To: Principled Libertarians
From: Mitch Berg, Uppity “Establishment” Tea Party Peasant
Re: Bamboozled
My Libertarian Friends,
I likely agree with you all on more than we disagree. Some of you like to focus on the disagreements, which makes for fun rhetoric, but whatever; I would call myself a constitutional limited government conservative. The battle to limit the power of government is a long, uphill slog – against the gleefully statist Democrats, and against a GOP establishment that has plenty of constituents that benefit from the Big State, as well as a crucially large Tea Party faction that is quite the opposite.
Whatever. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
Anyway.
Now, one of you folks’s signature lines is that you’d rather be irrelevant at the polls than violate your principles.
And generally – and I say this with all due respect – Libertarians achieve that wish with flying colors. Their irrelevance at the polls is legendary; most LP candidates are doing well to poll in full single digits – to the left of the decimal point, anyway.
And the big “Ron Paul” takeover of the Minnesota GOP has had mixed results. Some districts – like my SD65 – saw excellent efforts by solid candidates that turned out lots of new GOP voters. Others – the 5th CD – turned out more like frat party gags gone awry, run by people who chuckle amongst themselves about the contempt they feel for the GOP and Republicans.
As a general rule, Libertarians (with the Big L) are happy to remain magnificently above the scrums of daily life, gazing down on all the silly worker ants and their door-knocking and sign-pounding, focusing on big thoughts and dreaming of the utopia we’ll all share (from our neutral corners) once you get those damn brainwashed sheeple to see the light.
All is in its place, right?
So for the Virginia Libertarian Party, it must have seemed like Free Pot and Raw Milk day; someone gave them actual money to run a campaign.
Of course, that “someone” was an Obama bundler.
And the Libertarian candidate for Governor came in with a little over six percent of the vote. And I’m going to hypothesize with little fear of contradiction that in and among the people who wouldn’t have voted anyway there was a preponderance of a couple of Republicans, maybe several, for every Democrat.
Which was precisely why an Obama bundler rounded up all the money, of course – for the same reason that Liberals With Deep Pockets ® donated to Tom Horner. To siphon votes.
Now, many of you believe there’s no difference between the two major parties. I reject that premise (while stipulating that the GOP has a ton of room for improvement, which is why I’m firmly in the Tea Party wing of the party, and have been since long before there was a Tea Party).
But whatever it is you believe about the difference (?) between the two major parties, I gotta ask you; what do you think about having your movement and its principles co-opted in all their above-it-all grandeur to help solidify the control of the most gleefully, overtly statist of the parties?
“It’s not my fault” might be true and is still an evasion.
Only Libertarians and Republicans in the comment section on this one, please; the kids have all sorts of other places on my blog to romp and play; comments re the Democrat point of view will likely be deleted without ceremony.
I don’t do that often – but I am today.
It’s my blog. Don’t like it? Talk to the hand.
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