{"id":48633,"date":"2014-10-30T12:00:09","date_gmt":"2014-10-30T17:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=48633"},"modified":"2014-10-30T12:16:42","modified_gmt":"2014-10-30T17:16:42","slug":"unicorns-vote-100-third-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=48633","title":{"rendered":"Unicorns Vote 100% Third Party!"},"content":{"rendered":"

SCENE: \u00a0 Mitch BERG is biking in the southwest suburbs. \u00a0He pulls over into a coffee shop.<\/p>\n

As he sits down, he notices Stephanie Marie ANNAN, Community Organizer for the Minnesota 5th CD Libertarian party. \u00a0 She is wearing capri pants and a t-shirt with “He Gave His Only Begotten Son”, and a picture of Ron Paul walking across the water toward the camera.<\/p>\n

ANNAN:\u00a0\u00a0Hey, Mitch.<\/p>\n

BERG:\u00a0 Hey, Stephanie Marie.\u00a0 Ready for the election.<\/p>\n

ANNAN:\u00a0 Yep.\u00a0 I’m voting Libertarian.\u00a0<\/p>\n

BERG:\u00a0 Kinda figured.\u00a0 So – why?\u00a0<\/p>\n

ANNAN:\u00a0 Because big changes need to happen.<\/p>\n

BERG:\u00a0 Yeah, that’s true.\u00a0 That’s why I’m voting for Jeff Johnson as many times as Mark Richie will let me get away with it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

ANNAN:\u00a0 He won’t bring any changes.\u00a0 The GOP is just as big a part of the problem as the DFL is.\u00a0<\/p>\n

BERG:\u00a0 Er…why do you say that?<\/p>\n

ANNAN:\u00a0 When people put the GOP in power, they were just as bad as the Democrats.\u00a0 There is no difference between the parties.\u00a0<\/p>\n

BERG:\u00a0 Yeah, the GOP can be frustrating.\u00a0 Although you’re oversimplifying.\u00a0 Bobby Jindal has made a huge difference in Louisiana; under his leadership, the New Orleans Public Schools went all charter.\u00a0 Other GOP governors – Pence, Haley, Walker, Martinez – have made inroads in reducing the size and power of government.\u00a0 The GOP – and GOP candidates – have <\/em>made a difference at limiting government and its impact over the years.\u00a0\u00a0 Reagan’s tax cuts were a huge help…<\/p>\n

ANNAN:\u00a0 Reagan grew the deficit!\u00a0 He raised taxes!<\/p>\n

BERG:\u00a0\u00a0 Bingo.\u00a0 You’re making my point for me.\u00a0 Reagan, being a Republican president dealing with a Democrat Congress run by a big-government ward heeler like Tip O’Neill, had to make compromises.\u00a0 One of those compromises was that he had to trust O’Neill to keep up his end of the bargain on cutting spending – which, of course, he didn’t<\/a>.\u00a0 And for all of that, his “tax hikes” were a fraction of his tax cuts, and they happened at a time when the economy was humming along.\u00a0 If you don’t think Reagan’s tax cuts in the early eighties helped immensely <\/em>with the recession, you’re dreaming.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Anyway – the GOP in 1994 made a huge difference in paring back Bill Clinton’s megalomania.\u00a0 Remember “Hillary Care?”\u00a0 Either does anyone else.\u00a0 And the Tea Party class of the GOP, the people elected in 2010, have largely kept their promises.\u00a0<\/p>\n

ANNAN:\u00a0 But the Minnesota GOP had the governor’s office from 2002 to 2010, and the House until 2008, and both chambers in 2011 and 2011, and nothing changed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

BERG:\u00a0 Plenty changed.\u00a0 “Republican” used to mean Arne Carlson.\u00a0 It used to mean “go along with the DFL in turning surpluses into more permanent spending”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

ANNAN:\u00a0 The GOP raised the budget in 2011, and built the stadium.\u00a0<\/p>\n

BERG:\u00a0 Yep.\u00a0 And both were wrong.\u00a0 And in neither case did the Tea Party class of 2010 go along, at least without a fight.\u00a0<\/p>\n

ANNAN:\u00a0 Bla bla bla.\u00a0 The GOP always compromises.<\/p>\n

BERG:\u00a0 Parts of the GOP – the older, “Moderate” wing of the party, especially, which still exerts way too much control over the party at the Capitol – certainly does.\u00a0 Parties don’t change overnight.\u00a0\u00a0 The GOP still caves in on way too much.\u00a0 It’s improving, as conservatives slowly replace moderates.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And let’s be honest; Minnesota is a blueish purple state at best.\u00a0\u00a0 Minnesota is split between various shades of red and hard, deep blue.\u00a0\u00a0 When a conservative goes to Saint Paul, and wants to get anything done, compromise is inevitable.\u00a0 <\/em>There is no way anyone who gets elected to office as a conservative in Minnesota doesn’t have to defile the purity of their principles at some point or another.\u00a0<\/p>\n

ANNAN:\u00a0Yeah, well, I’m sick of voting for the lesser of two evils all the time.\u00a0 I’m going to vote my absolute, pure principles and vote Libertarian.\u00a0<\/p>\n

BERG:\u00a0\u00a0 And that way, you’ll promote liberty.<\/p>\n

ANNAN:\u00a0 Yep.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

BERG:\u00a0 So let me get this straight; you won’t vote for Republicans because previous generations of Republicans have had to compromise the purity of their principles when they actually got into a room with the other side and had to actually try to get things done, to say nothing of having to stop the other side from getting worse things, like daycare unionization and gun control, done.\u00a0<\/p>\n

ANNAN:\u00a0\u00a0 Yep.\u00a0<\/p>\n

BERG:\u00a0 And you’ll vote for someone who’s never had to test the purity of his\u00a0precious principles by trying to enact any kind of policy at all, much less over the votes of a legislature that is at least 50% completely hostile to everything your candidate says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Don’t get me wrong.\u00a0 I could see myself supporting Rand Paul for President.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

ANNAN:\u00a0 Ew.\u00a0 He’s abandoned his principles.\u00a0 Not like Doctor Paul.<\/p>\n

BERG:\u00a0 You’re proving my point.\u00a0 “Doctor” Paul never got elected to anything outside of a House district in Texas.\u00a0 And for all his big talk about policy – auditing the fed, disengaging abroad, yadda yadda – he admits, albeit quietly, that he never could have done it.\u00a0 He had no support in Congress.\u00a0<\/p>\n

ANNAN:\u00a0 Why do you hate liberty?<\/p>\n

BERG:\u00a0 Actually, I clearly respect liberty more than you do.\u00a0<\/p>\n

ANNAN:\u00a0 Hah!\u00a0 How can you say that?\u00a0<\/p>\n

BERG:\u00a0 Because the only way you’re going to get your agenda passed is to elect a libertarian monarch who takes office, sweeps away a century of noxious policy by decree, and then steps down.\u00a0 Hopefully.\u00a0 And that’s fine, if “magical thinking” is good enough for you.\u00a0\u00a0 But that’s really all voting for a third party gets you.\u00a0 A third party vote is a wasted vote.<\/p>\n

ANNAN:\u00a0 It wasn’t with Jesse Ventura!\u00a0 He had principles and he stuck with them!<\/p>\n

BERG:\u00a0 No, he didn’t.\u00a0 He ran on a promise of returning the entire plus to the people. And once he got elected, he had to deal with the fact that was a governor with no caucus in the legislature \u2013 two Democrats flipped over to the Independence Party over the next year, and that was it. So we had to run with his hat in hand to Roger Moe, the DFLSenate majority leader, and cut deals like a madman. Meaning that about a third of the surplus got paid back. And the rest of it got turned into permanent spending, the way the DFL wanted. <\/p>\n

So where was the principal?<\/p>\n

ANNAN:\u00a0 He sent a message!<\/p>\n

BERG: Yep. And that message was “voting for a third-party candidate is of nothing but symbolic value”.<\/p>\n

ANNAN:\u00a0 (Plugs ears, turns, starts running<\/em>).\u00a0 Bla bla blaaaaa can’t year youuuuuuu bla bla bla bla bla).<\/p>\n

[And SCENE]<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SCENE: \u00a0 Mitch BERG is biking in the southwest suburbs. \u00a0He pulls over into a coffee shop. As he sits down, he notices Stephanie Marie ANNAN, Community Organizer for the Minnesota 5th CD Libertarian party. \u00a0 She is wearing capri pants and a t-shirt with “He Gave His Only Begotten Son”, and a picture of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[121,280,30,72],"tags":[236],"class_list":["post-48633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-14","category-circular-firing-squad","category-liberty","category-mngop","tag-dramatization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48633"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48633\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48768,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48633\/revisions\/48768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}