Opinion article submitted by Paulie
It seems the duopoly spin machine is at it again.
Latest case in point: Rodney Lee Conover on the website of “Joe the Plumber”.
http://joeforamerica.com/2013/11/phony-libertarian-fix-coming/
Rodney Lee Conover writes: “…This guy Robert Sarvis who ran as a Libertarian against Ken Cucinelli in Virginia got 6.5% of the vote – enough to allow someone even more vile than Hillary Clinton to become Governor of Virginia – and if Democrats can skim off just 1% of the votes in a presidential election, that’s huge!”
Well, for starters, out of the Sarvis voters who would have still voted if Sarvis had not been in the race, exit polls show that the Democrat, McAuliffe, would have received twice as many of their votes as Republican Cuccinelli. Thus the logic that Sarvis running “allowed” McAuliffe to win is faulty. Actually, Sarvis almost, but not quite, cost McAuliffe the election. The fault for Cuccinelli’s loss lies with his own coercive social issues positions, and can’t be blamed on Sarvis.
Conover writes “We can argue all day long about whether or not Sarvis was serious about trying to win or not, but you can’t debate where his money came from. Democrat money bundling – specifically an Obama bundler from Texas threw in the lion’s share of the cash. Bottom line: Sarvis’ campaign was funded in large part by Democrats and this made Terry McCauliffe the winner. Them’s the facts.”
There’s not a single fact there. Of course Sarvis was serious, but as for the money…. a Libertarian donor whose wife is a Democratic bundler paid some seed money to a Libertarian PAC with no strings attached. Some of that money was used to help get Virginia Libertarians (not only Sarvis, but also a whole slate of legislative candidates) on the ballot, something that should never have been necessary to begin with if it weren’t for the insane and ridiculous ballot access barriers to non-establishment party candidates running in the first place. The donation was made without any mention of Sarvis, and it is quite likely that the donor had never heard of Sarvis when he made the donation. It was nowhere near the “lion’s share” of Sarvis’ campaign funding, in fact it was not direct Sarvis campaign funding at all, and even if we count ballot access for all Virginia Libertarians as part of Sarvis’ campaign funding it is still a tiny fraction of all the money spent by and on behalf of Sarvis. Oh, and as we already learned, it didn’t make McAuliffe the winner – it almost cost him the election.
Conover again: “Who could forget how Bill Clinton himself got into office? It was the third-party libertarian-type candidate Ross Perot who siphoned off a significant number of votes from Bush the elder to allow the long-shot hick to slip into power.”
Yet another oft repeated falsehood. I’m not sure where the idea that Perot was a “libertarian-type” candidate came from, but regardless – actual exit polls showed that an equal number of Perot voters – 38% in each case – would have voted for Bush and Clinton had Perot not been in the race. The rest would not have voted at all, except for a small number who would have voted for a different non-duopoly candidate.
“No one else of any quality would even run against Bush 41 because he was so popular after all those videos of Iraqi’s getting blown up by smart bombs, narrated by Norman Schwarzkopf. ”
Sure, for a quick minute, the war gave Bush’s popularity a quick artificial spike, sort of like a crack binge. And then the inevitable crash – a persistent recession, broken promises of “no new taxes” and Republican culture wars combined to bring Daddy Bush down in much the same way that they brought down his son 16 years later. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree in that family. But it’s so much easier to blame independent and third party candidates, “libertarian-type” or otherwise, than to accept responsibility, right?
“…you could run a decent Libertarian campaign for President in 2016 and get who knows how many votes?”
Finally Conover says something I agree with. Between the mounting world-policing wars, spiralling debt, unfunded mandates, corporate bailouts, domestic espionage and militarized police-prison-industrial complex perpetuated by Democrats and Republicans alike, more and more people are waking up to the need for a Libertarian option. Perhaps that’s why Libertarian voter registration nationwide is growing faster than any other party, and the percentage of voters not picking any party to register with rises year after year as well.
For the first time in Pew poll history, a majority of Americans say the US government should mind its own business and stop policing the world. Also for the first time this year, a majority of all Americans favor ending marijuana prohibition, as the Libertarians have been advocating for decades, and some states are starting to do just that. Growing majorities of Americans also favor Libertarian positions on lower government spending, lower taxes, a balanced budget, an end to mass surveillance of citizens, marriage equality…and a record majority are dissatisfied with both major parties and believe a new major party is needed.
Conover says that Libertarians are “just appealing to the idiots who don’t pay much attention to detail.” Actually that’s what his article tries to do…and fails.
Time to give Conover a plumber’s flush, and let him have the last word:
“…you could run a decent Libertarian campaign for President in 2016 and get who knows how many votes?”
Yeah…who knows? Let’s find out!
Thanks GPV.
Bravo Paulie! Well done. A superb and exact response. Green Party applause.
All of those can be either or both.
For example, coercive economic views can be stupid (naive do-goodism that ignores real world evidence, or a sincere desire for justice by those left out hungry in the cold watching the rich stuff themselves through the plated glass). Or, it can be evil – conscious rent-seeking or power-seeking, jealous vengeance, a desire to lord over others or take what others have worked to earn by force, etc.
Social coerciveness can be stupid – a desire to have a more moral society, preventing the social problems created by drug abuse and indiscriminate unprotected sex, etc (also naive in ignoring how this doesn’t work or bacfires in the real world). Or it can be evil: the desire to lord it over others, hatred of the “other,” self-hatred and the desire to be restrained from engaging in behaviors that some of their perpetrators are ashamed of by force.
Foreign interventionism — same thing. It can be stupid and naive, thinking we can solve the world’s problems by invading various nations or trying to bully them with sanctions and threats or bribe them with “aid.” Or it can be evil – hatred of the “other,” taking joy in the carnage of war, taking pleasure in the looting, raping and murder that comes with it, etc.
I mean their politics. Liberal economics is stupid, social conservatism & foreign policy is evil.
I view them both as both stupid and evil. By which I don’t mean necessarily any individuals (although some may very well be), but as organizations.
I view the Democrats as stupid, and Republicans as evil. I’m very likely to support a third party/independent/write-in candidate because I view the idea of a two-party system as inherently evil & prone to rampant corruption, but if pressed I would prefer stupid over evil.
I’ve found the two to be equally vociferous.
Unfortunately, the belief that libertarian candidates are “stealing” their votes is burned into the back of the eye lids of the republican rank and file.
I have spoken to many republicans and democrats over the years who say that they’d vote for our candidate, but the other party’s candidate would win! But among democrats it is not as vocal. The problem is that democrats view republicans as corrupt, while republicans view democrats as evil.
I think that it is actually easier to encourage a democrat to support us at this point than it is to convince a republican (taking for given that we’re talking about voters who start by saying that they don’t completely agree with their party and like our positions better).
The Republicans lost in 1992 as L Neil Smith said because they gave up on the gun owners. The Republicans figured they would get the gun vote, all 30 million or so, because who else would they vote for. Remember Republican votes in 1994 brought us Brady and the gun ban.
Smith talked about this in a morning speech at the 1993 LP National Convention.
Math is hard.
http://www.leinsdorf.com/perot.htm
Jill:
Thanks!
I agree.
Andy, Jed and George – all good points and I agree. I tried to keep it a bit shorter this time.
Excellent response, Paulie!
These hit pieces are becoming laughable in their attempts to make us look bad.
“There’s not a single fact there. Of course Sarvis was serious, but as for the money…. a Libertarian donor whose wife is a Democratic bundler paid some seed money to a Libertarian PAC with no strings attached”
The Libertarian Booster PAC only paid for part of the petition drive to get Rob Sarvis on the ballot. Rob Sarvis paid the rest of the ballot access costs out of his own pocket. The $10,000 from the Libertarian Booster PAC paid for less than half of the petition drive.
When you factor in all of the money that was raised by the Sarvis campaign, or put in the campaign by Rob Sarvis himself, plus the money that was spent for Sarvis by the Purple Super PAC, one will see that the $10,000 from the Libertarian Booster PAC was a very small percentage of the total amount of money that was spent on the campaign.
This accusation is much ado about nothing.
Libertarians are indeed greatly concerned that Democrats and Republicans are stealing our votes. They should stop.
If the Republicans are tired of losing, they could greatly improve America if they would just stop running candidates. Then they would never lose. (When I encounter a Democrat whining that we cost them the election, I will give them the same message.)
My response, from Twitter:
1. Sarvis was NOT funded by Democrats. ONE DONOR to a PAC also gave money to Obama. That PAC helped Sarvis & others get on the ballot.
2. Libertarians are not for “securing the border”. We’re for open boarders. Ron Paul wants to secure the border, most libertarians don’t.
3. Libertarians don’t “divide the Republican voter pie”. Quite often we “take” votes from Democrats, but neither party is entitled to votes.
4. Since when are Libertarians on every talk show? Third party candidates are almost always unfairly ignored by the mainstream media.
5. Sarvis did NOT “take” more votes from Cuccinelli. The Cooch lost because he was a shitty candidate.
6. Ross Perot was not a libertarian. We tend to like him because he ran outside the duopoly, but we ran our own candidates.
7. Ross Perot did not cost Bush Sr. the election. He drew from both sides, & brought people to the polls who wouldn’t have otherwise voted.
8. Libertarians have been running since 1972, without much help from either Republicans or Democrats. We’re not going away.
I find it funny that a number of libertarians who believe that the party is being “invaded” believe it is coming from the republican/conservative side of the political spectrum. For this bozo to say that the LP is a puppet for the democrat/liberal side is hilarious!