Who to Vote for come November?

If you love wasting your vote - vote Libertarian !!! Principle - Schminciple...a wasted vote is still a wasted vote, all it does is help put Al Gourd in office. Coinneach, in reality your vote for "liberty" is a vote for the gun loving Al Gourd - that ought to make you and your gun collection feel safe. :(
 
Voting Democrat: Being in a car that is racing towards a cement wall at 100 MPH.

Voting Republican: Being in a car that is racing towards a cement wall at 95 MPH.

Voting Libertarian: Not getting into the car in the first place.

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I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm tired of being stabbed in the back by the Republicans time and time again.

In 1994 we were told that if we supported Republicans the direction of government would change. 1996, '98, now '00--the same old tune. Has it? We have more gun control, more government spending, no government agencies eliminated, and a lot more government intrusion into our lives than ever before.

The Republicans have capitualated on all the budget battles, have slowly embraced Democratic issues such as gun control, and have shown themselves just as eager to spend our tax dollars as the Democrats.

Now both major parties are arguing not over who will cut government and its intrusiveness, but over who will bring home more of that government cheese; All the major candidates with the exception of Alan Keyes (whom I will vote for today) are playing Santa Claus politics, promising more gifts than candidate B; And, in the end, both will take us ever closer to statism.

They can keep their rotten cheese--I'm voting for the Libertarian candidates this Fall.

[This message has been edited by RMc (edited March 07, 2000).]

[This message has been edited by RMc (edited March 07, 2000).]
 
I believe that state and local elections ar the place to support grass roots progress. Take Minnesota as a prime example of what can be done on the state level.

Nobody has ever one the Presidency as a write in, or a minorioty third, forth, or fifth party nominee.

A vote not in favor of whoever is the GOP candidate is a vote for whoever is the DNC candidate. This is reality, not idealism talking. I know, I voted for Perot his first time round, and in came Clinton. Take heed, do you want Al Gore as your President? If not, vote for the GOP candidate, who will more than likely be G.W. Bush. Despite not being our ideal when it comes to gun rights, he is a quantum leap from where Gore will take us.

Erik
 
Okay LPers, your guy is great, he oughta be king, blah, blah , blah. Is he on the ballot in all 50 states? Why is 5% of the popular vote all they hope to get? Where is the support?

I thought we were all being somewhat civil here, but it seems to be the moderators who like slinging the insulting language around. Coinneach, I know you're out there lurking around so read this. And again. As many times as it takes until it sinks in. YOUR GUY IS GONNA LOSE!!

I wonder if you will still have that warm fuzzy feeling of knowing "I voted for liberty" when Algore's gun grabbers come knocking on your door?

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bullet placement is gun control

[This message has been edited by muleshoe (edited March 07, 2000).]
 
Also from the NARA site:


<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>The 1888 Presidential election was very close. Democratic party candidate
President Grover Cleveland and running mate Allen G. Thurman of Ohio won the
popular election by 95, 713 votes. President Cleveland, however, was not
re-elected because he lost the electoral college vote by 65 votes. Instead Benjamin
Harrison, former senator from Indiana and the Grandson of President William
Henry Harrison, was elected as the 23rd President of the United States.

Today a President must win 270 electoral votes, a majority, to become President.
If no candidate wins a majority of electoral votes, the 12th Amendment to the
Constitution provides for Presidential election by the House of Representatives
with each state delegation receiving one vote. Twice in our history, the House of
Representatives has chosen the President -- Thomas Jefferson's election in 1801
and John Quincy Adam's election in 1825.

The first constitutional crisis occurred when Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr
received the same number of electoral votes. Even though they were both
Republicans and Jefferson was chosen as the Presidential candidate and Burr as
the Vice Presidential candidate, it took the House of Representatives 36
successive ballots to finally elect Thomas Jefferson as President. Twenty-four
years later, again no candidate received a 131 vote majority of electoral votes
needed to become President. In this case, the House of Representatives voted for
John Quincy Adams over Andrew Jackson and William H. Crawford on the first
ballot.

These instances in our political history remind us of the important role that the
Electoral College plays in electing a President. [/quote]

LawDog

[This message has been edited by LawDog (edited March 07, 2000).]
 
Yes, the Electoral College actually elects the president. But the candidates gain the electoral votes by winning the popular vote of the states. This constitutional reality leads candidates to campaign in the larger states while ignoring the smaller ones because they are campaigning for electoral votes. My state, Nevada, has only four electoral votes, so we are pretty much ignored by the candidates.

No president since 1888 has lost the popular vote but won the electoral vote. If a modern candidate were to take the office by only the electoral vote, there would be such a stink about it that the electoral college would be abolished immediately. The reason the popular vote and the electoral vote have managed to coincide for 112 years has to do with the great concentration of voters in urbanized centers of population. Given this pattern, I would be surprised to see 1888 or 1825 happen again.

Of course, it could given a strong third party candidate who carried several states, including a couple of large ones. No one would get enough electoral votes to win so the election would go to the House. Once there, God only knows what kind of back room deals would be made. This scenario was what George Wallace hoped to accomplish in 1968. What Wallace accomplished though was to bring the Democrats' post-Civil War reign in the South to an end.

So it goes. That's why I like politics.
 
Yet another example of how the Electoral College system screws with the figures is in the 1996 Presidential election.

Clinton did NOT get a majority of the popular vote. No candidate did. I believe the popular votes were Clinton 43%, Dole 41% and Perot 14% or something like that. Despite the closeness of the popular vote, Clinton was elected as our President by an overwhelming majority of the Electoral College delegates. 'Landslide' was the term bandied about.

Yeah, right. Just look where that one got us.

If you don't think that a vote for a third party can be a 'wrong' vote, this was a prime example. If the conservitives that voted for Perot would have voted for Dole, Dole would have won and we wouldn't be subject to Billary's drivel, much less Gore's.
 
Coinneach: BTW, I am a conservative, not a libertarian, so you can always get an argument from me on the merits of conservative versus libertarian politics.
Since many of these issues are not about firearms, I won't belabor the point here, but I can't get behind much of the libertarian agenda. This statement is not intended as a dig against you. Instead, it is a note that there is a difference despite our mutal interest in the RKBA.
 
Trevor,

You hit it on the head about the
Electoral College. In 1888 there weren't
national media outlets to report the
popular results of each state. Now, the
voting process of the Electoral College
is, more or less, an afterthought.

The other justification behind assigning all-or-nothing electoral votes from each state is to give the winner a "mandate" in the cases of close elections or pluralities.

As long as the electoral votes are assigned in accordance with the popular vote in each state, I don't see a problem. I do have a problem with the notion that our votes don't count--that's hogwash!

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Don't waste your vote on a Republicrat--vote Libertarian.
 
First of all, Libertarians (although they sound like liberal and have the same latin root word)are conservative and liberal. They support the Constitution in its intirety. Let me ask some of you; are we going to be spending this many hours debating on whether we should support the constitution? That is what it comes down to anymore. The Democrats don't support the constitution, The Republicans don't support the constitution, The Reform Party doesn't support the constitution, so that leaves me supporting the Libertarian Party. A party of principle, and a party of "mind your own business". While Libertarians say that the Federal Government should not ban abortion (I am very pro-life), they feel it should be left up to the states to regulate the taking of a life. I can abide with this. There are 7 articles in the Constitution telling the Federal Government EXACTLY what it can do. Prosecution of crimes exceeding counterfeiting money, piracy, and treason are beyond the constitutional authority, and therefore, the Federal Government should stay out of abortion, murder, terrorism, family violence ect...
The libertarians are the only party that makes sense in their positions. You may believe that Ross Perot cost Bush the election, but Bush cost Bush the election. He was anemic, and Perot only motivated tens of thousands who wouldn't have otherwise voted to get off the couch and vote. I am a Libertarian first. If there is a Republican out there who can earn my vote (Ron Paul comes to mind), then I may cross. To think that everybody is automatically either Dem or Repub, is a fallicy. My vote is always libertarian. Do not tell me I'm costing anybody the election. I am only helping those who abide by our founding principles, and rejecting those who don't. Republicans reject the founding principles just as much as Democrats. If you want to argue this point, let me ask you: Why haven't they repealed Brady I or II, Import Ban, Magazine bans, 1968 GCA, 1932 NFA, or any of the other "conservative causes"? I'd like to hear a good answer.
 
RMc and all you republican bashers/haters,
because they aren't coming through.

There is a group to blame and yes they are republicans they are called moderates Sen Snow, Sen Spector plus a few others in the senate (I would even put T Lott in this group), and there are a bunch of Republican Reps mainly from the north east who have more in common with liberal democrats than the conservative republicans. If the republicans try to do anything this group of about 10 senators and 25 reps doesn't like they vote with the democrats. These Republicans vote for higher taxes, gun control, and literally hold the party hostage, because the party does not have the votes to pass any legislation with out their votes, let alone over ride a presidential veto. We need to get these people replaced or get a republican in the White House and more republicans in the senate and house to make their votes unimportant. The current speaker of the house is proof of their influence. Until these so called moderates votes become unimportant they will continue to hold the rest of the party hostage to their “limited” agenda.
These are the people the rest of the party are bowing to right now and these are the people that are stopping the show. Notice in 1994 all the "Contract with America" passed the Congress to be vetoed by the president. Their vote were unimportant then even though we didn't have the votes to over ride a veto.

The simple fact is this county is hard wired for a two party system all the way down to the county committees. An Independent in the White House will be a 4 year lame duck as he/she will have no support in the legislative branch at all. Its not a trend you can buck with out a lot of changes in the basic political system first.

Voting for the current crop of republicans my be like driving toward that brick wall at 50mph VS the 100mph the democrats are taking us at but it at least it gives us twice as long to change things. Because not voting for the republican is a default vote for the socialist/liberals running the democratic party.


[This message has been edited by Alan B (edited March 08, 2000).]
 
Very dismaying watching all of this infighting among allies, isn't it?

The predicament, as I see it, with the Libertarian Party it that it is a party which really doesn't do anything. It can't accomplish much since it rejects the use of power to achieve goals. If you go to the website, you will see it wants to stop using power for just about everything. While that may be a wonderfully romantic notion, much as Quakers and the Amish reject similar affectations of humankind, it leaves a power vacuum. We all know that nature abhors a vacuum. And as long as power is the ultimate aphrodisiac, you will always have more people fighting to get it than give it away.

Being a member of the LP means that members' votes have been taken out of play, neutralized as it were, and done voluntarily. That is just fine for people and groups in search of power. It means that possible obstacles are removed from their path.

Being a party which rejects power, it seems to me to be a home for people who feel powerless in modern society and who join other people who are powerless by design. That's not to say that individual Libertarians don't accomplish political acts, but since the LP is made up of folks who eschew power and while the party's platform could easily be the old hippie saying, "anything, as long as it doesn't hurt anybody", they can't act together officially, for if they did, all the members would find they were exercising power for specific ends, which would lead to a contradiction within the party.

When people seriously want to accomplish things, they work with other folks who are like minded. The Republican and Democratic parties are good vehicles for many because they are very powerful groups which do accomplish things, rather than just talk about how bad everything is, and complain about why one can't do this and why one can't do that.

This drives Libertarians mad since power, which they forgo, is being used by people who enjoy exercising it, live their lives to exercise it. Maybe that's why there seems to be such hostility between those who support using collective power to select a candidate to beat Al Gore, and those who are opposed to using collective power at all.

------------------
"Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it."
 
A couple of points worth noting here: the Libertarian Party _was_ on the ballots in all 50 states in the '92 and '96 elections. Libertarians now hold at least 276 positions in state and local governments -- more than all other minor parties combined.

And, in fact, Libertarian candidates don't actually have to win elections to influence the issues. The stronger the showing that Libertarians make, the more other candidates will try to adopt some of their stands. (Good example: Bush trying to co-opt some of McCain's positions when he got scared of McCain's unexpected strength.) This phenomenon has been an element in the rise and fall of American political parties throughout our history. And, as I've written before, I'm more than ready for at least one of the two major parties today to be replaced.
 
David
Nice points but this is do or die time, we don’t have two or three elections to trade in for the vain hope that the parties will pick up more Libertarian ideas.

It also seems to me that we tried this in 92 and we got Bill Clinton instead and in to our current predicament.

If Al Gore wins we lose the second either by executive order or when he appoints enough court justices to rule against us. For the RKBA we are in it up to our necks right now.

Not to mention a bunch of other things we all hold dear.


[This message has been edited by Alan B (edited March 08, 2000).]
 
Joseph, if you'll check the web site again, I think you'll see that the LP pledges not to initiate the use of force for political means. That's a far cry from eschewing the use of power.

Alan B, it's been "do or die" time for quite a while now, and we've watched RKBA eroded under the Republicans just as it was under the Democrats. What makes you think either party will change their ways unless they perceive a threat to their ability to stay on top?

Are any of you actually saying that you're not wholly ashamed of the Republican Party record on RKBA?
 
Joseph, if you'll check the web site again, I think you'll see that the LP pledges not to initiate the use of force for political means. That's a far cry from eschewing the use of power.

Alan B, it's been "do or die" time for quite a while now, and we've watched RKBA eroded under the Republicans just as it was under the Democrats. What makes you think either party will change their ways unless they perceive a threat to their ability to stay on top?

Are any of you actually saying that you're not wholly ashamed of the Republican Party record on RKBA?
 
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