Posted on 06/01/2008 10:31:23 PM PDT by neverdem
So maybe it isn’t very “live and let live” for libertarians to assemble en masse in the hopes of exerting power. But some libertarians, feeling a little heady after their party’s national convention last weekend, are making a bold claim: this is the year their voting bloc will hold some serious sway in American politics.
“We are in the beginning of a libertarian moment,” said Nick Gillespie, editor of Reason, the libertarian monthly.
Meeting in Denver, the Libertarian Party chose as its new standard-bearer Bob Barr, the former four-term Republican congressman from Georgia who has already been branded a spoiler by Sean Hannity, the conservative commentator from Fox News.
The most well-known libertarian figure, the Republican Ron Paul, has a book at the top of the best-seller list and has raised millions on the Internet while gathering 1.1 million votes in the primaries and caucuses so far. (In the libertarian strongholds of Idaho, Washington State, Montana and North Dakota, he got more than 20 percent of the Republican vote.)
Michael Kinsley, writing in Time magazine last fall, predicted that voters with libertarian leanings are going to be “an increasingly powerful force in politics.” The auguries come even from Hollywood, where a film adaptation of the libertarian writer Ayn Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged” is planned for release next year starring Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, both of whom are said to be Rand fans.
The Libertarian Party faithful expressed their hopes that if Mr. Barr can tap into the well of Ron Paul supporters, it could be their biggest election yet.
“They’re a swing vote right now,” said David Boaz, executive vice president of the Cato Institute, a libertarian research organization in Washington. “People with broadly libertarian views typically vote two-thirds to three-quarters Republican. But in 2004 and 2006, libertarian votes...”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Bummer. If only the U.S. could change to a Proportional Representation, parliamentary system such as the ones which bedevil Israel and Italy, we to could see nutjob splinter parties playing kingmaker...
WOW! A movie will shape our history.
One Ross Perot in a lifetime is enough, as most of you know what happened then. See my tagline...
And I’m sure the N.Y. Times hopes that Barr can drain enough votes away from McCain to make Obama the winner. Some polls suggest that Ross Perot drew many more votes from Bush 41 than Clinton in 1992, which enabled Clinton to win that election. And we know the Dems. feel Ralph Nader took votes from Al Gore in 2000 in Florida to give Bush 43 that election.
You mean the dimmacrats, right?
No party is perfect. I could live with a Libertarian government’s imperfections better than the Republicans or the Baby-Murderers.
As long as they kept the Jihadists from blowing up any cities.
Ron Paul is friends with both Libertarian Presidential candidate Bob Barr and Presidential candidate Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party, and Ron Paul isn’t fully endorsing either one because of his positive connections with both men.
I may well toss one to them in November as a protest vote in favor of not going to the polls at all.
They won't win anything, and it should not go to their head that they ever will.
Stark Contrasts Between McCain and Obama in Judicial Wars
This is why staying home on Election Day is extremely stupid - federal judges and the other elective offices - that effectively gives the donkeys a pass by not voting.
Please, hold your nose and vote for McCain. His appointments may not be great. Obama's or Hillary's appointments will be appalling.
I will continue to support the Libertarian Party , when the GOP sees that more of their base moves to that party they will adobt their ideas. I can believe leftist like Jolie or Pitt are Rand fans, now I can see Jolie’s father doing it. Maybe John will have a part in it. I am going to quit bashing Mccain, most of you have rolled over and accepted him as the candidate and have no intention of questioning the parties motives. I might be delusion but wouldn’t be cool if he just suckered the leftist into voting for him and he turns hard right. But I really doubt it being as he was for CFR and a globull whoring tax.
So if you are a small government conservative, write in “The Gipper”. If you are X .... write in Y. And of course, please donate $10 to support the cause of protestvote.com
Then, after the election cycle, tally the numbers state by state and then make your pronouncements. A more fiscally conservative candidate would gain XX more votes, etc.
Not that many would listen but hey, it sounds like fun. You might even get a few min of fame out of it.
It's unfortunate, but I believe it's a symptom of a much larger problem.
The idea of a protest site is interesting, but believe me when I say that they will get the message. Unfortunately, the ones who might listen to that message will likely be packing up their offices in January.
The larger message needs to be read by the country at large. They have become pawn of the media and the parties, and no longer think of reason properly.
This can only be changed by making mistakes, and then admitting and accepting that mistakes were made.
That's what needs to happen. I can only hope that it will in time.
He does however have a chance of helping get the most dangerous man in America elected to POTUS in one Barracks Hussein Muhammad Obama and all of his radical Muslim loving crew.
Unfortunately, this country is largely oblivious of this.
They will get the government that they deserve.
I dont care, maybe it will be the tipping point, doesnt seem the GOP is fighting for us, we need to get riled up. In fact our brothers in arms (talk radio) need to be stirring us up over the globul whoring tax making its way thru the senate real soon. Just like the did for illegal immigration.
Gawd, Pitt and Jolie as icons of a philosophical guidepost? I haven't eaten enough to puke as much as that notion deserves.
This is the same gambit then-Governor George Wallace of Alabama tried in ‘68 when he and retired General Curis LeMay ran on the American Independent Party’s ticket.
Wallace knew and acknowledged that it was unlikely that he could be directly elected to the presidency, but what he was aiming for was deadlock, to win enough electoral votes that the election would be thrown to the House of Representatives where he hoped he could “make a covenant” as he put it when questioned about his political goals, the long-forgotten reporter said “you mean, make a deal?” and Wallace insisted “make a covenant”, presumably on the hot issues of the day, forced school busing, integration, etc., and a more aggressive anti-Communist foreign policy.
Had Wallace won a couple more states, he might have pulled it off.
No independent campaign has done as well since that ‘68 Wallace/LeMay ticket, and Bob Barr isn’t going to change that one iota.
Bob Barr?
But I thought they were voting for Ron Paul.
What happened there?
Did they really just team up with radical Democrats to burden us with John McCain?
Fair weather Republicants I guess.
Ron Paul says it is all blowback and that mall cops do a better job of protecting America. The interviews are out there.
if you want to hear the libertarian leaders inaction IN action.
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