My theory on why we lose the Libertarian vote.

[coloradodem2005]

When I say Libertarian, I mean true libertarians, not those so-called libertarians that simply believe in Bush's version of the free market economy. I think that many Libertarians are pissed at Bush. The reason why they vote for him is this. Libertarians believe strongly in gun rights. It is a salient issue to them. While there are many people who hate The Patriot Act and hate Bush for sicking that on us, the Mainstream Democrats have not taken a strong enough stance against it. Al Gore has done so, Dean has also done so. But, sadly Kerry said that he was for it. Many Dems did take issue with the more invasive aspects of this act, but they did not stand against that strongly enough. They did not fight it. I say all this because on the political compass: left/right, libertarian/authoritarian, I am quite libertarian. I am also quite left. But my point is some of these people can be won over. But we need to find our own issues that are salient to the libertarians. I think that we made the mistake of saying the Libertarians would support us because Bush was too Authoritarian. However, Bush found his one or two issues to win them over that he championed. We did not find ours. But, this is my theory.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

1. The reason we lose the Libertarian vote is that

when it comes right down to it, financial interests trump civil liberties for many of them.

At least that was true with the Libertarians I ran into in Oregon. Their civil liberties stance, rather than being based on a feeling of the inherent worth and dignity of every person, was based on "I wanna do what I wanna do when I wanna do it." It therefore went very well with their property rights absolutism "I wanna use my land however I wanna use it no matter how it impacts the community" and their low tax absolutism, "I wanna use every penny I ever earned on me and me alone."

[lostnfound]

2. Start tackling the sacred cow of "defense" as a tax issue & we might

be able to win them.

With half the federal budget going for defense, there's an awful lot of their money that's going for welfare of the corporate kind.

[TO Kid]

21. Lots of internal disagreement there

Many Libertarians opposed the Iraq war but not as a tax issue. National security issues have divided a lot of LP types.

[coloradodem2005]

4. In a way you are right.

Libertarian is a word that has been corrupted the same as Christian. They don't embody the pure libertarian values the way many of these so-called "Christians" don't embody pure christian values. But the people of which you speak are not ones that I would consider true libertarians.

[w4rma]

6. You're being too dismissive, Lydia. coloradodem2005 is correct, imho.

While Ann Rynd Libertarians have this view of the world where somehow "the Market" wiykd rule everything ethically as long as the government were too small to affect "the Market".

They also oppose the Patriot Act *and* gun control. I had many folks on the virge of supporting Dean in the general up until Kerry (who is considered, and probably rightly so unfortunately, a gun grabber) won the primary. And when Kerry and so many other Dems RUSHED back to vote for the AWB as if it were more important than fighting to keep overtime, that PISSED them (and myself, btw) off even more.

Support gun control and they can call you totalitarian using an issue that most Americans understand well. That's why liberals and Dems MUST lose the association with gun control that we have gotten. Gun control is NOT liberal and our country's liberal founding fathers opposed gun control greatly.

I have a major problem getting Libertarians to believe that Dems weren't secretly in support of the PATRIOT ACT, also. Because all of them, except Fiengold who won reelection by more than 10% in a state that Kerry only won by less than 1%, in the Senate voted for the PATRIOT ACT. Dems MUST lose this appearance of totalitarianism that the DLC is saddling Dems with. LOSE IT! Voting against such authoritarian crap will help show that Dems are NOT in favor of Poppy's New World Order.

[JHB]

7. Bingo. A large amount of what passes for "libertarianism"...

...in this country is more accurately described as "Fuck everybody but me"-ism.

[billbuckhead]

3. All these nations with gun control are less free than home of PATRIOTact?

Canada, New Zealand, Australia. the Netherlands, Sweden, Ireland, Germany----Hey isn't it sad that Germany is now widely considered freer than the USA?

I think libertarians strongest link with the Bushies is the common lack of being in touch with reality.

[TO Kid]

5. More to it than that

We have plenty of reasons to dislike Republican policy but the Dems (especially Kerry) never offered any viable alternative. Consider some of the Libertarian issues that the Dems, if they are truly concerned about working people, should embrace but don't:

Affirmative Action- Mandated racism that Libertarians abhor but many Democrats continue to support.

Corporate welfare- Both parties support it, they only disagree on whose friends should receive it. Neither party is making any serious attempt to stop the transfer of wealth from working taxpayers to corporations.

Trade- Protectionism doesn't protect American jobs, it just enriches a few corporations at the expense of consumers and competitors. Why are the shareholders of steel mills more important than people who make cars or appliances?

Religious freedom- Why are some many Democrats terrified of the word "Christmas" and why are they so selective in their outrage? Why is there no outcry over "happy Eid" in the public square? The first amendment doesn't prohibit expressions of faith, it merely prohibits legislation regarding faith. Lighten up already.

[dean_dem]

8. I think you nailed it....

On an ideological sense, many Libertarians are disgusted with both the Republican and Democratic parties. They support a lot of the more progressive social issues of the left, but affirmative action is a pretty notable exception. School vouchers would be another big issue.

But I think the main disagreement is with the tax code, and its where I disagree with the Libertarian Party. Most believe that the income tax should be abolished altogether. That would mean cutting back on many Government social programs that I still think are needed.

I think too many of them take the Conservative reaction to anything with the name "government" attached, and tend to confuse "good government" with "big government." But maybe those are just ideological differences that you're never going to overcome. I knew of plenty of Libertarians who despised Bush, and most voted Kerry as a protest vote unfortunately. They didn't necessarily think Kerry was a strong candidate, just "less-bad" than Bush by a long-shot.

[TO Kid]

10. From my perspective...

If I were an American I would probably have either voted for a third party (not the LP, it's a mess) or held my nose firmly while voting Kerry. From the perspective of a Canadian who sells services to the US market, though, Kerry lost me when he endorsed protectionism. Doesn't the damn fool realize that the lumber tariffs are hurting Americans more than they hurt Canadians?

[wuushew]

16. Free trade is currently just a massive wealth extractor

I was for NAFTA when it was just between Canada and the U.S.(your comparative advantage in raw materials and ours in finished goods) but the increased market efficiency is never passed along to all those in society. Increased trade should mean increased corporate taxes, but alas in our massively corrupt political system this will never happen.

Also not all protectionism is bad. Things like steel and sugar tariffs are bad because the gain for a particular industry is more than offset by costs to other sectors. By knowing this it should be possible to design a system of protectionism that maximizes employment for the American worker.

Even if this comes at the cost of reduced market efficiency many of things that America exports in the aftermath of the post industrial era are not products that require great amounts of labor. We export a lot of agricultural and aerospace products but I don't see those industries being able to pick up the sum total of laid workers from the rotting husk of all of other job areas.

[TO Kid]

19. Read up on our economy

The competitive advantages you cited are bogus- Canada has always had a strong manufacturing sector in auto, aerospace and electronics. I laughed my ass off a few years back when our dollar tanked due to soft commodity prices (the Asian meltdown of '98). Traders in New York, Hong Kong and Tokyo who thought our resource-based economy would go tits-up picked up their Canadian made phones or used their Canadian-made trading systems to dump our dollar. As for the "increased corporate taxes" that didn't happen, but revenues did increase and the cost of living decreased after the deal went through. I don't see corporate taxes as a particularly worthwhile measure of success anyway- corporations don't pay those corporate taxes, their customers do.

[w4rma]

22. Free trade between comparative nations like Canada are NOT a problem

It's free trade between nations that exploit the lower and middle classes is where you get the rush to the bottom.

And Kerry never supported anything but free trade between Canada and the US. The whole criticism is about free trade with nations like China and India where the potential living wage is very very low.

So *again* you've gotten your facts mixed up, TO Kid.

[wuushew]

11. I don't think the LP is for vouchers

such a system would interfere with the free market as per their platform. Unless of course they were actually christo-fascists in disguise.


http://www.lp.org/issues/platform/platform_all.html#educatio

[histohoney]

12. My Uncle

is big into the Libertarian party.
The big push for an "old school" Libertarian is States right and control and less national control.
He has no problems with taxes as long as they are State taxes.
He believes in social programs, State controlled programs.
The old guard believes each state is better equipped to know it's citizens needs, strengths, weakness, ect..
He believes that the national government should deal with international trade, common defense (Army but not state guards). Printing currency and mediate between States.
Thing along this line.

[Name removed]

9. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[pnb]

13. That is only part of it

Libertarians are not some sort of half-democrat/half-republican mutant...libertariansism has its own philosophy, one that differs from that of Democrats and Republicans. Many Libertarians didn't vote for EITHER of the major parties for that reason.

Your point about gun rights I believe is true but so were taxation, and mostly the overall philosophy. Libertarians do not see Democrats as being about freedom...a major part of the libertarian belief structure.

[reprehensor]

14. Liberty Forum Libertarians

I used to post news items over there, but I found that a lot of the regulars were still fighting the Cold War, commies under the bed, and all that.

I found the majority of them to be basically conservatives, in exile from the bizarre Free Republic universe.

They have no use for Liberals, Democrats, etc. and I would bet that hardly any of them voted Kerry in 04, and never would.

I think worrying about pandering to Libertarians is less useful than severing the DLC from the Democratic Party. Let's see if the parasite can live on its own, or if the relationship has become symbiotic and the host dies with it.

Then, the Democratic Party can worry about seeking support from new sources, watering the grass roots, {insert buzz phrase here}.

Either the Democrats stop sucking on the corporate tit, or the party goes the way of the Whigs, and a new party with a bona fide sense of Populist appeal assumes the leadership, and opposes to the Repubs.

We need a fighter, not an appeaser, not a drift towards the center, not a 'don't make any waves' attitude.

/rant

[coloradodem2005]

23. I was not talking about pandering.

But I was saying that there has to be something we have that can resonate with them.

[reprehensor]

24. Sorry.

Didn't mean to sound condescending if that's how I came across.

Because at their core, the bulk of Libertarians are free-market Conservatives, they have virtually no use for the Democrats, and are also typically intelligent enough to know when someone is dangling a carrot in front of them.

Honestly, if Shrub isn't a big enough issue to resonate with American Patriots who respect the Constitution, (flawed as it may be), then nothing is.

All you can do is educate the ones you can reach and hope that they will make the right choice.

Sadly, in the land of 'lookin' out for #1', it's an uphill battle all the way.

Lesser of two evils? Sure. Now it's time to hijack the Democratic Party and turn it Progressive, even if it takes 20 years.

If the Radical Right can do it to the Republican Party, (cynically using religion and fear as a combination punch), surely truth and the teeming masses can deliver a roundhouse kick to Fascism.

Engage.

[Killarney]

15. Their #1 issue is taxes.

They want minimal taxation, privatization as much as possible. They despise the New Deal. True libertarians would NEVER vote for Dems, especially not ones proposing a govt health care program.

[durutti]

17. There are no such things as Libertarians.

I've always looked at Libertarianism more or less as a vehicle for attracting college kids to conservatism.

[TO Kid]

20. We used to be called Liberals

Libertarians embrace the values of classical liberalism- free enterprise, free association and equality under the law (the values behind the original Republican party BTW- it was founded specifically to abolish slavery). The LP is hopeless because they have never been able to reconcile its internal factions that include classical liberals, conservatives and anarcho-capitalists (the latter aren't satisfied with limited government and want to abolish it entirely). There are a few positions on which there is consensus, though, the main one being opposition to the drug war (which is why authoritarian conservatives hate us).

[rucky]

18. Guns n/t

[Pushed To The Left]

25. How about drug policy?

Most libertarians oppose America's drug policy, and a lot of progressives do as well. Even some conservatives believe that drug laws should be reformed.