Glad to hear you are voting for Governor Romney this time around 🙂
If the GOP didn’t want the libertarians to “let Obama win” by voting their conscience, they should have put forward a better candidate.
Instead, they went with their robot man who does and says whatever the opinion polls tell him to. In the last week it has once again become apparent to the right that they need libertarians to fill out their numbers, but unlike the undecided voter, libertarians can’t be swayed by platitudes and empty promises.
If libertarians do “allow Obama to win”, hopefully, the time between these election results and the next will give the GOP the time to figure out how to actually win an election.
Hint: it involves youth and the libertarian party has all of it on this side of the river.
“If the GOP didn’t want the libertarians to “let Obama win” by voting their conscience, they should have put forward a better candidate.”
Unless the candidate was a Libertarian, you still wouldn’t vote Republican. There would always be enough of a difference that you could use to justify voting Libertarian.
But at this moment, this is irrelevant. We need you to help us stop Obama and the only way to do that is to vote Republican. Your Libertarian vote will do nothing more that amuse the Democrats as they retake the White House and deny you and us the very liberties you supposedly hold so dear.
Incorrect. Data has shown that Johnson is pulling Obama votes in Colorado, New Mexico, and New Hampshire, so he may end up giving those states to Republicans.
You’re welcome.
No.. you’re thinking like a child, or a gambler, focused on the short term. There will *always* be some statist asshole in the oval office so long as people keep voting for them. It’s not complicated: if you vote for statists, you get statists.
It’s not about the head of the ticket. It’s about the overall dynamic.
Don’t vote for Romney out of spite to teach Republicans a lesson? I hope libertarians will be more rational. There is a lot at stake for the future of our country not just a pilitical party or two.
If the Libertarians wanted me to vote their way, they would’ve started by not threatening to insure four more years of the most destructive predident in history if the Republicans didn’t nominate a candidate 100% acceptable to the Libertarian Party.
I’ll vote for Romney as the lesser of two evils. But I do wonder who would have picked up the nomination, if certain statistical anomalies which just so happen to strictly favor Romney hadn’t happened throughout the Republican primaries and caucuses. I consider it likely vote fraud (as I’ve mentioned before) at the vote tabulation level, I find it hard to take the Republican Party seriously when someone behind the scenes decides who gets to be the nominee.
There are two types of libertarians. One is preeminently a social liberal and doesn’t cotton to being in a big tent with SoCons. When Bush was in office, they mainly voted for Obama. The good news for Republicans is that they’ve been played by Obama and will likely be voting libertarian this time.
The other are mainly anti-statists and would be generally happy to vote Republican to stop Obama. So it’s quite likely that the Libertarian party is hurting the Democrats as much or even more than the Republicans this go round.
make the Republican and Democratic parties more libertarian
Randy didn’t go far enough. I think he kept the argument simple enough for even an ideolog libertarian to understand [yes, that was a tweak.]
If you believe one party is the least bit better than the other on libertarian ideals (and if you don’t you really lack perception) then your goal should be to split that party but exactly the opposite way from not voting for it.
For example, suppose you believe [I’ll just randomly toss one out here] that republicans are better on libertarian issues (having people like Rand Paul obviously agreeing with this.) As Randy points out, they are already a coalition. You want the democrats to disappear (the opposite of what voting libertarian does) and you want to grow the republicans to being an only party.
You keep the argument inside one party until only they are left and then you split out the libertarians to become the second party so they have a fighting chance of beating the republicans (because the democrat party is now the token spoiler.)
The only way in our system to marginalize one party is to grow the other. The fantasy of growing a third party in our system can’t work as Randy has explained. Like it or not, ours is a two party system by design. You keep the libertarian party together by keeping it together inside the republican party until the democrats are no more (or close enough to it.)
To make it even simpler… What happens if republicans get to say 80%? Then few of any other party will win any elections. Anybody wanting to win elections jumps into the republican party. That reinforces it being the only party.
Then, if libertarian can keep discipline, they can split off to become the major second party challenger taking tea party and other members that are not purely with them, that are fed up with the elite Rockefeller republicans.
Forming a new political party violates no laws of nature; neither the Republican nor the Democrat Party date back to the beginning of the Republic. However, taking over a political party seems to be an easier route to power. The extreme Left has demonstrated that with its takeover of the Democrat Party. If we’re serious about taking back the country, libertarians should concentrate on this route. We’ll know we are succeeding when closet Democrats like Powell and McCain get their sorry asses the hell out of the GOP, and just go be Democrats.
“closet Democrats like Powell and McCain get their sorry asses the hell out of the GOP”
Why stop there? If moderate Mitt joined moderate McCain, there would have been no need for this thread!
The term “moderate” is an invention of the liberal left, and means: “A Republican who has no convictions, and either agrees with us or can be bullied into capitulating to our demands whenever we want.”
Neither Romney nor McCain is a moderate. McCain is every bit the statist that Biden is. He’s not called a liberal because he calls himself a Republican, and he is very strong on national defense. He can’t be bullied out of that position, but since he agrees with almost everything else the Democrat Party stands for, he’s a “moderate.” Romney is a different animal, and would probably fit a normal person’s (as opposed to a Democrat’s) concept of “moderate,” which is: someone who appears to hold a lot of contradictory views. But at his core, he is more attuned to the individual than any Leftist (not a very high bar, admittedly). A libertarian Republican Party would be his logical home.
I don’t know which Mitt you’re talking about (there are so many) but Massachusetts Mitt is a statist! Vote libertarian! 🙂
I had a funny thing happen the other day. An Australian commenter was claiming that those who bother to vote voluntarily were “extreme” and one needed to force everyone to vote (which is apparently how it’s done in Australia) in order to get the moderate vote. So here, “moderate” meant lazy and ignorant.
That’s also true regarding taxes — anyone who wouldn’t pay voluntarily is lazy and ignorant (as well as foolishly selfish). I’m sure you agree.
At the founding of our country there was a disagreement as to if there even should be political parties. The founders who thought there should not be any have proven to be correct.
What was (or is) the alternative? Has any modern democratic republic operated without parties?
I am not sure how you would prevent people from joining together with other like minded individuals.
Gosh, voting sure felt good today. Mostly libertarians, a couple greens for the Railroad Commission, and nary a Democrat or Republican vote anywhere on the ballot.
Feels good. Feels real good.
I’ll point to a special report that appeared in The Economist print edition a few weeks ago titled True Progressivism. It’s about another kind of oppression than simply governmental. BTW, that somewhat conservative British publication favors Obama but very unenthusiastically.
Pretty much what I’ve been saying. I’m an old student of one of libertarianism’s unsung heroes, Leonard Read of the Foundation for Economic Education, who always thought a political action would not restore liberty unless the electorate were educated in why liberty was not just morally right but brings about a more prospeous society than statism. One of the ways I see that happening is by libertarians infiltrating the GOP and educating it in a more pro-freedom direction, similar in a way to what the socialists did with the Democratic Party back in the 1920s and ’30s. The socialists realized Americans had too proud a tradition of freedom to ever embrace the “s”word; so the socialists re-packaged themselves as “liberals” (thus distorting and bastardizing the term), and as “liberals” infiltrated and eventually took control of the Democratic Party, moving it in a more statist direction.
Glad to hear you are voting for Governor Romney this time around 🙂
If the GOP didn’t want the libertarians to “let Obama win” by voting their conscience, they should have put forward a better candidate.
Instead, they went with their robot man who does and says whatever the opinion polls tell him to. In the last week it has once again become apparent to the right that they need libertarians to fill out their numbers, but unlike the undecided voter, libertarians can’t be swayed by platitudes and empty promises.
If libertarians do “allow Obama to win”, hopefully, the time between these election results and the next will give the GOP the time to figure out how to actually win an election.
Hint: it involves youth and the libertarian party has all of it on this side of the river.
“If the GOP didn’t want the libertarians to “let Obama win” by voting their conscience, they should have put forward a better candidate.”
Unless the candidate was a Libertarian, you still wouldn’t vote Republican. There would always be enough of a difference that you could use to justify voting Libertarian.
But at this moment, this is irrelevant. We need you to help us stop Obama and the only way to do that is to vote Republican. Your Libertarian vote will do nothing more that amuse the Democrats as they retake the White House and deny you and us the very liberties you supposedly hold so dear.
Incorrect. Data has shown that Johnson is pulling Obama votes in Colorado, New Mexico, and New Hampshire, so he may end up giving those states to Republicans.
You’re welcome.
No.. you’re thinking like a child, or a gambler, focused on the short term. There will *always* be some statist asshole in the oval office so long as people keep voting for them. It’s not complicated: if you vote for statists, you get statists.
It’s not about the head of the ticket. It’s about the overall dynamic.
Don’t vote for Romney out of spite to teach Republicans a lesson? I hope libertarians will be more rational. There is a lot at stake for the future of our country not just a pilitical party or two.
If the Libertarians wanted me to vote their way, they would’ve started by not threatening to insure four more years of the most destructive predident in history if the Republicans didn’t nominate a candidate 100% acceptable to the Libertarian Party.
I’ll vote for Romney as the lesser of two evils. But I do wonder who would have picked up the nomination, if certain statistical anomalies which just so happen to strictly favor Romney hadn’t happened throughout the Republican primaries and caucuses. I consider it likely vote fraud (as I’ve mentioned before) at the vote tabulation level, I find it hard to take the Republican Party seriously when someone behind the scenes decides who gets to be the nominee.
There are two types of libertarians. One is preeminently a social liberal and doesn’t cotton to being in a big tent with SoCons. When Bush was in office, they mainly voted for Obama. The good news for Republicans is that they’ve been played by Obama and will likely be voting libertarian this time.
The other are mainly anti-statists and would be generally happy to vote Republican to stop Obama. So it’s quite likely that the Libertarian party is hurting the Democrats as much or even more than the Republicans this go round.
make the Republican and Democratic parties more libertarian
Randy didn’t go far enough. I think he kept the argument simple enough for even an ideolog libertarian to understand [yes, that was a tweak.]
If you believe one party is the least bit better than the other on libertarian ideals (and if you don’t you really lack perception) then your goal should be to split that party but exactly the opposite way from not voting for it.
For example, suppose you believe [I’ll just randomly toss one out here] that republicans are better on libertarian issues (having people like Rand Paul obviously agreeing with this.) As Randy points out, they are already a coalition. You want the democrats to disappear (the opposite of what voting libertarian does) and you want to grow the republicans to being an only party.
You keep the argument inside one party until only they are left and then you split out the libertarians to become the second party so they have a fighting chance of beating the republicans (because the democrat party is now the token spoiler.)
The only way in our system to marginalize one party is to grow the other. The fantasy of growing a third party in our system can’t work as Randy has explained. Like it or not, ours is a two party system by design. You keep the libertarian party together by keeping it together inside the republican party until the democrats are no more (or close enough to it.)
To make it even simpler… What happens if republicans get to say 80%? Then few of any other party will win any elections. Anybody wanting to win elections jumps into the republican party. That reinforces it being the only party.
Then, if libertarian can keep discipline, they can split off to become the major second party challenger taking tea party and other members that are not purely with them, that are fed up with the elite Rockefeller republicans.
Forming a new political party violates no laws of nature; neither the Republican nor the Democrat Party date back to the beginning of the Republic. However, taking over a political party seems to be an easier route to power. The extreme Left has demonstrated that with its takeover of the Democrat Party. If we’re serious about taking back the country, libertarians should concentrate on this route. We’ll know we are succeeding when closet Democrats like Powell and McCain get their sorry asses the hell out of the GOP, and just go be Democrats.
“closet Democrats like Powell and McCain get their sorry asses the hell out of the GOP”
Why stop there? If moderate Mitt joined moderate McCain, there would have been no need for this thread!
The term “moderate” is an invention of the liberal left, and means: “A Republican who has no convictions, and either agrees with us or can be bullied into capitulating to our demands whenever we want.”
Neither Romney nor McCain is a moderate. McCain is every bit the statist that Biden is. He’s not called a liberal because he calls himself a Republican, and he is very strong on national defense. He can’t be bullied out of that position, but since he agrees with almost everything else the Democrat Party stands for, he’s a “moderate.” Romney is a different animal, and would probably fit a normal person’s (as opposed to a Democrat’s) concept of “moderate,” which is: someone who appears to hold a lot of contradictory views. But at his core, he is more attuned to the individual than any Leftist (not a very high bar, admittedly). A libertarian Republican Party would be his logical home.
I don’t know which Mitt you’re talking about (there are so many) but Massachusetts Mitt is a statist! Vote libertarian! 🙂
I had a funny thing happen the other day. An Australian commenter was claiming that those who bother to vote voluntarily were “extreme” and one needed to force everyone to vote (which is apparently how it’s done in Australia) in order to get the moderate vote. So here, “moderate” meant lazy and ignorant.
That’s also true regarding taxes — anyone who wouldn’t pay voluntarily is lazy and ignorant (as well as foolishly selfish). I’m sure you agree.
At the founding of our country there was a disagreement as to if there even should be political parties. The founders who thought there should not be any have proven to be correct.
What was (or is) the alternative? Has any modern democratic republic operated without parties?
I am not sure how you would prevent people from joining together with other like minded individuals.
Gosh, voting sure felt good today. Mostly libertarians, a couple greens for the Railroad Commission, and nary a Democrat or Republican vote anywhere on the ballot.
Feels good. Feels real good.
I’ll point to a special report that appeared in The Economist print edition a few weeks ago titled True Progressivism. It’s about another kind of oppression than simply governmental. BTW, that somewhat conservative British publication favors Obama but very unenthusiastically.
Pretty much what I’ve been saying. I’m an old student of one of libertarianism’s unsung heroes, Leonard Read of the Foundation for Economic Education, who always thought a political action would not restore liberty unless the electorate were educated in why liberty was not just morally right but brings about a more prospeous society than statism. One of the ways I see that happening is by libertarians infiltrating the GOP and educating it in a more pro-freedom direction, similar in a way to what the socialists did with the Democratic Party back in the 1920s and ’30s. The socialists realized Americans had too proud a tradition of freedom to ever embrace the “s”word; so the socialists re-packaged themselves as “liberals” (thus distorting and bastardizing the term), and as “liberals” infiltrated and eventually took control of the Democratic Party, moving it in a more statist direction.