Where will Libertarians go?

Great Debates
1

[for the actual question, see the last paragraph.]

I just read this story on Yahoo News, and it made me wonder: as the Libertarian party gains credibility and becomes more mainstream, what will happen to the fringe element with which it’s currently afflicted?

In Canada, the first new federal party to survive in the last twenty years is the Reform Party (r.i.p. the Natural Law Party and the National Party). In the first ten years of its life, the Reform party was self-marginalizing, because it couldn’t afford to keep the lunatics out; as a result, Reform candidates were running on platforms like bringing corporal punishment back into schools, and enforcing laws against sodomy.

Two federal elections ago, they won 50 out 300 seats in the House of Parliament, and had to grow up. After four years of stumbling around and embarassing themselves, they succeeded in mainstreaming themselves, and they’re now trying to merge with the remains of the right wing to present a credible threat to the Liberal party, which has won the last two elections, and looks like it will take a third.

The story on Yahoo mentioned that Harry Browne is the new presidential candidate, and he’s quoted as saying that the Libertarian party has tripled in size in the last four years, having benefited from the rise of third parties.

Generally, it seems that any political party that moves into the mainstream has to rid itself somehow of its lunatic fringe. I believe there was already a thread here where someone asked why the Libertarians seem so insane; the consensus was that, being a fringe party, they attracted more than their share of the fringe who can’t or won’t get in the Republicans or the Democrats. There are reasonable, sane Libertarians, but they’re sometimes drowned out by guys wearing solar panels on their heads.

This is all a very long-winded way of asking what will happen to the really radical political activists who will leave or be pushed out of the Libertarian party as it moves into the mainstream. Are there any other semi-credible parties/movements out there? Is there a real Green movement in the U.S.?

2

hansel wrote:

That sounds more like the U.S.'s “Natural Law Party” (no relation to the Canadian Natural Law Party) or “Green Party” (no relation to the German Green Party) than the Libertarian Party. The Libertarian crackpots would wear hardbound copies of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged on their heads.
Incidentally, when I first saw the title of this thread (“Where will Libertarians go?”), I thought it was gonna be another religious thread about whether Libertarians will go to Heaven or Hell when they die.

3

No solar panels are useful to keep oneself independent of the power companies. And to be prepared for when the Feds come to take the power away and give it to freeloaders. Sheesh, do I get down on you for your satorial habits? What, why are you all backing away?

4

We’re not backing up: the curvature of the Earth is carrying us away from you. It’s phsyics, and that’s science, so don’t fight it…

5

<SPLEEN VENT>

To the last question: We can only pray there isn’t. The Green dictionary doesn’t have an entry for “property rights” in it. <shiver>

I registered Libertarian a few years ago, leaving the Republican party. What finally convinced me was Bob Dole’s presidential debate comment that (paraphrasing) “Bill Clinton wants to grow the government by 16%, while I only want to grow it by 12%.” !!! Hey, Bob: How about SHRINKING it by 50 to 70%?

Every time I feel disenfranchised and think about switching back the Republicans do something really boneheaded to keep me away.

Case in point: Here in the People’s Republic of California our Democratically-controlled state legislature and Democratic governor recently passed a $102 billion (with a “b”) budget for the next year. That’s up from $84 billion last year – a 21% increase. (I would have loved to received a 21% raise from my employer this last review cycle. But I digress.) The Republicans did little to nothing to stop it – in fact, they REMOVED some tax-cutting measures from the budget, giving the aforementioned Democratic governor LESS tax relief than he asked for.

Also, the Republican state Insurance Commissioner just resigned after it was discovered he cleared many insurance companies from having to pay earthquake claims in exchange for these companies donating large sums to foundations the commissioner had set up. What an idiot. (And, BTW, this leaves only ONE Republican in state-wide office: the Secretary of State, whose important duties involve making sure elections are fair and all the hard-working notaries public get the credit they are due but for some reason never receive. Yes, that’s the scent of sarcasm you just detected.)

So the topic of this thread shouldn’t be so much “Where will Libertarians go?” but “When will Americans finally get sick and tired of having their lives micromanaged by power-hungry, bribe-taking, tax-and-spend representatives from the two major parties?”

</SPLEEN VENT>

6

For better or worse, the answer to the OP is that the Libertarian Party won’t become mainstream. Every year, seemingly, the LP is growing in “record numbers” according to the LP itself, but it still struggles to pick up 1% (or .5%) of the vote in national elections. Every third party does this, mostly because it looks better in the newsletter than “Libertarians as unpopular as ever! Membership remains surprisingly low!” If you crunch the numbers right, you can make any claim you damn well please.

It’s more than likely that we Libertarians won’t be going anywhere. We will continue to play the part of every American third party, i.e. trying to gain enough acceptance to force the major parties to adopt some of our positions. Realistically, that’s the best we can hope for.

If, however, we posit the OP’s assumption that the LP will go mainstream, then the radicals will disperse. The radical conservatives will head to the Conservative Party or the (shudder) Right to Life Party. The tree-huggers (those left over from the LP’s hippie roots) will flee to the Green Party. Personally, if a Libertarian is not on the ballot, I usually vote Democrat. In effect, they don’t tax you any more than the Republicans do, and at least they’ve shown a genuine interst in preserving most civil liberties.

7

Ah, yes “mainstream libertarians”; isn’t that an oxymoron? Hey, libertarians, name the 5 largest countries with libertarian gov’ts…The 3?..Any?..Any in all recorded history?

Oh, don’t get me wrong, there are many good libertarian principals, and if the purpose of the Libertarian party is simply to make some of the “saner” planks become mainstream, well, great. But as no 2 “libertarians” can even agree exactly what L is and what it stands for, I think we have a long wait before the party begins electing significant #s of canditades.

8

Neither, they will wait endlessly in eternity for the “free market” to shut down one or the other, so they can decide which to go to. :smiley:

9

Well, DIWD, you are dead wrong about Libertarians not being able to agree. If you had watched ANY of the Libertarian National Convention this weekend on C-SPAN you would have seen that the party is very capable of agreeing, not surprising since we all share the same core principles.
<hijack> Any other Libertarians watch the convention? How do you feel about that Beer-Gut with the Ukulele, or the Butterfly Lady? My god people, this a nationally televised convention, wear a suit!</hijack>

10

Libertarians can agree? Boondoggle and Poppycock! The LP is such a “big tent” party that principles are the only thing we’ll ever agree on. There are Libertarians who are just in it for the civil liberties platform, those who are just in it for the economics, and those who want to rip up the military. Then there are those who want a fucking missile defense program and who, inexplicably, support the death penalty (egad, are they ever in the wrong party). If we can get drugs and prostitution legalised (legalized? cripes.), or at least sort of tolerated, that’s good enough for me.

11

VarlosZ wrote:

That would be a chastity belt, right? :wink:

12

As I’m sure most of you know, the American system has never been able to support more than two major political parties for any length of time (see the Republican Party’s surpassing the Whigs for the classic example). If the Libertarian Party ever does “grow up” into a major party, it will have to supplant one of the major parties (my guess is the GOP… but where will Dubya ever go?)

If that happened, the GOP would probably split, with some going to the LP, and some to the Dems… but I doubt that will happen. It looks like the Dems and the GOP for the foreseeable future. Unless we decide to go to a parliamentary system, that is. Now, wouldn’t that be fun!

13

Well hansel, if the party remains true to its principle there’s no need or reason for them to leave, unless they were not truly Libertarians to begin with.

Chief

We watched most of the convention and yes, we saw the characters you mentioned. [Shrug] If individuality really bothered me, I join the Republicrats. :wink:

Tolerance, my friend.

DIWD A Libertarian is one who believes in the libertarian principle. You now have my take on the “L”.

Varlos

I can’t agree with you and I won’t compromise my vote.

14

If a Libertarian isn’t on the ballot (my first choice) I will vote for ANY third party candidate. Reform, Green, Socialist, Communist, whatever. If there is only a democan and a republicrat, I will leave the choice blank. I stand by my voting record of never having voted for a democan or a republicrat.

I am most definatly a supporter of the Libertarian party, but I also think that it is better to vote ** against ** either of the two major parties if no suitible Libertarian is on the ballot. The two party system sucks. If we had a multi-party system (like Italy or Israel) people claim that the government would be paralyzed into inactivity. Good, says I. Governmental inactivity is the reason that I vote Libertarian in the first place. I look to achieve that any way I can.

15

Why not? And are the conditions that caused the Republican party to depose the whigs still extant?

16

First of all, we are in a period where it is quite chic to be part of a third party. I think that Gov. Ventura is both a cause and an effect of this to a degree, to be honest.

There are many people now who are jumping ship, not because they found a party which is perfect for them, but because they are quite dissatisfied with the lack of bipartisan politics we’ve seen the last decade or so.

And since the Libertarians are easily the third biggest party and they have (Ventura aside) done the best job of getting the word out about it’s ideals and candidates, it’s not surprising that many people have chosen them.

Also, it doesn’t hurt that I have seen hardcore conservative Republicans and bleeding heart liberals vote Libertarian at times, because one can see both sides liking SOMETHING about what the Libertarians stand for.

(Right now, someone could talk about such an inclusive party being doomed to failure right from the start, but I am trying to answer the OP and some posts since, not discuss the overall viability and/or pros and cons of every nuance of Libertarian ideology.)

I am a registered Libertarian. I do not think the “Libertarian Platform” is any more 100% perfectly suited to my own ideals than any other party out there. But as I see many of our civil liberties taken away from us, I am glad that I am at a party which fights for them - admittedly to a fault sometimes, but revolution ain’t never been simple! :slight_smile:

Now, there are some Libertarians who go quite far, farther than I would like to see us go. Some sound like anarchists with their anti-government dogma, while others come up with unrealistic ideas, such as eliminating the entire public school system - without any real solutions that would make such bold assertions anything more than a Nirvana-esque pipe-dream of rhetoric.

But these extremists exist in every party. There are conservative GOP folks such as Buchanan, but he is tempered with moderates such as Spector or Powell. There are total liberal Democrats like the Kennedy’s who are tempered with moderates such as Gore. It happens. Becoming part of a party does not mean being assimilated like the fucking borg got you. :rolleyes:

Now, I don’t know WHAT will happen with the Libertarian party. All I know is that it fits me best, and I do what I can to spread MY interpretation of Libertarianism whenever I can, and encourage people to look into the party.

17

Originally posted by hansel

Sorry, I guess I wasn’t clear. My point was that in no point of American history has the American political system done this. It may not be impossible, but it hasn’t happened yet, and I don’t find it particularly likely. The way the President is elected (Electoral College, winner-take-all in each state), it encourages the growth of big national parties, to make sure that your guy gets enough EC votes to have a shot. As the House determines the result if nobody wins a majority, you have to have a strong foothold before you’re viable.

In a parliamentary system, where the MPs vote for the PM, a smaller party has a better chance of gaining a foothold, through a coalition government. It’s just an issue of ease, and the American system is not friendly for a situation where more than two “major parties” duke it out regularly. Abe Lincoln was one of the original Republican candidates: less than a decade later, he was President. Which brings me to…

Considering that the Whig party was created to be against Andrew Jackson, it really didn’t have much reason to exist after his disappearance from the scene. This is the other reason why I don’t see turnover coming soon: both parties are in strong situations. Their biggest danger is that in running to the middle, they merge with each other, and a Communist, Libertarian, or some other political party moves in to fill the (rather large at that point) vacuum on the fringe.