Will the Two-Party System Go the Way of the Dinosaur?
According to this editorial, the two-party system may go the way of the Edsel and fiscally conservative Congressmen. The East Valley Tribune's editorial staff wrote:
Voters do have choices other than Republican or Democrat. One nonpartisan Web site for political information, politics1. com, lists 33 active third parties that have nominated federal candidates in more than one state. Only the Libertarian Party has ballot standing in Arizona, but seven others are actively seeking members here. So far, none of these third parties has sparked enough national interest to overcome the structural barriers created by the Republican and Democratic parties to protect their standing.
Perhaps if enough of us work together, we can continue to break down those barriers created by the two major parties. A good place to start is with ballot access, which will be a core function of the Libertarian Party for the next couple of years.
Wanted: Your opinion about Libertarian Party Strategy
The latest edition of LP News has just been sent to the printer. In it, we have announced that we'll be printing letters to the editor again, and we've asked for letters on a particular topic to get the conversation flowing. Letters should be 250 words or less and e-mailed to editor@lp.org.
The conversation we'd like to start is about the strategies and tactics we should employ in order to win more elections. Some suggestions are to concentrate on lower level races, focus and direct money at the more winnable races, and for the LP to provide more tools to local candidates.
Candidates I've spoken with generally indicate they are missing three key items in their campaigns: Money, media exposure and a large enough base of volunteers to assist their campaigns.
Please feel free to comment here to get the conversation started, but please also take the time to send us a 250 word or less letter to the editor by December 31 so we can include it in the next edition of LP News.
The Chicago Tribune's Steve Chapman wrote an interesting opinion piece about divided government. Here's a clip from the Washington Times:
A revival of fiscal discipline is just one of the potential benefits of breaking up the Republican monopoly in Washington. Maybe the new order will make Republicans truer to their principles, and maybe it will make Democrats more responsible. Or maybe it will just keep either from doing their worst. In any case, we will probably rediscover an old truth: That government is best which unites least.
Again, this divide most likely would not have happened without the Libertarian Party. Perhaps Lincoln's old quote should be rewritten for the 21st century: A house divided against itself may be the only salvation of the grand American experiment.
"There's no question in my mind that this president and this administration would never have invaded Iraq, especially on the flimsy evidence that was presented to the Congress, if indeed we had a draft and members of Congress and the administration thought that their kids from their communities would be placed in harm's way," Rangel said.
Rangel, a veteran of the Korean War who has unsuccessfully sponsored legislation on conscription in the past, said on CBS's "Face the Nation" that he will propose a measure early next year. Under the plan, some of the troops would be assigned to community service in the states.
In 2003, before the invasion of Iraq, Rangel proposed a measure covering people ages 18 to 26. This year, he offered a plan to mandate military service for men and women ages 18 to 42, but the bill went nowhere in the Republican-led Congress.
While Nancy Pelosi seems to be trying to distance herself from Rangel at the moment, let's not forget that Hillary Clinton has made similar suggestions in the past.
It's a shame that the Democrats can't apply even a modicum of Libertarian common sense now that they are gaining control of Congress. Throughout our history, the Libertarian Party has opposed both the draft and interventionist military adventures overseas. Americans are adamantly opposed to both, as well. The real shame is that neither the Republicans nor the Democrats care about the will of the people.
I just returned from a C-SPAN televised panel over at the National Press Club. When asked by a local reporter about LP chances in the upcoming presidential race, I responded that, because of gains made and tools developed in 2006, I expect our candidates to really rock in 2008. As soon as I got back to office, I found that Vincent Mouser of the Louisiana Libertarian Party and my boss had both e-mailed me this rap song Lil' Nuke wrote for the 2007 T. Lee Horne gubernatorial campaign. Enjoy!
While Rex Bell may have lost his race in Indiana, it led to the victories of two other Libertarians in the area.
The support has been fantastic -- and resulted in two Libertarians being elected in Rex's district to Township Advisory boards -- and a very nearly a third one.
Very truly yours,
Mark W. Rutherford
Chairman
Libertarian Party of Indiana
Rex Bell provided the additional information in a campaign e-mail:
Conley Tillson in Greensfork and Steve Coffman in Millville won their township races, and Juli Stout missed a win by just 17 votes. And it's going to be easier the next time around because Mike Kole kept us on the ballot with his showing in the Secretary of State race.
It truly is a great time to be a Libertarian, and it gets better every election.
The Washington Post has a video of recent Connecticut congressional candidate Phil Maymin. Here's their text introduction:
Phil Maymin's family immigrated from communist Russia to America when he was five. They came for Reagan's promises of increased liberties, smaller government and lower taxes. But taxes have gone up and government got bigger. Phil Maymin wanted to change that so he ran for Connecticut's Fourth Congressional District as a Libertarian.
November 7th, 2006 was an historic night for the Libertarian Party of Georgia!
Garrett Michael Hayes received over 77,000 votes for Governor -- more votes than any Georgia Libertarian gubernatorial candidate has ever received!
Allen Buckley received 20,000 more votes in his race for Lt. Governor than did the 2002 Libertarian candidate for Lt. Governor.
Kevin Madsen received over 81,000 votes for Secretary of State -- the most votes any Georgia Libertarian running for Secretary of State has ever received!
David Chastain received over 103,000 votes in his race for State School Superintendent. That's over 5% of the vote -- almost double our 2002 vote total in the State School Superintendent race!
Paul MacGregor pulled 4.87% of the vote in Public Service Commission District 3 which forced the race into a run off between the Democrat and Republican.
Between causing a significant Republican loss and irritating neo-conservative apologist Michael Medved, I'm not sure which is more enjoyable.
According to the Washington Post, Libertarian Stan Jones earned 10,324 votes in the Montana U.S. Senate race. Democrat Jon Tester is winning over Republican incumbent Burns by a mere 2,847 votes. Jones has obviously covered the spread with significant change left over.
Medved was up to his usual name calling as he blamed the Republican loss in the Senate on third party candidates. Here's a clip:
Montana provides an even more alarming example. Democratic John Tester beat the Republican incumbent Conrad Burns by a margin of less than 3,000 votes. At the same time, Libertarian standard bearer Stan Jones drew 10,324 votes. In general, Libertarians draw more than two-thirds of their votes directly from Republicans. Once again, the Stan Jones juggernaut (which earned an anemic 2.6% of the total vote) drew more than enough support to change the course of history for the worse.
In what must of been some sort of intellectual challenge for him, he didn't call us "Losertarians" more than once in the Townhall.com article. He made up for it by slinging a few words like sucker, fringe, kook and crazy. For some reason he forgot to call us Nazi-lovers, as he did recently to libertarian Vox Day.
Medved proposed making ballot access restrictions even harsher -- at least for third party candidates. Almost one out of every five voters chose Bob Smither in the five-way race to fill the incomplete term of the disgraced and displaced Tom DeLay. Medved found these voters "kooks and crazies with a few dozen supporters," but doesn't find anything wrong with supporting a write-in candidate who wishes to continue the agenda of people like Bush, Cheney and DeLay.
Americans are becoming increasingly unhappy with the policies that people like Medved support. He should start spending some time in front of the mirror before he considers hurling invectives like fringe and sucker again.
Thanks to Dennis Brossman, the Libertarian candidate for Wyoming Secretary of State, the Wyoming LP has now earned major party status. Here's the scoop from the Jackson Hole Star Tribune:
The Wyoming Libertarian Party is back in the political mainstream as a result of Tuesday's general election.
Dennis Brossman of Lander, the Libertarian candidate for secretary of state, collected enough votes to make the party a major party once again.
Brossman tallied about 18 percent of the vote for secretary of state, or 32,526 votes, in Tuesday's general election. This more than met the 10 percent vote threshold for a major political party.
Congratulations are due to Brossman and the Wyoming Libertarian Party.
Reason Magazine has been providing a lot more coverage of the Libertarian Party and our candidates lately. They just published two more articles about us.
In the first article, Brian Doherty covered some of our more interesting races. There were some compliments, some criticisms, and quite a few newsworthy items covered.
I'd already read the second article in the print version of the magazine, but it just appeared online. They interviewed prominent Democrats and Republicans about the libertarian vote, but concluded with a Q&A of LNC Chair Bill Redpath. When asked why libertarians should vote for LP candidates, Redpath responded:
Because we're the Libertarian Party. They certainly are not going to find libertarianism in the Democratic Party. Beyond Ron Paul and possibly a few others, they're not going to find it in the Republican Party. If they want there to be a viable libertarian alternative in the political process of the United States, they should support the Libertarian Party and vote for its candidates.
His quote is a great theme for Election Day: Vote Libertarian!
Feds to Send Observers to Texas Congressional Spelling Bee
It looks like the Justice Department will be sending election observers to the polls in Texas CD-22. GOP write-in candidate Shelley Sekula-Gibbs has already been twice accused of violating election law in the race which pits her against two candidates actually on the ballot: Libertarian Bob Smither and Democrat Nick Lampson.
Hopefully, they'll send down observers who were once spelling bee champions. Shelley Sekula-Gibbs is a big mouthful to say and even tougher to write, especially on electronic voting machines.
Fox News has finally acknowleged "the L Factor" in a column they ran online today. Here's their take:
Libertarians -- people who cringe at intrusive government, high taxes, nation-building and politicians telling them how to behave -- could turn out to be the key swing voters in Tuesday's contentious midterm election.
And, in an unusual development, that might not bode well for Republicans this time around.
A number of political scientists and libertarian pundits say that libertarian voters who sided with the Republicans in the past have become disgusted with bloated federal spending, the war in Iraq and prevailing social conservatism in the GOP-dominated White House and Congress. Many feel libertarian voters will either vote for Democrats on Tuesday or just stay home, and that could play a role in deciding key battleground races.
It will certainly be interesting to watch election results coming in tonight. Be sure to stop by LP.org through the evening to chat online while catching the latest Libertarian Party election returns.
LNC Chairman Bill Redpath is currently featured on the new website HotSoup.com. He's talking about how to get more people more engaged in the electoral process with former White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry and several other VIPs. Join in the conversation here.
Considering that Election Day is tomorrow, you are likely to be visiting this website for one of two reasons: You haven't yet decided for whom you'll vote or you intend to vote for Libertarian candidates and are stopping by to see what you can do to help out.
UNDECIDED VOTERS:
If you are still undecided about your vote, we've provided a few tools to help you out.
If you're a conservative who is angry about where the GOP has led our country over the last few years, I encourage you to read what a lot of other prominent Republicans have recently written on the subject -- and what they suggest conservatives should do about it.
If you are liberal, you are probably pretty upset with a lot of the Democrats out there. The Libertarian Party has been known as the "Party of Principle" for years, and we'd like to share some of our principled stands on the important issues of the day with you.
Many of you are independent-minded and consider yourself politically independent. The values of a majority of independent voters are the also the values of Libertarian candidates. We like to present some recent data which indicate that a majority of Americans share the visions of smaller government, social tolerance and common sense foreign policy.
The Libertarian Party is fielding candidates across the country who reflect the values of most Americans, as opposed to the values of special interests or extremist organizations. We are listing those candidates on our Candidate Tracker. Please feel free to check out the candidates running in your home state so you'll know why you should vote Libertarian tomorrow.
LIBERTARIAN VOTERS:
Thanks so much for stopping by. We appreciate your support of both the Libertarian Party and our candidates. We could use your assistance in the final few hours before Election Day.
We are calling thousands and thousands of voters across the country in support of many of our candidates using our new BallotBase program.
BallotBase works! In our first test case, we tripled the number of Libertarian votes in the district. In a different race, we had a State House candidate in the Vermont primaries who won by one vote. It's clear that BallotBase calls were the deciding factor in that race. That's why your assistance is so crucial.
Please register and login at BallotBase.com to help bring about a historical new level of Libertarian vote totals across the country.
Maybe it's time we establish some sort of award for the politician or pundit who best states some really simple concept. The best idea I have is the "It Doesn't Take a Rocket Scientist Award."
Perhaps the first nominee should be Arizona's Senator John McCain. Following the CNN Poll which stated that a majority of Americans prefer smaller government, McCain quipped:
"Conservatives came to office to reduce the size of government and enlarge the sphere of free and private initiative."
On second thought, we're going to have to remove his nomination for a complete lack of principle.
"But lately, we have increased government in order to stay in office."
I'm wondering how hard this majority of Americans who prefer smaller government is going to slap the GOP on Tuesday for their antics over the last few years. Hopefully, a large chunk of them will vote for their libertarian values, as opposed to wasting them on the other party of big government.
Since it seems that McCain is starting to get really simple concepts now (i.e. torture is bad, big givernment is bad), perhaps he'll start reconsidering the McCain/Feingold Act AKA BCRA AKA Incumbent Protection Racket.
Every since the "Republicans for Smither" signs started going up in Texas CD-22, they've been getting slashed or they simply disappear. The regular yard signs seem to vanish as soon as they hit the ground, too. We've been collecting photographic evidence every since this started, but haven't been able to obtain conclusive evidence of the culprit's involved.
It seems that a local blogger may have found a key sign vandal. Here's Juanita'a scoop (with photographic evidence):
Take a look at the sign here. See something on the ground behind the "Illegals" sign? Go ahead, I'll wait and be here when you get back.
That little tad of blue got me pondering. I drove over to the sign site just to check and see if it was what I thought it was.
It is.
It's a "Republicans for Bob Smithers" sign. These sons-of-a- motherless-goat Republicans cut down a Bob Smithers sign, stole his t-posts, and put up this rotten "Illegals" sign.
Then, to prove what little cowards they are, when they heard that there would be a press conference at the sign held by Democrats, they cut the "Illegals" sign down, too, and put it face down on the ground, covering the Smithers sign.
Okay, so I'm a natural blonde and I left my camera at home. Duh. But, just before sundown, I got a picture of it all with my camera phone.
The Smither campaign has lost hundreds and hundreds of signs; they seem to disappear (in some cases) within a few hours of when they went up. It's a good thing they can't vandalize broadcast advertising campaigns the same way they rip down signs.
I'm not at all surprised by these tactics. After all, who would ever expect clean politics in Tom DeLay's old district?
Libertarian U.S. Congress candidate Phil Maymin, from Connecticut's CD-4, will appear on Tucker Carlson's show on MSNBC today (Wednesday) at 4PM EST. Tucker also played Maymin's "I Approve This Massage" ad on his show a couple of days ago.
Maymin is yet another candidate who is tracking well on Candidate Tracker and has been included in public debates.
By now, about everyone knows that Libertarian Bruce Guthrie has pumped over a million dollars into his U.S. Senate campaign, which enabled him to get into a key debate in that race. During the debate, he disagreed with Republican Mike McGavick for his views on Iraq, but he hammered on Democratic incumbent Maria Cantwell for taking the Kerry-like waffle on the issue.
The GOP candidate is now running a commercial which begins this way:
"On Iraq, Bruce Guthrie and Aaron Dixon have the guts to say what they think. They say let's get the troops out now. But Maria Cantwell, it's just politics..."
Libertarians have a history of determining the outcome in Washington elections. It's interesting that the Republican candidate gets this and is using the LP to help split the anti-war vote in the state.
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