Taunting the Libertarian Bull

There's an old saying my dad taught me as a kid: Don't fool with the bull or you'll get the horns. It appears Washington state GOP chairman Chris Vance missed that day in Life's Lessons 101. And a Republican candidate is now paying the price.

Of course, I'm talking about Dino Rossi, who now appears to have LOST the 2004 Washington gubernatorial election by just 130 votes out of darn-near 3 million cast. The Fat Lady hasn't finished her aria on this one yet, but she's choking out the final chorus. Rossi will need to complete the political equivalent of a "hail Mary" pass to pull this one out.

When you lose an election this close, you face a flood of "what ifs" and second-guessing. So while acknowledging that a miracle is still possible, if unlikely, I say let the Monday Morning Quarterbacking begin.

In light of this loss, Rossi and the Republicans will do what they always do. First they'll ask if there was anything they could have done to get more votes from women. Then they'll ask what more they could have done to attract black votes. Then they'll question if their outreach to Hispanics was up to snuff. And then, "could we have done more to turn out evangelicals"? Oh, and how about the union vote? You get the drill.

But there's one critically influential voting bloc which Republicans, if they stay true to form, will somehow neglect to consider. And it cost them dearly in 2004...again.

Let me first point out that there is no Woman Party which runs candidates in elections. There is no Black Party. There is no Latino Party. There is no Fundamentalist Party. There is no Labor Party. None of those constituencies have their own political operation running their own candidates who have the ability to siphon off votes from one or both of the two major parties.

But voters who want the government to get the hell out of their wallets, their bedrooms, their businesses and their hair; voters who just want to be left alone; voters who still embrace the Founders' notion of limited-government and good, old-fashioned freedom to pursue life, liberty and happiness...they DO have their own party.

And while the LP comes in for plenty of criticism for its own political short-comings (they too often run "fringe" candidates with no hope or even intent to win, but rather put themselves on the ballot merely as "spoilers"), Republican candidates and party leaders who dismiss and/or ignore them do so at their own peril. Just ask Slade Gorton.

Back in 2000, incumbent Republican Sen. Slade Gorton faced a challenge from Democrat Maria Cantwell, not coincidentally in Rossi's state of Washington. Gorton reveled in his well-established "moderate" Republican record and blew off the limited-government, libertarian-leaning voters, including many in his own party. And because his hubris, Cantwell snatched away his senate seat...by a scant 2,229 votes out of almost 2.5 million cast.

The LP candidate in that race pulled 64,734 votes...a whopping 62,000-plus more votes than Gorton needed to keep his seat (and the GOP majority in the U.S. Senate as it turned out, by the way).

Now, the LP tries to deny that they throw races to the Democrats. Their "spin" is that they pull equally from both parties. But ask yourself this question. The candidate of a party which espouses strictly limited government is more likely to pull voters from which of the major two parties: The party which actively and openly promotes bigger and more intrusive nanny-state government or the party which talks the limited government talk but all too often fails to live up to its rhetoric and walk the limited-government walk?

You would think that a party which lost such an important and close U.S. senate race due to the "LP factor" just four years ago would have learned a lesson. Gee, do you think the GOP maybe ought to consider adding libertarian-leaning voters to their "outreach" programs?

Fat chance. Instead, GOP state chairman Chris Vance made the incredibly foolish political decision to taunt the LP bull by constantly waving red flags in its face. Frankly, for his bone-headedness Vance deserves that set of horns now firmly implanted in his backside.

In August 2001, a conservative Washington state senator "joined" the Libertarian Party. A quirk in how things work here means a person can retain their official voter registration with the GOP while "joining" the LP. It's kinda like registering as a Republican but joining the Chamber of Commerce...only in this case the "Chamber" also fields its own candidates, as well.

From a practical political perspective, the senator's move was merely symbolic. It simply sent a message to Republican leaders that many conservatives were more than a little concerned, if not angry, with Republicans wandering so far off the limited-government reservation. It was a serious, but ultimately harmless shot across the GOP bow.

But when questioned about the state senator's action by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Chairman Vance exclaimed, "You're kidding!" Libertarians are "a bunch of radical extremists" who "have a lot of kooky ideas," he told the paper.

Ah, how to win friends and influence people. Dale Carnegie, please call your office.

A few months later, the Post-Intelligencer ran a generally positive story about the Libertarian Party gaining some credibility at the ballot box in Washington, though primarily in non-partisan races for obscure offices. Nevertheless, Vance couldn't help but rain on their parade. "The Republican Party is running a little campaign this year...trying to get out the message that the Libertarian Party is the party of the loony left, not the conservative party," he told the paper. "What Libertarians believe in is small government carried to the most ridiculous extreme."

Hmmm. Small government carried to the most ridiculous extreme, huh? Let's consider the words, then, of some other "extremists."

How about starting with that "extremist" Barry Goldwater who famously noted that "extremism in defense of liberty" was "no vice." Which, by the way, was a take-off from the words of another "extremist" of his day, Tom Paine, who wrote that "moderation in principle is always a vice."

Or how about this "extreme" belief articulated by that 21st century Republican "extremist" Ronald Reagan who said, "Government is not the solution, it's the problem."

Or how about that "extremist" Thomas Jefferson who wrote that "Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare but only those specifically enumerated." Or that "extremist" James Madison who wrote that "Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government." Or Paine, again, who wrote that "Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil."

OK, I digress...but you get the point. As far as "extremism" when it comes to small government is concerned, the Libertarians are in pretty darn good company.

Unbelievably, and with not just a small amount of foreshadowing, Vance also acknowledged in this 2001 interview that "in a very, very, very close race, the Libertarians hurt us."

Gee, you mean like in a gubernatorial race where the Democrat wins by 130 votes out of almost three million cast...and the Libertarian Party candidate chalks up over 63,000 votes? Duh. Vance reminds me of Ray in "Ghostbusters" who ended up naming the means of his own destruction by thinking of the Sta-Puff Marshmallow Man.

Let's now fast-forward to 2004. As it turns out, no Republican candidate filed to run for Washington State Auditor by the normal deadline. Under current law, the party itself then had one week to fill the vacancy if it so chose.

Now, a Libertarian Party candidate DID file in that race by the original deadline. So this could have been an interesting statewide race between a Libertarian running head-to-head against a Democrat candidate. But Vance just couldn't let it go. So he scraped the bottom of the barrel and came up with a GOP candidate...who turned out to be a political loon who had been arrested 19 times for disrupting Tacoma City Council meetings. Boy, there's a candidate to make you proud, huh?

In an internal GOP memo issued after the embarrassing appointment was exposed by the media, Vance tried to justify his decision to the party's membership. His intent, he explained, was solely to deny the Libertarian Party any shot at getting even 5% of the vote in any statewide race because that would enable the LP to enjoy automatic ballot access for the next four years.

You see, Vance doesn't want to compete with the LP in the arena of public opinion; he wants to choke off any opposition. And if that means tapping a melon-head from the Planet Zircon to run for state auditor rather than let the LP have a clean shot at a Democrat, well, that's just a price Vance was willing to pay.

There's another old saying in sports: If you want to be the best, you have to beat the best. What kind of political victory is achieved against a non-existent opponent? True, it really IS a lot easier to win the game when you never face any opponents (just ask Saddam). But then...what's the point? Power for power's sake?

All of which is to say that Chairman Vance in particular, and national GOP leaders in general, have handled the Libertarian Party "problem" in recent years foolishly, if not stupidly. Rather than admit they have serious trouble in their own glass house, they resort to pointing out that the other guy's glass house is dump, too. The problem here is that the GOP's glass house is MUCH bigger...so they have a LOT more to lose if it comes crashing down.

Truth be told, the Libertarian Party isn't so much of a "problem" as it is a reality and a challenge. The GOP needs to find a way to deal with it in a competitive manner...or continue suffering expensive and embarrassing losses such as Gorton's and Rossi's.

That means GOP leaders need to factor in not just how to pander to...er, "reach out" to women, minorities and other special interests, but how to reach out to voters who have imbedded in their souls the extremist notion that government isn't the solution, it's the problem. That means competing against the LP instead of slashing its tires so the bus can't make it to the game. That means competing for limited-government voters instead of ridiculing their principles and taking their votes for granted.

And that means replacing Chris Vance as the Grand Imperial Pooh-bah of the Washington State Republican Party, post-haste. It's one thing for the LP to serve the role of electoral "spoiler." It's another thing altogether for the Republican leader to throw kerosene on the fire through childish taunts and bush-league machinations to keep them off the ballot. Vance fooled with the LP bull...and his party and his candidate got the horns. Stupid is as stupid does.

"However, there is a huge amount of disaffected people who no longer vote because..."

This is the same argument made by M. Moore and MoveOn.Org, that there was a huge number of disaffected voters who don't vote because their is no real left wing candidate. You see, the far left and the far right are both making the same argument. You see where that took the democrats.

"The left was so wacky and so unAmerican that they were rejected."

The libertarian party is just as wacky. Privitization of roads, courts and police departments is not a winner.

Let me assure you that I want pretty much the same things you do. But, as you say there are a large number of people who rely upon their own form of welfare. I think they can be persuaded but it will take time and must be done gradually. The modern welfare state was constructed over 40 or 50 years. It will take as long to deconstruct.

The subject of this thread is the libertarian party. No party that rejects the majority of voters who are somewhere between the center-left and the center-right will ever win office. At best, they can be spoilers as the libertarians are in this case or the Nadarites were in 2000. In the context of being a spoiler, they can do a large amount of damage. No, they will not destroy our system but they can make it more difficult to build a right wing coalition.

" That has nothing to do with the suggestion that the Republicans should spend time trying to get Libertarians (capital L) to join them."

What it has to do with is you bashing Lpers on their appearance alone, yet we have elected government officials -- Republicans, no less -- driving drunk and killing people. And BTW, when they aren't busy killing citizens, most of them are actively engaged in taking away our rights alongside their Democrat cohorts. So maybe the LPers aren't doing anything productive, but they certainly aren't doing anything destructive to us, individually or collectively.

One other thing, it's not just LPers that vote for LP candidates. Pissed off Republicans vote for the LP too in case you haven't figured that out yet. That is the point of the warning. Big government pubbies are just as harmful as big government liberals and if the GOP powers don't understand that they are destined to lose more elections.

The LP is against the War on Drugs.

They oppose government involvement in abortion AND they believe that government funding of abortion is wrong.

They also don't think that government belongs in the marriage business.

In short, they believe, like Reagan, that government is the problem. You apparently believe that government is the solution.

Look, I abhor drugs and the damage that their use has done, but I believe that the WoD has done more damage to our rights and to society. The 'War' has driven up the profit margin and the incentive to deal drugs. That has also fueled the violence and the corruption in our judicial system and police departments.

I oppose abortion and gay 'marriage' but I'm not all that happy with governmental 'solutions' either.

Think about it. How many problems are really 'solved' by government intervention? Many 'problems' are the result of an earlier government 'solution.' What the LP really wants is to stop the government from 'helping' us. Is that so bad?

Look at the decline that our present two party system has wrought. I think that the Dems are entitled to most of the blame because they held power for so long, but the GOP isn't an innocent bystander either.

The LP has -- as you and other LP basher are so fond of saying -- been relegated to bitching on the sidelines. They don't have the power to change anything, yet you want to blame them for our societal decline. Are they small and too irrelevent to do anything or large and powerful enough to inflict such damage as to destroy our country?

You can't have it both ways.

"Cantwell was elected by losertarians following their ideology off the cliff."

That's pretty pathetic. No voter is obligated to vote for any particular candidate. If you want to believe that and shift the blame for losing to the voters, go ahead.

Maybe you should consider the possibility that the candidate wasn't worthy of their vote.

"Oddly enough, the Libertarian got about the same number of votes in this election, and she was a moderate socialist... weird."

My suspicion is that most of those votes are really protest votes *against* the pubbie, more so than a vote *for* the LPer. I wonder how many people are registered as LP in Washington. 62,000 seems like a lot for a small state.

LOL - this same party that's filing all of these junk lawsuits, wasting taxpayer dollars, and clogging up the court system contesting President Bush's election? That party? What a joke. Yes, you are dismissed as loonies because that is what you are.

And of course, let's not forget about Harry Browne, who while the flames were still fresh at the crash sites on 9/11 wrote an article essentially saying America deserved it for having bad foreign policy. Nuts and sickos - the Libertarian Party.

You started out with some things that I think that are wrong, but you ended strong and I agree wholeheartedly.

First, I've been familiar with, and been around the JBS (although not always as a member) for 35 years and many of the issues that we are fighting today, they were warning us about in the 60s. What is your problem with them?

Next, the LP isn't against the war in Iraq. They believe that Bush went to war with a Congressional Declaration of war. I don't know of any LPer that would oppose the war if Congress declares war. The way I see this (your mileage may vary) is that this is a failing of Congress and that Bush was right to take the war to the terrorists. Congress has been using weasel words since WWII to avoid declaring war, but authorizing the 'use of force' and the money to pay for it. That way they can have some wiggle room if the war goes badly and can claim credit if it is okay. But what is the 'use of force', if not war?

Lastly, the LP does believe in open borders. You are right. But, they also believe and I agree, that if we did away with the benefits that illegals get, we would actually have less of an illegal alien problem. Those coming in would be looking to work and be productive members of society (for the most part) and that's a good thing. The lure of money and free health care and easy citizenship draws many undesirables.

As I posted to someone else earlier, many problems that we face are the result of an earlier government 'solution.' Illegal immigration is just one more example of a failure of government policy and action.

Both sides can make the same argument and it can be valid for one and not the other, can't it?

Who would you suspect would lie to support their position? Me or Michael Moore and the far left that wants to destroy the America that we know and love. Who has the history of lying?

I don't agree with everything the LP espouses, but many of their ideas are far less damaging than what the GOP does. Who pushed CFR? Who pushed the drugs for greedy geezer program? I think that the LP does spend too much time on the minutia of what a truly free society would look like. I don't always agree with their conclusions but the debate of issues is
interesting.

"I think that the LP does spend too much time on the minutia of what a truly free society would look like. I don't always agree with their conclusions but the debate of issues is
interesting."

Why that I agree. But their 'principles' are what is important to them. They'd rather be a spoiler than be a legitimate national party. If they'd drop some of the wacko stuff and become a real party, I could support them.

"If they'd drop some of the wacko stuff and become a real party, I could support them."

Funny, I just was thinking that if the GOP dropped some of their leftist big government policies, that I could support them. ;-)

See the problem we have?

I am reluctantly a Republican in the hope of pulling the party to the right or at the very least, to stop the drift to the left. I am proudly a member of the PA Chapter of the Republican Assembly that holds and defends conservative principles. Our goal is to take back the GOP in PA so that we are not just a paler shade of Democrat.

Republicans here control the State General Assembly -- both houses. Yet they just passed tax hikes, a gambling bill that allows government officials (including those who have a say in gambling legislation) to own a share of gaming operations, and hate crime legislation. Who can tell that we aren't democrats? This has to stop. The flight to the 3rd parties is due to the frustration of having principled candidates and rock ribbed officials once in office. There are too many cowards in office that can't take the heat (or they lied about who they were when they ran.)

Actually, they seem to have mostly been protest votes against the 'rat. Washington has, last I heard, about 1,000 actual LP members...

"The LP is against the War on Drugs."

Look at the European countries, especially the Netherlands, that have adopted LP philosophy. Personally, I don't think that heroin parks and red light districts are the high water mark of civilization.

"They oppose government involvement in abortion."

Look, any party that thinks that government has no role in stopping infanticide has forfeited its moral credibility from the get go.

"How many problems are really 'solved' by government intervention? "

Hmm. Declining crime rates came as a result of government policeis, i.e. incarcerating criminals. The fall of Communism came about as a result of government policies. Home ownership, and the consequent stabilizing effects of property ownership, have been increased by mrtgage tax credits.

Is government always the answer to every problem? Of course not. But there are things, such as police protection and national defense, that are government's legitimate responsibility.

"The LP has -- as you and other LP basher are so fond of saying -- been relegated to bitching on the sidelines. They don't have the power to change anything, yet you want to blame them for our societal decline."

I don't blame the LP for society's decline. However, I recognize that if they ever achieved anything like real power, we would not be slouching towards Gomorrah but sprinting.

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