\u00a0Some of you know my political backstory – I’ve written about it a time or two.\u00a0 In 1994, disgusted by the GOP’s capitulation to Clinton on the 1994 Crime Bill along with George HW Bush’s reversal on taxes, I left the Republican Party and joined the Libertarians.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Over the course of four years, I did what most libertarians do; thought big thoughts about liberty.\u00a0 I also ran for office under the Big “L” banner <\/a>– and did better than I thought I would.<\/p>\n But it was mostly thinking big thoughts.\u00a0 Libertarians were big on debating principles, and even bigger\u00a0on deriding those who, by their calculus, didn’t – or at least those whose principles weren’t drawn\u00a0in as big, stark letters as their own seemed to be, to\u00a0them and each other.\u00a0<\/p>\n I left the Big “L”\u00a0after about four years.\u00a0 I had – and have – principles.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0And I figured there was a better chance of doing my part toward that end, and actually having some effect in the great scheme of things, by working within\u00a0an actual party that had a chance of doing something useful than via endless navel-gazing in the Libertarian echo chamber.\u00a0<\/p>\n And so I left the Libertarian Party – partly because the party line on foreign policy and national security is (I’ll be charitable) simplistic, but mostly because the Big “L” Party is never, ever, going to have anything to do with passing actual policy into law; the most <\/em>it can ever <\/em>hope for is to serve as a\u00a0spoiler, taking liberty voters’ votes away from the other parties, mostly the GOP.<\/p>\n And in 15 years of varying involvement – from observer to amateur pundit to even-more-amateur activist – the party has come a long way.\u00a0 In 1998, Arne Carlson’s legacy loomed large in the party; today, it’s virtually gone, and good riddance.\u00a0 It’s been largely squeezed out (everywhere but in the media’s consciousness) by an uneasy, sometimes fractious assembly of business conservatives (who may or may not care about social issues or liberty), Tea Partiers (who focus on the “limited government” aspects of “liberty”) and, over the past couple years, “Liberty Republicans”.\u00a0<\/p>\n These last came to the party in 2012 as an organizational juggernaut that acted about as “libertarian” as a North Korean synchronized dance\u00a0team\u00a0– at least in terms of taking control of party functions and sending people to Tampa.\u00a0 The best of them – the ones in CD4 were among ’em – brought with them the pragmatism that led to a couple of really promising campaigns.\u00a0 The worst of them – I’m not naming names – left us a display of nihilistic principles-over-pragmatism that bordered on onanistic<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n None quite as dismal, thankfully, as the recent resignation by a group of libertarian Maine Republicans, who resigned in protest over…<\/p>\n …convention rules?<\/p>\n\n