People are begging for a third party, give them the Constitution Party.
YouTube - America: How Much Is Your Liberty Worth?
YouTube - America: How Much Is Your Liberty Worth?
The social-religious conservatism won't fly with most people. I'd be willing to vote for a CP candidate in a local election if a Libertarian wasn't running, and I'd see it as a positive step if CP members constituted say 10% of Congress. But if that ever approached a majority of Congress, I'd start to sweat
I agree we need to stop displaying the Christian Banner if we want to go recruiting more members.
This will be the CP's demise if we don't keep it to a principle level.
No. The Constitution party doesn't even need to drop the "Christian Banner". ALL third parties including the Constitution party need to convince the electorate that their party has a realistic chance against the Republican and Democratic parties. ...![]()
No. Actually, libertarianism in the sense of dope-peddling candidates won't fly with most people.
Most people don't even know the existence of third parties, and even if they did, they might know the party name but not the name of the candidates or the party's political platform. I never heard of the Libertarians until I was 20 (prior to that, I didn't really give a shit about politics b/c they all seemed like big bullshitters to me). Candidates and parties ride the gravy train that runs on media coverage (based on party affiliation) and money. Ross Perot had is own money to get media coverage. Jesse Ventura had his fame to get media coverage (and probably spent some of his own money). According to Schiff, Lieberman was able to win b/c he was an incumbent backed by the Democrat political machine (did the 'crats even run someone against him?). Dunno about how Bernie Sanders won - haven't looked into itIf people want a third party, they would vote for it. Period. End of story.
No. Actually, libertarianism in the sense of dope-peddling candidates won't fly with most people.
The Ten Points of the Libertarian Party Rothbard Caucus
http://www.lprc.org/tenpoints.html
1 Principled Populism—The Libertarian Party should be a mass-participation party operating in the electoral area and elsewhere, devoted to consistent libertarian principle, and committed to liberty and justice for all. The Libertarian Party should trust in and rely on the people to welcome a program of liberty and justice and should always aim strategically at convincing the bulk of the people of the soundness of libertarian doctrine.
2 Rights Are Primary—The central commitment of the Libertarian Party should be to individual liberty on the basis of rights and moral principle, and not on the basis of economic cost-benefit estimates.
3 Power Elite Analysis—American society is divided into a government-privileged class and a government-oppressed class and is ruled by a power elite. Libertarian Party strategy and pronouncements should reflect these facts.
4 Resistance & The Oppressed—The Libertarian Party should make a special effort to recruit members from groups most oppressed by the government so that the indignation of those who experience oppression is joined to that of those who oppose oppression in principle. The Libertarian Party should never approve of the initiation of force, nor should it rule out self-defense and resistance to tyranny.
5 No Compromise—The Rothbard Caucus insists that all reforms advocated by the Libertarian Party must diminish governmental power and that no such reforms are to contradict the goal of a totally free society. Holding high our principles means avoiding completely the quagmire of self-imposed, obligatory gradualism: We must avoid the view that, in the name of fairness, abating suffering, or fulfilling expectations, we must temporize and stall on the road to liberty.
6 No Particular Order—The removal of a harmful government policy should never be held up as a condition for removing another, for this throws self-imposed barriers in the path of liberty and removes potential pressures for change. For example, saying that borders may be opened only after welfare is eliminated is unacceptable; the proper position is to push for both changes. Should we succeed in achieving open borders only to find that welfare burdens are increased, this should be used as an additional argument to abolish welfare.
7 Strategic Centrism—Avoiding the twin errors of sectarianism and opportunism is key. Simply repeating our basic principles and not proposing transition measures is ineffective in the short run because only a small part of the populace is interested in liberty in the abstract, and hiding or abandoning our principled positions is ineffective in the long run because it fails to sustain us as a movement and attract and retain new Libertarians.
8 Radical Abolitionism --As the word radical means "going to the root" of something, radical Libertarians should not merely propose small changes to the status quo and debate the fine points of government policy with their opponents, but should propose the abolition of State institutions and programs while calling attention to the evil at their base: the coercion, force, and tyranny inherent in the State. Because morality and logic are on our side, the best candidates and spokespersons will sound eminently reasonable while maintaining radical libertarian positions.
9 Anti-Imperialism & Centrality of Foreign Policy—Because the United States government aspires to world-wide control of events, foreign policy is always potentially the most important issue of our time. The Libertarian Party should bring to the public the truth about the continuing threat to world peace posed by U.S. foreign policy. No one should be deceived by the notion that any government, like the American, which has a relatively benign domestic policy, therefore has a relatively benign foreign policy.
10 Anti-State Coalition—The Rothbard Caucus agrees to the view, adopted by the Libertarian Party at its 1974 Dallas convention, that for purposes of party programs and activities the issue of the ultimate legitimacy of government per se is not relevant. We oppose all efforts to exclude either anarchists or minimal statists from party life.
Libertarians don't peddle dope. We recognize the essential human right of others to use drugs as long as they don't harm another person's life or property.
You don't have to engage in a given behavior to endorse the belief that other people shouldn't be locked in cages for engaging in it themselves.
Indeed. If either the Constitution Party or the Libertarian Party ever plan on affecting policy though, I think they should both forget about promoting themselves separately for a moment and work on merging into a single, stronger, and more relevant party. We already know that they're capable of compromising on platform, because of all the support Libertarian and Constitution Party members threw behind Ron Paul. His own platform eliminated the truly objectionable and unnecessarily divisive federal stances from BOTH parties' platforms, thereby appealing to both the pro-lifers that the Libertarian Party alienates and the non-Christians (and pro-free speech people, honestly) that the Constitution Party alienates.
I don't think the Constitution party alienates the non-Christians as much as non-Christians alienate themselves from the Constitution party. It's never appeared to me that the CP is out to get libertarians, but the automatic pre-disposition is for libertarians to run from the CP like it's a radioactive spill. Speaking as someone who leans towards libertarianism, but voted for Chuck Baldwin here in Georgia because Bob Barr the libertarian turned out to be more like Bob Barr the neo-conservative, I didn't feel as though I was voting for theocratic tyranny by going with Chuck.
If anything, the Constitution party is likely to morph its platform to some of the same type of compassionate conservativism that Ron Paul exhibits. ('Drug users should not be treated and viewed as criminals but rather as patients suffering addictions'* NOTE: From my own family experiences, unless a drug-user/alcoholic wants to help themselves, they cannot be saved through intervention—including government intervention. That is a significant role to be filled by the church and other help-groups, AFTER a drug addict has made the personal commitment to clean up).
Wise words.