all politicians are assumed to be liars.
This is no reflection on you personally, but is a conditioned response by all those who came before you, and is, unfortunately, a burden that you, and other political hopefuls, must bear.
My question is…would you support a law that criminalizes lying to get elected?
Since this behavior eats away at the faith of the people in our political system and results in many people no longer voting or participating because they think that it doesn’t matter, I believe that this behavior is detrimental to our country and tantamount to treason.
What would you do with a politician who lied to gain political office?”
If we can’t count on them to be honest during the elections, we’ll NEVER fox what’s wrong.
Discussing ANY “issues” before criminalizing lying to gain elected office is an exercise in futility.
Check out who I asked at whatjimsaid.com.
Philies: [Lake, Told ya so, told ya so!]
Nazis: [Brothers under the skin, Alexander the Grape, Napoleon Blown Apart, Hitler, Stalin!]
Road to Ruin: [Sweden’s Charles the XII, Napolean, Hitler ……….]
George, I see you didn’t respond to my post 20. That’s okay; I didn’t expect you would.
As to your last comment, I must have missed the part where liberal pols came out foursquare against those things at the time.
I know you’re a left-libertarian (if we’re going to make such a distinction, which I don’t like). But saying most conservatives are authoritarians while not applying that label to most liberals is myopic. And then, based on that personal belief (unless you have surveys from different areas of the country supporting that notion), concluding that Libertarians generally draw much more votes from liberals than conservatives? Give me a break.
Btw, the Nazis in WWII weren’t just gross violators of civil liberties; they were also advocates of an enormous government bureaucracy and welfare state. So they embodied the worst elements of both conservatives AND liberals.
@22
I’m sorry, but the people who revived the use of torture in warfare, wiretapped almost all phone calls in the US, practice detention without trial, and launched a war of aggression against Iraq are indeed authoritarians. Roughly speaking, they’re like the people my father fought in World War 2 against.
I should add to my above post that it’s liberals, not conservatives, who want to make the current discriminatory tax system even more unequal. They want to greatly increase income and FICA taxes on high-income Americans, while decreasing the taxes of low-income Americans (many, though not all, of whom pay practically no income taxes as is). So much for “equality under the law.”
That isn’t to say that conservative politicians are much better than liberal ones overall; it’s to say that calling conservatives pols and not liberal pols “authoritarians” is unwarranted.
I think it is a good point that Libertarians have demographics on their side. On the other hand, you could just as easily say that many of those groups support redistribuitive and/or coercive programs in some area. And while that doesn’t mean the Libertarians cant get their support, it means they will have to work for them to.
That also doesn’t mean the Republicans cannot try to appeal to these voters too with what planks may appeal to them. The Republicans will not simply disappear from the political status quo without a fight, and they have shown the ability to change their platform over time.
However, looking at the current state of the electorate rather than future trends there are still strong arguments against the idea that the Libertarian Party could do best with liberals. The best gubernatorial bid in nationwide history was under Ed Thompson, who could easily be considered in the more conservative wing of the party and is today running for state senate as a Republican. In addiition, the Alaska LPs state legislators from the 80s were all conservative leaning if I remember right, and some I think eventually switched parties to Republican and AIP.
That is not to say that the LP-NC effort hasn’t yielded fruit in targeting liberals. But it is important to emphasize that this isn’t the only path to electoral viability for the LP.
George, you made a generalized statement first that Libertarians draw “much more” from liberals than conservatives. You didn’t say Beitler is drawing much more from liberals than conservatives; you said we Libertarians do. Where you got that conclusion I have no idea; you must have access to many voter surveys in different areas of the country that I’m not aware of.
Nevertheless, you then moderated your claim to either “modestly more” or “equal.” There’s a difference there. If you don’t see it, then perhaps it’s your logic that needs some work, and not my reading comprehension.
George: “With respect to liberals, we do not see liberals advocating against equality for all before the law, for removing a woman’s right to choose, or for continuing don’t ask don’t tell — quite the opposite, in fact. Similarly, we do not see the very few conservatives in Washington advocating for yet more war or for expanded Federal spending.”
So, IYO, this is the essential difference between those who are authoritarians and those who aren’t? Abortion and don’t ask, don’t tell? One could counter that conservatives were the ones leading the charge against the horrible health care bill that recently passed. None of these things are enough, IMO, to claim that one side is much more authoritarian than the other one.
JT:
I said, in a paragraph referring to the SUSA poll on Beitler,
“The first question has a long list of places we might draw our voters from. We Libertarians draw about equally from Democrats and Republicans, but much more from Independents and those uninterested in religion. We draw much more from liberals than from conservatives.”
to be quantitative from the poll, Beitler’s support is
4% — of conservatives
6% — of folks in the middle
8% — of liberals
Which is EXACTLY what I said in the previous post. Apparently your reading comprehension needs some work.
With respect to liberals, we do not see liberals advocating against equality for all before the law, for removing a woman’s right to choose, or for continuing don’t ask don’t tell — quite the opposite, in fact. Similarly, we do not see the very few conservatives in Washington advocating for yet more war or for expanded Federal spending.
We see Republicans arguing for all these things.
Republicans — the authoritarian party.
George: “When there is enough polling data to answer the question, we either equally from liberals and from conservatives or draw modestly more from liberals than from conservatives, but mostly from independents.”
First, this is NOT what you said in your previous post. There you said, “We draw much more from liberals than from conservatives.” Now it’s modestly more or equal?
Second, I don’t even know what data you have from different regions across the country showing that Libertarians draw significantly more from one side than the other. Please do share it.
George: “This result is not even vaguely surprising, given that modern Republican “conservatives” are parked at the bottom of the Nolan chart.”
Sorry, but modern Democratic “liberals” are there as well. Maybe hailing from the most left-wing state in the country is coloring your perception.
Let us consider the broader demographics here:
Occasionally, buried in news from other political factions is some incredibly good news for our Libertarian Party. And here we have some, in the form of a statistical report Demographic Change and the Future of the Parties, which you can read at http://www.americanprogressaction.org/issues/2010/06/pdf/voter_demographics.pdf
The author is Ruy Teixeira, a demographics expert and progressive democrat. He was co-author, with John Judis, of the excellent book “The Emerging Democratic Majority” which seems to have done a respectable job of describing the 2006 and 2008 elections, except that it was written in 2002 and described the elections via predictions.
While Teixeira usually writes as a progressive Democrat, in this paper he makes considerable effort to propose how the Republican Party way might avoid its current demographic destination, someplace in the vicinity of the whooping crane and the passenger pigeon. Republicans will justly say that his solution involves the Republican elephant amputating its trunk and then cutting its own throat.
As a Libertarian, I offer a different and much more positive perspective, not that having the Republican Party dissolve would not be wonderful news, namely that Teixeira’s report is wonderful news, for us!
Demographics impel voting patterns; they do not compel voting patterns. Out there in every group are a certain number of people who will vote Libertarian for their own very personal reasons.
Nonetheless, it should be anything but surprising that if you collect a large group of people with similar backgrounds, educations, and habits of mind, you will find that their voting patterns tend to be similar, too.
So what demographics are found by Teixeira? The following numbers are almost all paraphrases from his 45 page report; the interlaced commentary is mine.
America has gained a large upper-middle-class. That’s positive news for us, because our philosophy of entrepreneurialism and self-reliance is particularly appealing to people with the resources to be entrepreneurial and self-reliant. The numbers: In 1947, the 80th percentile of family income in 1947 was around $41,000 (in 2008 dollars) and the 95th percentile was $68,000. A few percent of all Americans had family incomes above $100,000. In 2008, the 80th percentile was around $113,000, nearly three times as much, and the 95th percentile was about $200,000. By 2030, a reasonable projection is that
$100,000 of annual family income will be about the 60th percentile. (Those of you who can recall Harry Truman’s 1949 State of the Union Address and other reports may remember his prediction, then widely disbelieved, that income would triple in the next 50 years…he was pretty close.)
That upper-middle-class group is increasingly split between managerial types with a Bachelor’s degree, who tend to be Republican conservatives, and professional types with post-graduate education, who tend to be socially liberal Democrats. The division here leads us to another demographic:
Education: The party of reality-based politics draws its votes from people who are willing to think about our stands. Those people are in considerable part educated professionals with advanced educations. Fifty years ago, professionals with a post-graduate education were a small minority. Now they are rapidly expanding, so they are 18 % of the electorate and (given that they vote) close to 21% of all voters. While they are well-to-do, they are readily split away from the Repiblican party. In fact, they already have been, namely they voted 2:1 for Kerry over Bush. The Republican dead-end march tends to insure that Republicans cannot collect these votes, because they are the votes of people who are, notes Tiexeira, forthrightly liberal on social issues, moderate reformists on economic issues and have “a distaste for aggressive militarism in foreign policy”. In short, these are people who are solidly libertarian on social and foreign policy issues, and relative to where America is now ready to move in our direction on fiscal
policy. And if they do not want to move as far, well, we have a long ways to go before this is an issue.
Religion: A quite respectable fraction of Libertarians started with the novels or philosophy of Ayn Rand, who was a militant atheist. Our Libertarian Party is rather broader than this, but there is a strong theological trend in our direction. The fraction of Americans who attend services only a few times a year or less has risen to 44 percent of voters, while voters without any religious affiliation has tripled since
1944, and is now up to 14%. These people are our natural targets, just as white evangelical Christians are natural targets of the Republicans, but our plausible demographic groups are rapidly expanding.
Indeed, it appears that by 2020 give or take a Presidential election cycle, only a minority of Americans will be white Christians.
Unmarried women, especially the highly educated: We’re Libertarians. We’re prochoice about everything. And we are opposed to foreign intervention, such as the Bush/Obama wars on Iraq, Afghanistan, not to mention parts of Pakistan, Somalia, the Yemen, the Philipines, and it would appear several other Stans. That has some important consequences, because single women are now 47% of all women. Within that group, single women went for Obama by 70 percent to 29 percent, working women voted for Obama by 60 percent to 39 percent, and a reasonable estimate is that 65% of college educated women voted for Obama. As noted by James Oaksun in the New Path for the LP Plan, Step Five, Page 36 at http://newpathforthelp.org/images/stories/newpathbook.pdf we have a real target audience in young women, who are way left on social issues, draw a bright line against foreign intervention, and are antiauthoritarians who distrust bigness, whether in government or private groups. Those women are prime targets for our Libertarian party, because they support us on our issues, and given the college gender graduation gap the target audience is expanding rapidly.
Finally, young people, which is not the same thing as college students: Teixeira writes: “On social issues, Millennials support gay marriage, take race and gender equality as givens, are tolerant of religious and family diversity, have an open and positive attitude toward immigration, and generally display little interest in fighting over the divisive social issues of the past. They are also notably progressive on foreign policy issues, and favor a multilateral and cooperative foreign policy more than their elders.” On the other hand “Millennials, more so than other generations, want a stronger government to make the economy work better, help those in need, and provide more services. These views extend to a range of domestic policy issues including education, clean energy, and, especially, health care.” Once again, on social and foreign policy we have already won in this area; the challenge is on fiscal policy questions.
Teixeira’s report is indeed wonderful news for us! We may not have a perfect match everywhere, as note the discussion on young people, but we are far better off than the Republicans. It will be even better news for us if we can encourage Republicans to stay true to their idea of principles, namely echoing the crackpot nonsense and foaming-at-the-mouth Republican fanaticism of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, and all those other groups who Bill Buckley read out of the conservative movement fifty years ago on grounds of nutcakery. Yes, every time some Republican idiot denounces global warming, evolution, or the round earth hypothesis, cheer for him in your heart, because that Republican is working hard for us by convincing America’s next generation that Republicans truly are The Party of Stupid.
George Phillies
the nolan chart is a guide ———- not irrefutable gospel !
Some where (Massachusetts ????????) some profession (college employee ??????????) some partisan affiliation (Lib / BTP ????????????) is the dumbest PhD on the planet.
………… I just saying!
REgard ing Phillies —– and Knapp: hey, Dannie and JT, what did you expect from guys whom claim that LP is the one and ONLY 21st Century American Peace Party. (W. A. R. any one ??????????)
More than one person has told me that they also claim that LP is the ONLY 2nd Amendment Party.
Delusion and Denial Party ????????? (at least [after the horrible ‘No Free Lunch’ Days] Libs have decent icons and mascots ………..)
The available evidence is somewhat limited but quite consistent. When there is enough polling data to answer the question, we either equally from liberals and from conservatives or draw modestly more from liberals than from conservatives, but mostly from independents. This result is not even vaguely surprising, given that modern Republican “conservatives” are parked at the bottom of the Nolan chart.
I agree with Danny’s post. You’re extrapolating from this one NC poll, George, that Libertarians in general draw far more votes from liberals than from conservatives? For a scientist like yourself, that doesn’t seem like a very scientific conclusion. I’m sure that’s how you’d like it to be, but I highly doubt that’s true everywhere in America.
@Phillies,
The LP in North Carolina is a bit different from the rest of the country. Alot of their success has to do with a successful campaign strategy under Dr. Munger in his 2008 gubernatorial bid. In that election he essentially ran to the left of the Democrat and went after the progressive vote.
I think this poll result is a throwback to that. Beitler does show a lot of liberal support.
However, Beitler also shows significant tea party support in the poll, with 7% of active tea partiers and 7% of those agreeing.
So, you have it right in that the LP-NC shows you shouldn’t go for the straight conservarian route; however, this result also shows there is ground to be made in the more conservative Tea Party as well. A good Libertarian would be wise to secure both groups, not just one exclusively.
In other news from the southeast, there is a SUSA poll for Senate in North Carolina. It matches Libertarian Mike Beitler against members of those other parties who need not be named.
You can read all the entries at
http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollReport.aspx?g=49aae9f8-15ef-4a62-b891-50b84f373847
The first question has a long list of places we might draw our voters from. We Libertarians draw about equally from Democrats and Republicans, but much more from Independents and those uninterested in religion. We draw much more from liberals than from conservatives.
They referenced their candidates’ ethnicities and genders because it gives them a good differentiator to play up in an area where such things are important. That they see value in this says more about the electorate they’re reaching out to than it does the organization itself.
Human American, planet Earth
My wife is African-American & she’s white. She was born in Rhodesia (now known as Zimbabwe).
Yes. I have known several “African-Americans” who were not black.
Isn’t a white person born in Johannesburg also an African-American if he or she was to become a U.S. citizen?
In general, it’s unbecoming of a libertarian to use euphemisms. Specifically, “African-American” makes no sense geographically nor historically. Myself, I trace my ancestry back to Western Eurasia, mostly kraut. I so happened to be born a white yank. Does this make me “European-American”? I know blacks living Stateside who can trace their ancestry back to Europe just like me. They consider themselves black. This expression “African-American” is in effect racist.
lol @ Milnes. Such a classy guy.
I do like the Martini and Cherry names. Very marketable.
All of these candidates are going to lose.
Great Job LP of Georgia!
Congrats to you all. I hope the slate does well.
Has Illinois gotten their slate on the ballot?