Libertarian Party

This year? nimh, it's not just this year.

The little l versus big L has been going of for a long time.

Apparently it was more a question of the two main favourites in the race, having grown increasingly inimical to each other, cancelling each other out at the last moment, opening the way for a marginal third candidate to scoop the nomination. Its really an interesting article, the one I linked in (though for me mostly in a kind of anthropological way) - its got all the details.


LOL! Oops ... happened automatically, that

Craven, huh? I think you're mixing up posts and points ...

Nah, sorry. The first question was just a rhetorical comment on Foxfyre's "this year" and the rest is a comment to you.

It's not like the party became wacky just this year, libertarians have been disowning the Libertarian party for a long time.

Nimh is probably right about the infighting canceling out the most viable candidates though. That's pretty much how John Kerry got the Democrat nomination I think--the Democrats certainly have viable people who would have made more attractive candidates. And that has certainly happened to the GOP in years past.

It isn't so much disowning the Libertarian Party, Craven, as it is putting so squirrley a platform out there that they fail to solidify their base. I think maybe the majority of Americans are libertarian at heart. I sure don't feel part of a minority in that.

I don't support some of the GOP platform either, but it has fewer items of major importance that I cannot support than does the Libertarian platform. I think sooner or later, reasonable people will recapture the Libertarian Party and, with the right marketing, it can actually become a viable Third Party.

What I'm saying Foxfyre is that I don't think the Libertarian Party ever really represented libertarians well and has nearly always been a cartoonish distortion of libertarianism.

It's not just their nominee, if you read their statment of principles you'll probably find it too extreme for yourself and the majority group you perceive.

LOL, isn't that what I said though less succinctly?

Not really, you pretty much that the fringe got control of the party this year and I'm saying the party has always been the fringe.

Oh okay. You may be right, though I think in some years the party has had much more appeal to the more sensible than it has had laely.

Yeah, like on "Double Digit Day". Thing is, I thought they were about as wacky even then, but because of the political landscape at the time had more appeal.

Uhm, after reading that article I have to go with Fox here. They may always have been wacky, but this year's candidate really is quite Out There even to Libertarian standards.

I've never disagreed with that. I have, however, maintained that they have always been wacky and the party wackiness is not new.