Posted on 05/30/2004 5:32:36 AM PDT by schaketo
ATLANTA — A national political convention opens here this week but it won’t get a lot of air time on the evening newscasts, cause traffic tie-ups or rack up big municipal bills for overtime pay for cops.
In fact, Atlanta workers and commuters will hardly even know the Libertarians are in town from today to Sunday to nominate a presidential candidate.
With just 800 delegates expected, it isn’t even a good-sized convention by Atlanta standards, where the average convention brings about 1,000 people and the visitors bureau doesn’t even ballyhoo those with less than 5,000.
As for security concerns like those surrounding the Democratic convention in Boston in July and the Republican gathering in New York a month later, where extraordinary preparations are under way, there just don’t seem to be any.
‘‘Is it going to be in the city?’’ asked John Bankhead, a Georgia Bureau of Investigation spokesman whose agency would be in the loop about any special security issues.
‘‘They’re Libertarians. Perhaps they didn’t want any government assistance,’’ joked Dan McLagan, the spokesman for Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue.
‘‘We’ll be paying for our convention solely with private, not taxpayer, funds,’’ countered George Getz, the party’s communications director. ‘‘The two older parties will be shaking down taxpayers for more than $75 million, which makes them (their conventions) nothing more than obscenely expensive, taxpayer-financed political ads.’’
Formed in 1971, the party stresses the rights of individuals over the power of government, and a foreign policy of noninterference. Libertarians call for lower taxes and increased individual freedom and individual responsibility.
It claims nearly 600 elected officials nationwide, almost entirely in city or county positions, and has been on the presidential ballot in all 50 states for the last three elections.
The main event of the convention comes Sunday when the party will choose its nominee from a field of seven, only three of whom are seen as strong contenders: Gary Nolan, a talk radio personality who has won all the primaries; Aaron Russo, a former Hollywood movie producer (“The Rose”) who ran for governor of Nevada in 1998, and Michael Badnarik, a Texas software engineer.
Their campaigns are anything but free-spending. None of the three front-runners had raised more than $100,000 through the end of March, according to campaign disclosure reports.
All three want to repeal the Patriot Act and bring American troops home from foreign soil.
So far, the Libertarian Party is on the presidential ballot in 28 states, according to Richard Winger, who edits a newsletter and Web site called ‘‘Ballot Access News.’’
But petitions have been filed with election officials in Maryland, West Virginia and Texas, and petition drives are still under way in Arkansas, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
Lawsuits will determine if the party gets on the ballot in Ohio and Oklahoma, he said. The party’s last presidential candidate, Harry Browne, received 384,431 votes in 2000, less than half of 1 percent. Ralph Nader’s third-party bid that year captured 2.8 million votes, or 2.74 percent.
Some argue Nader’s star is fading and that the Libertarians could play spoiler in the race between President Bush and Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry. University of Virginia political science professor Larry Sabato, however, isn’t one of them.
‘‘The Libertarians will contribute to the debate with their ideas, but they don’t have a ticket that is likely to attract much attention in the fall,’’ he said.
‘‘They have literally no chance of being included in the debates, and that may be one of the only things going right for Georgia W. Bush. Libertarians tend to take more votes away from Republican candidates than Democratic candidates ...’’ a statement denied by Libertarians, who agree Libertarians are likely to be excluded from the bi-partisan debates.
“The old parties are afraid for the people to hear our ideas,” said Getz.
Many still remember Ross Perot. (third party, not Libertarian)
Hell, the main stream (reads ... liberal, socialist, communist) barely tolerate the Republican Party, never mind entertaining any positive thoughts about the Libertarian Party.
The only reason Nader is tolerated by the press is because he's closer to Lenin than most Democrat Party members.
Fence sitters
I bet the price of dope just went up in Atlanta.
LOL! And I’m sympathetic to most Libertarian ideas (not the party), and that’s funny!
This thread is begging for the Zoolander gif.
"By their actions, if they happen to get elected, they would end up with the WoT being fought here, rather than there."
If the Libertarians were to win and did enact their platform there would be no WoT. The Libertarian platform calls for the elimination on all restrictions a/o laws on immigration and the possession of firearms. IOW, Osaama bin Ladin and the Taliban and every terrorist in the world could show up on our borders with enough firepower for WWWII and the Libertarians would have no basis to deny their entry.
The atmosphere was electric, the rooms were abuzz, and the crowd was steadily growing at the Atlanta, Ga., Marriott Marquis on Thursday, May 26 as the Libertarian National Convention got ready to begin.
The lobby and halls began early in the day to teem with delegates to the convention, as candidates for the LP's nomination for president -- and for internal party offices -- began working the crowd.
Although the convention didn't officially begin until Friday, May 27, hundreds of delegates and party officials were showing up early to participate in classes, organizational meetings and other events peripheral to the convention -- enough that Libertarian National Committee Chair Geoffrey Neale started jokingly "worrying" that there won't be room for everyone who shows up.
By the time registration closed late in the evening, 980 people had registered for the convention, and the number was expected to grow to well over 1,000 on Friday morning.
The three most likely candidates for the LP's presidential nomination -- Michael Badnarik, Gary Nolan and Aaron Russo -- were making the most of the little time left before their debate Saturday and the election by delegates on Sunday morning.
http://www.lp.org/lpnews/0407/convention_warm-up.html
GUESS NO ONE EVEN KNEW THEY WERE HAVING A CONVENTION, PROBABLY OVERSHAWDOWED BY THE WORLD WAR TWO MEMORIAL.
Badnarik, a computer consultant who teaches a class on the Constitution, began his eight-hour-long class on Thursday morning, with a room full of people who he promised would "learn the basics of the Constitution, primarily the difference between rights and privileges. They'll rediscover the proper relationship between the people and the government." That proper relationship is that "'We the people' created the government; therefore they work for us, not the other way around," Badnarik said -- pointing to a key belief of the LP. Nolan, a long-time radio talk show host who has made a clean sweep of all of the LP's non-binding primary elections in recent months, was interviewed on camera in the atrium of the convention center, following up on many radio and television appearances over the past few months. And Russo, a Hollywood movie producer whose hits included "The Rose" and "Trading Places," has aired a series of television ads in the Atlanta market over the past week on the ABC, NBC and Fox News affiliates.
VaBthang is keeper of the LOSERTARIAN gif....
Well, at least they're honest about it.
I'm a card-carrying, dues-paying member of the LP, and, like Neil Boortz, who's one of the speakers at the convention, I agree with your statement completely. I'll also be voting for GWB this year based on that issue alone. It's nice to talk about smaller government and personal freedoms - if we're around to enjoy it.
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