We really need a viable third party in this country. One question that comes to my mind every time we are faced with an election cycle is why is there are no viable third party candidate choices. The current lunacy surrounding the SCOTUS hearings is another clear call for a third party. Most all democratic countries in the world have viable 3rd, 4th, and maybe even 5th parties that are in legitimate contenders to win the top office. On paper, the Libertarian Party (LP) should be a better third party choice on par with the Democrats and Republicans. After all, the ideas of supporting individual liberty and freedom for all should be a very simple and effective platform in American politics on which to stand. However, only a handful of Libertarians have ever won elections in small, low-population voting districts and not one is currently sitting in an elected seat in the federal government. So why does the LP not even come close when it comes to national elections?
Graphic: Where Libertarians stand on issues
Reason One – Lack of Political Structure
The Libertarian Party and its candidates does not have the political machine that the Democrats and Republicans enjoy. Big money political donations from companies and private citizens go to either the DNC or the RNC and none to the LP. The best libertarians can hope for are local elections and seats that have been overlooked by the two predominant parties. Usually because neither see any point in putting any effort towards winning these small rural seats.
To go with the political structure, the libertarian candidate does not have the funding to compete in any hotly contested political seat and the media wont even bother to mention the libertarian candidate’s existence in their coverage. Money makes all the difference. Big money is given to the side that is seen to be in the best position to help the contributor and their cause. The LP position tends to be neutral in its policies toward business and special interests and thus no significant contributions are received by those who do make contributions.
The lonely libertarian is viewed as a persona-non-grata on the political landscape. If there actually is any coverage of a libertarian candidate at all by the media, it is usually to belittle or marginalize the candidate for some political misstep or another. When Gary Johnson, the LP candidate for the 2016 election could not provide an immediate coherent response to a question from a sarcastic reporter about the “Situation in Aleppo”, it made national news. Up to that point, probably almost no one had heard of Gary Johnson but just like that, the first we hear of an LP candidate was that he is a mental midget. Gary being an LP candidate, didn’t have the political speech writers and strategists that daily prepped him on what to say and what questions he will face like the major parties do. But there is another angle that the crazy or factually incorrect stuff that does come from Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump’s mouths daily was just part of the ongoing political show while one slip from an LP candidate meant the end of his running as a legitimate candidate.
Reason Two – Lack of a coherent platform
Ask any libertarian as to what the LP platform even is, they may or may not even be aware of what it is. If they are an involved libertarian, then they may say something about “maximizing individual liberty while minimizing statist incursions through a robust deployment of the non-aggression principle”. Holy heck, what does that even mean? In theory it is saying that everyone should be free to pursue their own desires while government should stay out of things in which it doesn’t belong. Not a very inspiring rally cry.
Meme: Rally cry of libertarianism
It’s not at all good when compared to the Democrats “Save the victims, Republicans and corporations are evil and should be made pay for it” and the Republicans “Democrats have made a shit-storm out of everything they do and they want to do more”. Those are simple messages for low-information voters on both sides but they are also effective in rallying the believers behind a cause and stirring up fear. The LP philosophy doesn’t particularly inspire nor does it generate the requisite level of fear mongering.
Reason Three – Political Interference?
It doesn’t take a tin foil hat or an overactive conspiracy-minded imagination to understand that there is sufficient motive for the DNC and the RNC to sabotage any LP efforts. If a third party ever becomes a force in the political theater that has been built up over the past century, the Democrats and Republicans will have lost their hegemonic domination in shaping US politics. Case in point, when it came out that Gary Johnson, the LP candidate was running on an “Never Trump” platform, the DNC funneled money into the LP campaign in what they felt was a strategy to steal voters that hate Trump but can’t stand to vote for the Democrats either. However, they then pulled the rug out from under Gary with the Aleppo interview by a media controlled by Democrats.
During the election cycle of 2016, fake mainstream media news tried to make an unfounded argument to tie the alt-Right to neo-Nazis and then went further to say libertarianism was “a gateway drug to the alt-right”. Google has recently been called into question on how their employees program to algorithms to skew political viewpoints. Do a search on Google on libertarianism and the top search result will be “Libertarianism is astrology for men” (see screenshot below).
Make no mistake, both parties will likely do everything within their power and use any sort of political shenanigans to marginalize and minimize the LP to prevent any further increase in its popularity should the political establishment feel threatened. As a party with no resources to defend itself and a budget that is less than a fraction of what the DNC or RNC has in their war chests and the Democratic control over the media, the LP doesn’t stand a chance.
Meme: Democratic attack meme on libertarianism
The Opportunity
There is a weariness of the American population with the two dominant political parties in the US. To counter this weariness, the two parties are coming up with new and more cynical ways to get their people mad at others as a way to perpetuate their political fortunes. One party is even pushing socialism, which is nothing more than slavery of the populace as the solution to our troubles and younger millennial’s who grew up in comfort in a free-market economy and have never experienced the true horrors of induced by socialism to include loss of freedom, slavery, starvation, and hopelessness are now turning to socialism as something new. The people are ready for a new, pragmatic, and sensible US political party to join the national discourse. A strong third party will also moderate the trend towards extremism by the two dominant parties. However, the challenges posed by the existing political establishment will be extremely difficult to overcome, if not insurmountable.
I’m a Libertarian as agreement with most of your graphic on stands on issues
Your statement about taking over the Republicans rings true because at least extremists like Birchers don’t nauseate me
Thanks
The biggest problem with the libertarian party is that nobody in it believes that anyone else (including others in the libertarian party) is a ‘true libertarian’. Many of them are also ideological purists, who are unwilling to compromise on issues, even with other libertarians.
Libertarianism is a range of political beliefs that borders on anarcho-capitalists on one side, and constitutional conservatives on the other, and yet there is no one anarcho-capitalists hate more than constitutional conservatives.
The majority of the libertarian party are only consistent in one regard: they do not vote. They will vote in the primaries, but in every election, only a handful of them are willing to get behind their own candidate, raising the question of, “If your own party will not support you, why should anyone else?”
The libertarian party is a joke. Libertarians have a much better chance of taking over the GOP than of turning the most ideologically driven among us into a viable party.
I’m going to have to disagree with you on this. In the formation of anything new, you have to go through various phases before you can build an effective organization. Those phase are commonly referred to as “storming, forming, and norming”. The libertarian party is clearly in the early stages of storming. You are absolutely right that there is a lack of coherency in its messaging because of such diverse opinions within the party. However, that is exactly why the LP needs to build a coherent message at this stage. You are also right in that the past political platforms have been a joke, again this is part of the life cycle in having the party to first determine what it really stands for other than just a good idea. As I said, it remains to be seen if they can do it but we sorely need a third moderate/centrist party to tone down the push towards extremism by the two dominant parties in American politics.
Exactly they are. They have 0 coherence and when they tried to… go to Youtube and search 216 Libertarian cringe. LOL weak fagz tbh