The same nonsense argument has been trotted trotted out by many big gov't candidates.
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Let’s start with the moral and work backwards to the story that justifies it:
Don’t waste your vote.
In the autumn of every even-numbered year, the mail starts arriving: Some candidate, somewhere, is in trouble. The race is too close to call. They’ve pimped every policy position they can think of to every possible interest group who might bring a carload of voters to the polling place come November. They’ve poured their money into the slickest advertisements in the most important markets. They’ve played the game to perfection, but it’s still not a sure thing.
The candidate is always a Republican or Democrat – sometimes both of them in the same race. And their wandering eyes invariably come to rest on the small, but suddenly very important, percentage of voters who are likely to cast their vote for the Libertarian candidate.
The polls may look something like: 47% for Robert Republican, 48% for Doug Democrat, and 5% for Joe Libertarian. That 5%, as you can see, could swing the election to the GOP’s side if it were to waver in one direction, or seal victory for the Democrats if it moved in the other.
So the letters start coming in via e-mail, to libertarian message boards on the Internet, and via direct mail and phone bank campaigns targeted at people who voted in the Libertarian primaries.
"Why waste your vote? Your man can’t win, and Candidate A is not quite as bad as Candidate B. Quit playing the lemming and move on over to our side of the board."
It’s a tempting proposition. The LP has been around since 1972, and although we have over 200 officials serving in public office, we have yet to make a dent in congressional or gubernatorial positions. Maybe we could preserve a little liberty or make a slight gain on one issue or another by deserting our own ticket and voting for the lesser of two evils. Why not?
Because it’s wrong, for one thing. Because it doesn’t work, for another.
This year, I’ve been getting e-mail on behalf of Dan Lungren, California’s Attorney General and Republican gubernatorial candidate. Never mind that I don’t live in California and so can’t vote – I’m on a lot of lists.
Lungren is a particularly interesting case. As AG, he ranted and raved against the passage of Proposition 215, the measure approved by California voters in 1996 that legalized the medical marijuana use. After failing to intimidate the electorate into defeating the bill, he simply ignored their wishes and continued to persecute and prosecute, and to support federal intervention in the state against groups like the Cannabis Buyers’ Club, which provided medical marijuana to people afflicted with AIDs, cancer, and other illnesses which the drug is helpful in treating.
And now, Dapper Dan Lungren’s supporters are pitching him to Libertarians as the only candidate to support! His Democratic opponent, Lt. Governor Gray Davis, is certainly no poster boy for freedom, but there are lines of idiocy in the political sand which only the GOP is willing to cross.
We are expected to believe that an Attorney General who opposed the legalization of a beneficial drug to the point of violating his own oath of office in pursuit of hopheads is the best choice? That it really makes a difference whether we elect an anti-liberty Republican or an anti-liberty Democrat?
It would be wrong for a Libertarian to vote for Lungren (or for Davis). They oppose everything we hold dear, although Lungren has been the more overt enemy of freedom in recent years.
Furthermore, it would be completely ineffective. Where was Lungren when the Libertarians -- in particular, LP gubernatorial candidate Steve Kubby – were attempting to bring Proposition 215 to passage? Was he thinking about the Libertarian vote then? If not, why should we believe that he’ll think about it after he’s elected?
The Republican candidates spend a great deal of their time courting the votes of a tiny, but extremely vocal, minority in their own party – the religious right. The Democrats spend a great deal of their time courting the votes of a tiny, but extremely vocal, minority in their own party – the socialist left. After they’ve prostituted every value they have to offer nailing down those votes, and bought every other vote their money will buy, they assess the situation and start digging through position papers looking for a bone to throw to a tiny, but extremely vocal, minority that belongs to neither party – the Libertarians.
We’re third-class citizens. We’re an afterthought. We receive consideration after, and only after, every other bloc of votes has been stapled to the endorsement list of one candidate or the other. This is not a game we should even consider playing.
The Libertarian Party, when we have a good year, can grab 5% of the vote in any race with the exception of the Presidential and Vice Presidential contests. That’s not a lot. Right now, it’s just a potential spoiler. If we let it go to the "lesser of two evils," it will quickly dissolve to nothing.
If, on the other hand, we hold onto that 5%, we may eventually make the voters come to us.
Libertarianism is not a grab-bag of issues stands. It’s not a political brothel where the john picks between the prettiest of two cheap and ugly tricks. It’s a coherent, rational philosophy based on the proposition that liberty is the primary criterion on which human society should be based.
If Dan Lungren loses his bid for office this year by 4% of the vote, and Steve Kubby rakes in his 5%, we’ll see immediate benefits. The next Attorney General may consider the Libertarian vote before he or she does something just as stupid and evil as the things Lungren did. And in 2002, the LP candidate may pick up 7% as the "I’m a Libertarian but I vote Republican or Democrat to win," voters start realizing that it doesn’t work that way anymore.
The way to build a new political party is to offer a platform that people can vote for, not to piece the votes that would have gone to that platform out to inferior candidates with positions antithetical to one’s ideals. To take the latter route is to make a waste of the 26 years of work that have gone into building America’s third-largest, and its fastest-growing, political party.
I’ve been told that it’s a waste of my time to pursue the libertarian agenda; that it will never come to pass, and that it won’t work even if it is implemented. But I don’t think I’m wasting my days, my nights, or my vote. Don’t waste yours.
tlknapp.net
Regards,
Barb |
