The Liberal Party, a nationally focused group that emerged from dissatisfaction with the leadership of the Libertarian Party, announced last week that it will be holding its inaugural national convention later this year.
While information on the inaugural convention is still limited, the party stated over social media last Thursday that it will take place from December 7 to December 8, 2024. According to the information provided by the party on its website, delegates will convene in Houston, Texas. The party is also expected to adopt its official bylaws during the convention, including the process for becoming a state affiliate and selecting a national presidential ticket.
A copy of the Liberal Party bylaws to tentatively be adopted is available here.
The Liberal Party was originally known as the Association of State Liberty Parties before rebranding in 2023. Readers can find past coverage on the party before its rebranding here. According to its website, it is the “national home of autonomous state political parties committed to furthering the agenda of free people and limited government.”
As of this article, the party states that it has eight affiliates, including those in Massachusetts, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Utah, Oregon, Missouri, and Wyoming, with at least two of those affiliates having ballot access. It has not yet been stated what the party will do regarding the 2024 presidential election, but its Massachusetts affiliate has previously discussed plans to field a candidate on the ballot from several options.
There, we certainly agree. There should be alternatives listed, and will be. Starting a new party is a bad idea, the timing is bad, the ideological proximity of the still existing LP is a further impediment, and the name just adds insult to self inflicted head injury. All those things can be, and are, simultaneously true.
“You can be as sick of them as you want. One of them will be elected in November”
At the very least, I want an alternative listed on the ballot so that I can register a NO vote against both of them, so that folks won’t think that I am apathetic or indifferent by not voting at all.
You can be as sick of them as you want. One of them will be elected in November. It may or may not matter which one. Starting new parties doesn’t change that one of them will take the oath of office 20 January. It’s increasingly counterproductive even as a way of trying to make it so we’ll have better realistic choices 4, 8, 20, 40, or 80 years from now. There are many, many far better ways to use your resources – time , money, etc – to work in various ways towards that goal.
I’m not going to suggest particular ones. Different things work for different people. You can look at alternative ways to advance your movement’s goals as easily as I can. I’m sure you already know many of them.
8 more quasilibertarian parties will accomplish nothing except waste time and money.
The socialist and paleoconservative movements are advancing their goals in various ways, despite the persistent failure of the minor parties which nominally represent them. The libertarian movement is at that same point. It might accomplish a lot, or little, but “libertarian” parties are at this point and going forward counterproductive to it.
It’s possible certain creative strategies may be an exception – fusion influence parties a la Twerking Families, deliberate joke parties , or something. But not reinventing a flatter tire. That’s just dumb and self defeating.
Well, I for one, am thoroughly sick of both the Democrats and Republicans, and consider both Trump and Biden nauseating and unfit for the Presidency. Oh yes, there ARE differences between them, but they are both still awful, but in different ways.
So, I for one, cannot wait for a “better time” for new parties.
And, I don’t think that I am alone.
It’s not. Parties as a whole are increasingly unpopular, and minor parties especially so. To save myself a lot of typing as to why, Pig Farmer explained it pretty well in this thread:
https://ballot-access.org/2024/06/10/liberal-party-to-hold-first-national-convention-in-houston-on-december-7-8-2024/#comments
There are also technical reasons why now is a bad time, but Farmer explained well why it’s fools gold, what you are noticing on the surface
“It may be in the past or may come again, but clearly not now”
It seems to me to be a very opportune time for a new party, given the dissatisfaction within all political parties, large and small, right now.
Anything involving any kind of liberal indicates a preference for higher taxes and more regulations to the vast majority of regular voters, who are highly unlikely to give you the time to reeducate them on what they believe they already know.
If anyone doesn’t believe me, to circulate a Liberal Party ballot access petition or introduce yourself as a Liberal party candidate to every one who walks by on a busy street for a few hours and tell me how it went. Or call a few hundred randomly selected people from a phone book, etc.
No name would rescue this albatross or stillborn dodo bird. But they chose a particularly bad one. At a bad time. Bad move. Or maybe good move, as a less bad name would have actually caused even more people to waste even more time and money and still achieve exactly nothing useful in the end.
“Neoclassical liberal” sounds like an art movement or a school of architecture. It sounds good but also completely meaningless when it comes to politics (which might actually make it an expedient name), as classical liberal and neo-liberal are exact opposite of one another.
It may be in the past or may come again, but clearly not now. My best guess is that absent a time machine it would be best to scratch the idea, but I’m open to the possibility that it can be shelved for a more opportune time if that time ever comes again.
Reality says:
“Anything with liberal is very bad namewise. But the whole idea is very bad with horrible timing even aside from that”
When would be a good time, in your opinion?
Anything with liberal is very bad namewise. But the whole idea is very bad with horrible timing even aside from that
There used to be an early abolitionist party called the Liberty Party. A nice, generic name that would permit members to call themselves either liberals (of whatever sort), or even neolibertarians.
The name game continues.
How about Neoclassical Liberal?
This is an interesting development. If they can perhaps make a coalition of LP-averse classical liberals with liberty-oriented people from other parties, they might have a little bit of influence.
I’ve said for years that the multitude of libertarian/conservative “freedom” parties are only hurting each other and preventing any of them from being the least bit effective.
But as usual, they’re trying to build from the top down, as all these “third parties” seem to do, when the way is to build from the bottom up.
“Modern Whig Party” was an attractive sounding name. But even then, the question arises which Whigs are we talking about – British or American? Because while the Modern Whig Party was an American party, it’s politics were closer to those of the British Whigs of yore than to those of the American Whigs of yore.
Fun fact, which you may well already know: “Whig” is an Anglicization of Gaelic “chuig”, literally meaning “away”, that initially referred to cattle-drivers, but was later pejoratively applied to the Scottish Presbyterians. The English Country Party/Whig Party then claimed the name for themselves as a proud indication of the hatred for Roman Catholics that they shared with the Scottish Presbyterians. The American Whig Party’s use of the name was likewise a deliberate nod to this origin, since the party consisted primarily of staunch anti-Catholic protestants – though not exclusively Presbyterians, much less Scottish Presbyterians. However that was also about the only thing the British and American Whigs shared in common.
My favorite party name was the Modern Whig Party. It was one of the parties technically folded into the Alliance Party when that political party was founded.
“I’d be all in favor of reclaiming “liberal” to mean classical liberal (far-right), as opposed neo-liberal (far-left), no matter how much of an uphill battle that would be.”
Well great, but politics in this country are dictated by the people that pay very little attention to it. So you could spend years toward “education” and still make very little progress educating the electorate outside of your activist base. I still explain all the time what “libertarian” means.
I feel like a lot of the struggles in the Libertarian Party and Green Party is their party names are meant to represent a philosophy. Contrast to the Democrats and Republicans whose names as far as beliefs don’t mean anything. Donald Trump would’ve had a harder time taking over the Republican Party for example if it was instead named the Free Trade Party when he’s pro-protectionism.
Naming a political party is difficult. The opposition in British Columbia have been called the Liberal Party, however with it being the most right-leaning viable option for power in the province, it was heavily made up of federal Conservative voters. They decided to change their name to become BC United, and post-name change are right now are in the middle of a process where they’re losing support in polling and legislators to the BC Conservative Party who have been a party of minimal support for decades.
Feel like the best option would be name the party after a previous high-level American politician or movement you support (if you’re of that ilk, the Woodrow Wilson Party or the Roosevelt Party) or a symbol used at the time to describe people you more identify with (for example Bull Moose).
Neoliberal = far-left. The latest from the No True Scotsman Unabridged Dictionary.
I’d be all in favor of reclaiming “liberal” to mean classical liberal (far-right), as opposed neo-liberal (far-left), no matter how much of an uphill battle that would be. Unfortunately, that’s not what the Liberal Party is doing.
Sure, they claim to be classical liberals. But the whole reason the Liberal Party exists is because it split from the Libertarian Party after the Mises Caucus made that party too classical liberal for them… So the Liberal Party is even further left than the Libertarian Party, which itself is already so far left that most classical liberals and small-L libertarians want nothing to do with it. The Liberal Party isn’t classical liberal at all, but neo-liberal.
What they actually want, is to play the Bull Moose Party to Libertarian Party – which, if they would be honest about that, more power to them – but given that the Libertarian Party was never even close to being in power and is now rapidly disintegrating, I just don’t see the point.
They are fishing in the same voter pool as all the other neo-libs: the Democrats, the Greens, the left wing of the Libertarians (e.g. Oliver-ter Maat), the left wing of the Republicans (e.g. the original never-Trumpers as well as the 2024 Trumpers), not to mention RFK Jr., Cornel West, the American Solidarity Party, the Transhumanist Party, the Natural Law Party, the Unity Party, the Prohibition Party, the Common Sense Party, the Peace and Freedom Party, the Women’s Equality Party, all the myriad parties with the words “socialist/socialism” or “marijuana/weed” in their name, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseam.
I am reminded of the words of socialist neo-liberal George Bernard Shaw:
“You must all know half a dozen people at least, who are no use in this world, who are more trouble than they are worth. Just put them there and say ‘Sir or Madam, now will you be kind enough to justify your existence? If you can’t justify your existence, if you’re not pulling your weight in the social group, if you’re not producing as much as you consume or perhaps a little more, then clearly we cannot use the big organization of our society for the purpose of keeping you alive, because your life does not benefit us, and it can’t be of very much use to yourself.’ ”
Now I completely disagree with Shaw saying this about people, but if we instead applied his words to interchangeable parties that are all just ego-vehicles fishing in the same voter pool, he may have a point…
Curious. But I note their tentative plank on electoral reform is no more radical than the Libertarian Party.
Have to agree with Ryan on this one.
There is no “Liberty Party” today. Surprised they didn’t jump all over that name instead.
I get this is a reference to “classical European liberalism,” but William Gladstone has been dead for more than a century and the British Liberal Party for a full century, its anemic LDP quasi-successor aside.
People today are so obsessed with form instead of substance.; labels over meanings. All of these “not-a-real-libertarian” libertarians will soon be “not-a-real-liberal” liberals
Not going to say anything positive or negative about the people seeking to do this, but you’re trying to make the Mississippi River flow backwards to change people’s connotations of the word “Liberal” in this country. People friendly to you, people hostile to you, and people ambivalent to you.