An article by Jeet Heer published earlier today in THE NATION, titled: “The Libertarian Party Goes Alt-Right: By embracing bigotry, Libertarians are poised to help reelect Trump” attributed the origins of the Reno Reset in LNC management to a blog post by Jeff Deist from 2017.
Mr. Heer writes: “In July 28, 2017, Jeff Deist, the president of the Mises Institute . . . published a blog post arguing that “blood and soil and God and nation still matter to people. . . .” The phrase “blood and soil” . . . took on an even more gruesome connotation . . . during the infamous Charlottesville Unite the Right Rally of 2017. . . . The white supremacists . . . chanted “blood and soil.” . . .
“In the wake of that event, Nicholas Sarwark, chair of the Libertarian Party, wrote an open letter warning of the dangers of fascism. Arvin Vohra, vice chair of the Libertarian Party, wrote a post arguing that the “Mises Institute has been turned into a sales funnel for the White Nationalist branch of the Alt Right.”
The article continues, “Writing in Reason, Brian Doherty, a distinguished historian of libertarianism, reports that “foes say that too many Mises Caucus members and fans downplay libertarian positions that might offend the right, are intentionally obnoxious and bullying, and are often racist.” Doherty cites a tweet posted by the New Hampshire Libertarian Party after it was taken over by the Mises Caucus:
“America isn’t in debt to black people. If anything it’s the other way around.”
“. . . Andy Craig, a staff writer at the Cato Institute, predicted that the Libertarian Party is “going to fade away very quickly. They are going to lose their ballot access.”
The Reason article (Mises Caucus Takes Control of Libertarian Party) by Brian Doherty can be read HERE.
“Jeet Heer is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation and host of the weekly Nation podcast, The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer. He also pens the monthly column Morbid Symptoms. The author of In Love with Art: Francoise Mouly’s Adventures in Comics with Art Spiegelman (2013) and Sweet Lechery: Reviews, Essays and Profiles (2014), Heer has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The American Prospect, The Guardian, The New Republic, and The Boston Globe.”
The full article from today’s The Nation can be read HERE
That’s a great point. IIRC, they raised something like $40k to sponsor some of their delegates. Someone just needs to take the lead in organizing a proposal, which will be no small task. You’ll need a literal big tent, and plenty of logistics that are built into hotel bids.
I agree that conventions should be budget conscious. That usually means airport hotels, in hub cities where airlines compete with low fares. Not luxury hotels.
But “budget” doesn’t equate to outdoor events, parks, playgrounds, or college campuses.
I prefer a professional indoor venue set up for convention business: air conditioning, good acoustics, lighting, mics, etc.
Starchild,
You bring up an interesting possibility.
The Mises PAC crowd does seem to enjoy festival-type events.
And while I could be wrong, my impression is that a lot of their activists are, well, povertarians who have trouble affording things like holiday weekend air fare and luxury hotel room rates.
So the Mises PAC dominating LNC might actually consider something you (and I) have been advocating for a long time — making national conventions more accessible and less expensive “campground/festival” affairs.
Thanks, Starchild. I admire your thinking.
NewFederalist writes (June 8, 2022 at 6:16 pm), “Starchild- happy to see you posting here again. What is your take on the recent LP convention?”
Thank you for your friendly words. I never exactly left IPR, just been commenting much less frequently than when the site was busier. Is Paulie still around? Haven’t seen his comments in a while…
To answer your question, my feelings are mixed. I remain ambivalent about the Mises Caucus. Some of the group’s reported goals and grievances seem laudable, and their members appear for the most part to be libertarian, not a bunch of Republicans or Trumpists. I am concerned that changes like eliminating the abortion plank and ditching our explicit condemnation of bigotry could make the party more susceptible to an actual right-wing takeover, however.
I was on the Platform Committee, and we passed a bunch of solidly libertarian proposals out of committee. We almost ran out of time to consider them in convention, as happened in 2020 – indeed we took the 2020 committee’s excellent proposals that never got considered as a starting point, and nine of them (IIRC) were approved by delegates.
The way this happened was not encouraging, though. Although I supported all of them, they were adopted very quickly, one after the other, on up/down votes with no amendments or debate allowed. I suspect if committee chair Caryn Ann Harlos, a Mises Caucus member who generally had their support, had not suggested this bare-bones method, we might not have considered or passed any of them, however the way it was done sets a bad precedent in terms of party governance. It’s good and healthy for there to be lots of delegate activism and engagement – debate, amendments, etc.
We want a society of empowered individuals in which the exercise of power is bottom-up, not top-down via government, and can best work toward this end by cultivating a similar culture and practices within our own libertarian organizations, especially the LP as the nearest thing we have to a participatory mass movement in which ordinary people are not simply passive check-writing supporters, but actively engaged in running the movement.
I continue to feel that we should get our conventions out of these hotels and their controlled atmospheres where we are overcharged for most stuff and virtually invisible to the public. I’d like to see them more like week-long festivals, intermingling speakers with music, workshops, activism, activities, and art. The Free State Project’s annual PorcFest festival in New Hampshire continues to provide an example of what this kind of gathering could look like. Convention business could still be packed into a weekend, for delegates unable to take that much time off work. But having camping, homestays with local LP members, and other low-cost accommodations as the default, along with community food preparation largely taking the place of expensive hotel-catered meals and restaurants, could make the expense of attending a lot more manageable and allow for a larger number of attendees. A more DIY approach would also be more in keeping with the libertarian ideals of freedom and independence.
I hope the newly elected leadership may be more open to this kind of non-traditional approaches and outside-the-box thinking about what a pro-freedom party could or should be like, but there’s a lot of institutional inertia to overcome and I’m not sure the will or vision is there.
The right answer on the question of secession is to enumerate the states that have peacefully seceded or broken up from each other. Slovakia and Czech Republic excellent example. This article names three more largely peaceful ones.
IndependentCalifornia.net looks at the key elements of peaceful independence movements:
http://independentcalifornia.net/portfolio-item/a-successful-path-to-a-peaceful-secession/
Robert young, a professor of political science, wrote an interesting paper about how peaceful secessions happen. In it, he analyzes various secessions from the past and theorized that the long term success of the peaceful ones depended on their fitting a general pattern.
He focuses mainly on three secession movements; Hungary from Austria in 1867, Norway from Sweden in 1905, and Singapore from Malaysia in 1965. ETC
RE bigotry, that language was fine the years it originally was in the platform because few libertarians were bigots and most knew the difference between right to associate and hateful bigotry.
And, of course, that was in the days before the insane identity politics left oppressors started to call anyone who wouldn’t bend the knee to their ideology a bigot.
Today you have a lot of reactive and hateful bigots who want to put down others coming into the “Free Speech” LP. As long as no one criticize Mises caucus members and leaders of course.
So without a clear definition of bigotry IN the platform, the current language actually is better.
I personally want to the bosses of every Mises leader and LNC member to see the many bad articles coming out. Somebody dox them. ha hahahahaha
In the same wicked vein, can’t help having fun with https:/twitter.com/misesEXPOSED And I’ve only begun to build up my lists of national and political media to @…
Not only do they THINK they’ve gotten rid of abortion in the platform as they beat their mostly manly breasts… they turn good old fashioned libertarian decentralism and secession into ethnocentralist blood and soil garbage. And few have the guts to criticize them or they get CANCELLED – booted from LNC, tossed off LP National Facebook feed (like me), etc. But I won’t name call cause I don’t want my message cancelled.
Anyhoo… I did buy MisesCaucusExposed.Org in December and was going to do a well structured website but my 74 year old spine got inflamed, screwed up my hands and fingers for 4 plus months before got at least SOME treatment. (Medical rationing has set in and with baby boom professionals retiring in droves and the poorly educated younger generation barely able to get into the professions, we are in trouble.) Thank heavens for all the smart young immigrant professional from India! And Philipino nurses. Let millions more in!!)
To finish. We’ll see if I do the website. DO have more constructive things to do.
There wasn’t a “libertarian side” to that war. It gets painted as a typological struggle between cosmic forces of good and evil, or racism and antiracism, or tyranny and regional self-determination. Both governments were racist and authoritarian as hell. It was hypocritical, self-serving, exploitative politics all the way around.
Did the States have the legal right to secede? Yes, I believe they did. But did they exercise it for the right reasons? For the most part, no, I don’t think so. Was the abolition of slavery an unjust outcome? No, of course not. But should the U.S. Government have allowed the Confederate States to leave peaceably without forcing a war of Southern independence? Yes, I do.
This topic is never far behind whenever we start talking about the relationship of libertarian philosophy to political federalism and decentralization. I’m not sure there is “the right answer” that can be derived neatly from libertarian principles. I have strong opinions, but they’re only opinions.
Being enslaved is a bad thing no doubt, but dying or being maimed in a war is also a bad thing.
Brazil didn’t end slavery until 1888. If you were born into slavery in the U.S., and it was 1860, and you were 20 years old, what would you say if someone said, “Just put up with your slave status; by 1888 you will be free.”
Andy – yes it would have been better to end slavery without a war. The choice in this case was made by the slaveholders who ran the government of South Carolina, who undertook an attack on Fort Sumter, a federal installation.
I have read “The Real Lincoln” by Tom DiLorenzo. He comes up with a quote by a southern politician opposing tariffs, but he does not bring up any southern politician who advocated a peaceful end to slavery.
Nor does Mr DiLorenzo deal with the fact that the southern secessionists were not opposed to a strong federal government. Their number one reason for secession was the failure of the federal government to enforce the fugitive slave act.
The Confederate constitution banned any state from ending slavery – an interference with state’s rights – and provided the central government of the CSA with the power to enforce slavery, and the power to draft free white men into the army..
Andy: Chattel slavery ended other places without a war.
Me: Fair point. Were there subsets of nations where there were slavers highly dependent on their slaves that decided to split off from the nation-state, violently so?
Lincoln was a war criminal. Look at what he did to Georgia. Did all those innocent women and children deserve to die because 1% of the population owned slaves? War crimes are not libertarian. Forcing people to be part of a union they don’t want to be a part of is not libertarian.
https://www.history.com/news/5-things-you-may-not-know-about-lincoln-slavery-and-emancipation
The point is whether or not a war was necessary for chattel slavery to have been ended. There are historians who say no. Chattel slavery ended other places without a war. The Civil War was the most costly and destructive war in American history.
I believe that Jimmy Carter was president when the airlines were deregulated. In the old days, the government told the airlines how much to charge, and so all the rates for the same route were identical. Also under Jimmy Carter, draft dodgers were all pardoned.
The Nation analysis appears to be dubious for an odd reason, namely the last sentence “Taking the Libertarian party out as a competitive force will help consolidate the right-wing vote around the Republican Party.’ The Nation author thinks we are a right wing party only drawing votes from conservatives, a claim not supported by polling data or the Libertarian Party’s platform. The analysis up to that point tries to make a specific case, but when it transitions to ‘this will help Trump’ it fails.
Back in the 1990s, an article in Liberty magazine argued that Harding was highly underrated by historians, the Teapot Dome Scandal overrated, and that Harding was one of the most libertarian presidents in history.
I forget all their arguments. But one was his shirking of the military, especially the Navy. Another was his preventing U.S. entry into the League of Nations.
‘most libertarian scholars’ -> most southern reconstructionist and/or racist libertarian scholars.
@RichardWinger
100%
If you had been a slave, you wouldn’t think that.
Lots of countries ended chattel slavery without having a war.
Most libertarian scholars put Abraham Lincoln on their list of worst presidents.
I think that in the context of actions that ended up advancing liberty, Lincoln’s not a bad choice. I agree that suspending habeas corpus is far from libertarian, but ending slavery is ultra-libertarian. There may be other choices, but when you think about the overall effects of a given President’s actions as opposed to the philosophy that motivated those actions, Lincoln is defensible.
Lincoln suspended habeas corpus. Far from libertarian.
Really, Richard? Wow!
The president who did the most to advance liberty (setting aside the founding fathers who became president) was Abraham Lincoln. He may not have set out to abolish slavery, but the consequence of actions he took while president was to abolish slavery, and that was the single biggest leap for liberty within the United States, since the revolutionary war.
I’m trying to think of much Trump did (or abstained from doing) that was even remotely “libertarian.”
He occasionally talked an anti-war line while escalating every war he inherited (he does deserve credit for, at the last minute, finally surrendering the lost war in Afghanistan).
He banned bump stocks by executive order and his view on “red flag” laws was “take the guns, THEN go to court.”
While his attempt to be more authoritarian on immigration than, say, Obama was mostly just a con, he was certainly anti-libertarian on that topic.
He invoked war communism (the “Defense Production Act”) to nationalize manufacturing facilities for ventilators (the market caught up with that before the nationalization had much effect, fortunately).
And so on, and so forth.
On a “libertarian” scale, I wouldn’t necessarily put him below, say, Woodrow Wilson, FDR or LBJ, but he’d certainly be in that mix. Absolutely the “least libertarian” president since Nixon.
“I would be happy to explore that topic without any slurs or ad hominems as long as the position that is indeed completely rational to (racially) discriminate, and irrational to fail to do so, can be explored here without censorious interference. If required, I can easily set up a disposable email address, so long as there is no further requirement that I additionally keep up with whatever is sent to that address. It takes about a minute or less to set one up and then forget about it.”
Unfortunately, as no assurances have been provided, I don’t wish to spend time and effort laying out an argument. Is this forum currently open to an honest intellectual examination of this question or is it not? Management, please reply.
Robert, it seems we agree. Poor responses from both administrations.
Sadly, covid response actually ties in with issues of bigotry. My wife and I can’t visit her family in Japan due to both nation’s coronavirus protocols. America’s is fueled by whatever Biden thinks the test mandate does. Japan’s straight bigotry. 60% plus of recent graduates don’t want to work with westerners, rumors abound that westerners spread covid, and people in tourists areas don’t want dirty, ill-mannered westerners around.
Bigotry is spreading. Just very sad.
JD, OK, sure, the Trump Administation did acknowledge federalism and the division of labor/power between the feds and the states. Biden has been less so.
Both are/were awful in different ways, in my view.
George, duly noted. I had read otherwise. I was not recommending it be used though.
Robert, because he and his surrogates did. Such was said on NPR regarding a nationwide indoor masks mandate.
I never said he had no power or that the administration said they had no power at all to intervene, ever. I heard it in response to questions asked. One may have little power to intervene or a great deal. Either way a person might not handle such intervention well.
Your argument keeps going back to the rhetorical bluster of the response. As I said, very few world leaders responded in a clear or coherent way. His overall messaging was off just like others.
Again, if you want more examples of he or his surrogates saying he didn’t have the power to intervene you will need to look for them.
Contrary to JD: Communist Control Act of 1954 “In 1973, a federal district court in Arizona decided that the act was unconstitutional and Arizona could not keep the party off the ballot in the 1972 general election (Blawis v. Bolin). In 1961, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the act did not bar the party from participating in New York’s unemployment insurance system (Communist Party v. Catherwood) ” Thank you, wikipedia.
JD1: [Trump}, and the federal government, had little power to intervene.
JD2: Robert, I didn’t say he handled the pandemic well. Just as I don’t believe Biden has handled the pandemic well.
Me: 2 seems perpendicular to 1 to me. Trump’s daily briefings suggest to me that he was saying, “We got this.” He announced “Warp Speed” with all sorts of hype. Why do you believe the DJT said he had “little power” to address COVID?
Starchild- happy to see you posting here again. What is your take on the recent LP convention?
George Phillies is correct that “Deleting a sentence which said, ‘condemn bigotry’ is NOT the same thing as embracing bigotry”.
Especially when the new language reads, “We uphold and defend the rights of every person, regardless of their race, ethnicity, or any other aspect of their identity.”
Andy, another couple of points you made. You mentioned Marxism as the direction the country is moving. Immigrants are voting more to the right now than in previous years but that’s a recent turn. Traditionally immigrants have voted Democratic but I think the recent shift amongst immigrants towards Trump and Youngkin has a great deal to do with the extreme left turn of the Democrats.
If Marxism is the real problem then the President could move to enforce the Communist Control Act of 1954. Never been enforced or adjudicated, but it is the law. Recently Ukraine banned 11 left wing parties and the UK is placing some restrictions on members of the Workers Party. Not really a brute force sort of guy but one could try.
As far as the college question… Are Gresham College and Hillsdale College good enough? They meet your criteria. Programs available to everyone, no entry requirement, get out of the lessons what you can apply and understand. They are no cost to sign up for as well.
Robert, I didn’t say he handled the pandemic well. Just as I don’t believe Biden has handled the pandemic well.
Most world leaders behaved incoherently. Very few showed any knowledge of previous pandemics and almost none of them listened when the WHO told them travel bans don’t work.
I didn’t need Trump or Biden to do anything. My work shut down 7 weeks. My wife and I fed the homeless and the needy. When work resumed I took on a second job guarding a facility that produced hand sanitizer. I kept the 2nd job until November last year when it was obvious that hospitalizations and deaths were shooting down. Most pandemics run their course in about 18 months. This one has and 8 to 10 week lag due to lockdowns.
Andy, I never said ignoring U.S. immigration law was correct either. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Of all people, Viktor Orban verbalized my feelings best, at the outbreak of the Ukraine crisis. Standing at the border he said “Let them come, if they don’t have documentation, we will document them. Orban is not an open borders advocate by any means.
I see no reason for nation to nation migration to be any different than state to state migration. Move, find residence, document, work, tax(unfortunately), apply for permanent residence, work, tax(more unfortunately), test, citizenship. Simplify the process, increase enforcement. Skirt the simplified rules, sure no problem with punishment. Problem with current law is that it is too cumbersome and expensive to enforce.
It was once suggested that people imagine treating alcohol the way marijuana was treated in states that still criminalize it’s use. A prohibition on steroids hypothesis. Well imagine we did they same thing but for state to state migration. What if you couldn’t move to a new state without applying for a visa first and it took years to get it. Silly scenario. You wouldn’t. Nation to nation migration is the same way.
Regarding crimes, with a victim, committed by immigrants, just prosecute those like anyone else. Whether you destroy property or people you should face prosecution.
Standards are in the eye of the beholder. I have never minded competition from immigrants or anyone else. Best way I have found to raise standards is to be disciplined. Discipline advances liberty.
Generations Radio has been very good about this over the years. At least since I last listened to them. They are Biblical literalists, not socially liberal at all, but they oppose immigration restrictions. Several easy to use Biblical search tools online will show you that migration is spoken about in a positive light more than 30 times in scripture.
The standard isn’t for myself to set nor is it mine to enforce.
JD: Often during the first year of the pandemic he and his surrogates made it plain that he, and the federal government, had little power to intervene.
Me: Guess we’re watching a different movie. Embarrassing daily briefings where he was obviously out of his depth. Warp Speed, which is an experiment that has yet to run its course.
J.D., so you think it is good to have millions upon millions of people pouring into the country, mostly from alien cultures,
a disproportionately high percentage of whom end up being a drain on the taxpayers, and who, after they and their offspring become eligible to vote, sway election results and political discourse in a Marxist direction?
So everyone who shows up in the country MUST be granted citizenship, with NO STANDARDS, and nobody can ever be deported, no matter what they? Do you think if a college or university operated like this, that it would be a very good college or university?
How does this advance the cause of liberty?
I think one would have to go back farther than Coolidge to find any American elected official that actually helped INCREASE personal liberty.
I disagreed with Trump on immigration and his rhetoric. Despite that, I still feel that things he did, within the confines of state apparatus, were often fair and productive. None of us are going to like 100% of a man’s actions.
Honestly, I think his most libertarian and constitutional actions were the ones he was criticized for not taking. Often during the first year of the pandemic he and his surrogates made it plain that he, and the federal government, had little power to intervene. Even his Covid related travel bans were limited to specific countries, while the Biden admin still has an international air travel covid test mandate in place.
I still think the libertarian nature of any modern American President is a hard thing to judge. The office has just grown over time. The President, through simple ignorance, may believe he is acting in the “most liberty loving way” but have no concept that some liberty lovers view his job’s existence as an affront to liberty.
Donald “rapists and murderers” Trump set a hateful tone on Day One of his first campaign, one that this libertarian found immediately disqualifying. Policy-wise, he wasn’t nearly as negative as I feared he would be, but I don’t see how he promoted an INCREASE in liberty, net net. He did do a few relatively positive things, and several injurious actions.
“Trump, while president, led a party that refused to do anything to legalize marijuana. He appointed judges who are moving to restrict individual liberty involving procreation. He strongly promoted building a wall along the US border with Mexico that confiscated private property using eminent domain.”
I didn’t say he aligns with your viewpoint on everything, just that overall he does so more than any president in nearly the past century, and perhaps a good deal longer. However, perhaps I ought to mention that personally I agree with him, and disagree with you, on all of the specific issues you mentioned above.
Marijuana is part of a communist conspiracy to destroy the moral fiber and mental acuity of the American population. We should go back to the stringent punishments that were in place for marijuana addicts prior to the 1960s, such as life in prison for simple possession, or perhaps learn from the successful drug war strategies of President Duterte in the Philippines and the 19th century Chinese, who both treated possession of narcotics as a legitimate basis for summary execution. I am fully on board with ending the holocaust of abortion and protecting our borders much more strongly as well, including but in no ways limited to finishing the wall and reviving President Eisenhower’s Operation Wetback, whereby illegal invaders were rounded up and deported en masse.
I think, in general, Trump’s actions were more libertarian than the rhetoric surrounding both his campaign and presidency. Not a full blown libertarian or even classical liberal but it is fair to say he is more so than the press surrounding him.
Most libertarian since Coolidge? A fair argument. It’s a hard sell only because the importance, responsibilities, and expectations, of the president, have grown so much since Coolidge.
Fwiw, I also feel Trump was far less bigotry tolerant than made out to be.
Trump, while president, led a party that refused to do anything to legalize marijuana. He appointed judges who are moving to restrict individual liberty involving procreation. He strongly promoted building a wall along the US border with Mexico that confiscated private property using eminent domain.
There’s no doubt Trump was the most libertarian since Coolidge.
Indeed, he is. I believe he was the most libertarian President since at least Calvin Coolidge, and possibly even since Andrew Jackson, and I believe he will eclipse all of them in his second term (2025-9) and become indisputably our greatest President yet. NOTA or a co-endorsement of Trump would be the best decision the Libertarians could make for their Presidential nomination if, as seems inevitable, Trump is again the Republican nominee in 2024. I am very proud to have voted for Trump in the primary and general elections in 2016 and 2020, and look forward to so doing again in 2024.
Trump is more libertarian than Jorgensen.
I was replying to Mr. Winger, if that is in any way unclear. The comment by Carl, albeit chronologically before mine, was not present whilst mine was composed.
I would be happy to explore that topic without any slurs or ad hominems as long as the position that is indeed completely rational to so discriminate, and irrational to fail to do so, can be explored here without censorious interference. If required, I can easily set up a disposable email address, so long as there is no further requirement that I additionally keep up with whatever is sent to that address. It takes about a minute or less to set one up and then forget about it.
The LP has every right to nominate NOTA for president. If their candidates at convention are that bad NOTA is the best choice.
The question isn’t whether “discrimination” is irrational. It is whether racism is irrational. In other words, is it is irrational to judge someone based on his or her race or ethnic identity? My answer is “yes.”
Above two authors are at the edge in terms of acceptable posting. Also, I anticipate that in the near future you will not have to tell readers who you are, but you will have to tell IPR who your are, at the level of a valid email address.
The only thing truly irrational and repugnant is the notion that discrimination is inherently irrational and repugnant. In reality, of course, it is completely irrational to be indiscriminate at all times. Taking that sort of irrational approach lets in all sorts of repugnant rot, pestilence, and vermin, including but not limited to the four legged variety. Brains spilling open liberals and the libertarians who foolishly ape them are who is irrational and repugnant. Thank goodness that the Libertarian Party is finally purging itself of this progressive cancer, much as we are currently also doing in the GOP.
The libertarian party is quickly becoming irrational and repugnant. RIP LP.
J,
Your outlook sounds about right. Smith/Toure will be taken down to the extent they get coverage for their bigotry-tolerant views and other way, way outside the Overton Window stances.
And, yet, I suspect they will claim a win because they gathered thousands into their cadre.
The Mises crowd can’t function without a charismatic leader to rally behind as the face of the movement. It exists because they’ve never gotten over Ron Paul, have been listening to Tom Woods for the better part of a decade, and want a new hero to feel that sense of shared purpose they felt back in college. I sympathize with the movement “retro”libertarians who make up the bulk of the caucus a lot more than I do than the hard-right paleolibertarians in leadership, since I think most millennial members fit into the former category. But they seem not to understand that moments have contexts in which they arise, and they pass by. Rekindling an old moment because you miss the good old days and want to experience it again is no path forward for any movement.
Unless something changes, Dave Smith is going to be handed the presidential nomination. Maj Toure will likely be the VP nominee. They’re going to be flabbergasted when Smith not only performs worse than Johnson in 2016, but also Jorgensen in 2020, and they’ll have no one to blame but themselves because the national party will be Mises owned and operated. Bringing the LP closer culturally to the Republicans either, depending on how extreme the LP is perceived to be, (a) divides right-leaning voters to help the Democrats win plurality (classical spoiler effect) or (b) boosts the GOP’s credibility among independents by making the Republicans appear moderate, respectable, and accessible by comparison. The only party it can’t help is the Libertarian Party.
Tom,
Consider the LP nominating NOTA for President in 2024, a step I do not advocate. It’s the PA step on a larger scale. A Republican might believe that would help their 2024 candidate.
Andy: 1) Deleting a sentence which said, “condemn bigotry” is NOT the same thing as embracing bigotry…
Me: True, it’s not the “same thing.” It does, however, suggest that deleting “condemn bigotry” strongly implies a tolerance for bigotry. Why a political party would open itself up to such an easily understood interpretation is, to me, stunning and shocking. Why make such an effort? Think of the opportunity cost vs more persuasive, positive messaging on far more pressing and relevant issues.
Oy vey!
Heer seems to be confused as to the mechanism the Mises PAC is using to “help reelect Trump” or something similar.
A basic “move to the right” would actually disadvantage Trump and Trumpist Republicans insofar as it might increase the “spoiler” factor (“I’m basically conservative and the LP isn’t QUITE as bad as the Trumpists, so I’ll take a chance on them”).
The Mises PAC’s actual strategy, as shown in New Hampshire, Pennslyvania, and Minnesota, is to ensure that Republicans of any stripe face no meaningful Libertarian competition by:
1) Nominating candidates so toxic that no sane “liberty-leaning Republican” would abandon the GOP ticket for them (for example, in New Hampshire, a gubernatorial candidate who says Jews “chose” to die in the Holocaust and Hitler went to heaven; in New Hampshire, a gubernatorial candidate who was a convicted child molester);
2) Failing that, nominating nobody (in Pennsylvania, the child molester turned out to be ineligible, so the Mises PAC pushed through None of the Above rather than nominate a libertarian candidate); or
3) Simply screwing up ballot access by failing to turn in relatively easily gathered petition signatures (Minnesota).
Three times isn’t happenstance or coincidence, it’s strategy.
Love how nobody is trying to equate Jeet with the Southern Poverty Law Center. (Because you can’t; from the left, I’m no fan of the SPLC myself.)
Good point.
But maybe if Ralph Nader hadn’t run in 2000, Al Gore would have lost by a bigger margin.
But Al Gore lost so Nader running didn’t seem to help.
” Deleting a sentence which said, “condemn bigotry” is NOT the same thing as embracing bigotry” It’s the chaneg that matters, and the message it sends, so the change does tend to embrace something.
By “superior”, I meant that of the two similar choices, one had a good chance to win and the other one didn’t.
Who determines what is superior? Was Ralph Nader superior to Al Gore? Was Donald Trump superior to Gay Johnson?
IMO the answer to both is yes, but that’s just my opinion. Perhaps my opinion is superior?
The whole idea of “spoiling” is greatly misunderstood. Voices of third party candidates that seem to be “spoiling” for one of the major parties can actually influence voters to support the closer of the two major parties. This is why “Predictably Irrational”, a psychology book with experiments, showed that when there are 3 choices, and 2 are very similar, but one of the two similar ones is superior to the other, that benefits the superior choice, versus the third choice. This is why Democrats are wrong to fear third parties of the left. This is why Sam Lubell, a pollster and political scientist, found that Henry Wallace helped Harry Truman in 1948 to beat Thomas Dewey. This is why the Communist Party insisted on running its own presidential candidate in 1936 against Franklin D. Roosevelt, even though the Communist Party vociferously wanted FDR to win.
This is an idiotic article.
1) Deleting a sentence which said, “condemn bigotry” is NOT the same thing as embracing bigotry, and this phrase was not even in the LP’s platform for at least half of the existence if the party, and if anyone would bother to read the rest for the platform, they would know that protecting the rights of all people is covered.
2) The Libertarian Party intends to run its own presidential ticket in 2024, and if the party has shifted the right as far as they claim, it will only mean that the party will siphon more votes than normal from Republicans, and will therefore benefit Democrats.
Joe, A fine article! And thank you for all the photos of the National Convention, which will soon be appearing, probably at the Independent Political Report Facebook Site.
Oh hey, the new Libertarian Party board is doing a great job getting media attention! I’m sure this is just the beginning.