I joined the Minnesota Libertarian Party back in 1994.\u00a0 I’d been a conservative – ergo a Republican – for something like ten years at that point.\u00a0 But I was disgusted with what I saw as the pusillanimity of the GOP Congress in the face of Bill Clinton’s power grab.\u00a0 Not just Hillarycare; it was the widespread caving-in on the 1994 Crime Bill, with its noxious gun control provisions, that disgusted me with the GOP.<\/p>\n
So I joined the Libertarian Party of Minnesota (LPM).\u00a0 Not as a super-active member, of course – my kids were one and three years old, at the time, so there was little enough chance of me being a full-time firebrand.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But I was hardly alone.\u00a0 The mid-nineties may have been the high-water mark for the Libertarian Party – the LPM and nationally.\u00a0 I don’t have the figures in front of me (and I don’t really care to look it up at the moment), but the Libertarian Party reached something of a high-water mark in the mid-nineties.\u00a0 The party was endorsing candidates for offices, from city councils all the way up to President, like it hadn’t at any time before or since.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The thing that appealed to many newly-minted Libertarians, myself included, was the absolute purity of Libetarian Party dogma.\u00a0 There was <\/em>no compromise on personal liberty!\u00a0 Freedom ruled!\u00a0 Liberty was the Law!<\/p>\n Our enthusiasm had the advantage of being utterly unfettered by any sense of having to make any of the compromises that come from actually having to govern<\/em> anything.\u00a0 The number of big-L Libertarians that had been elected to significant office, ever, was vanishingly tiny.\u00a0 Outside of ornery, contrarian environs like the rural West, New Hampshire and Alaska, it was rarer still.<\/p>\n The LPM – and the LPUSA – were a haven for a lot of people, like me, who were very, very clear <\/em>on what they wanted.\u00a0 They – and I – were very very unclear <\/em>on how the sausage was made.\u00a0\u00a0 Politics is a two-stage process;\u00a0 Stage 1 is pulling like hell to get your beliefs – wrapped up in the form of a candidate – into the election.\u00a0 It’s the part\u00a0that takes place within a “party”, usually – and includes all the various roots of the term “Party”; one is “particular” about which candidate ones’ “party” endorses,\u00a0\u00a0one exhibits “partisanship”.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0Stage 2 is when that candidate is (hopefully) elected, and has to actually try to govern, either by sitting on a deliberative body like a city council,\u00a0a county commission,\u00a0a Legislature or a Congress, with people with whom you may disagree, to actually make <\/em>the sausage.\u00a0\u00a0 It’s when the various forms of the word “politics” start to apply; one must “politely” (by the standards of the governing body) work with other “politicians” to achieve enough “polity” to enact your beliefs as “policy”.<\/p>\n My fellow Libertarians and I had the Phase 1 bit down cold.\u00a0 We knew how to agitate!<\/p>\n We – I – were a little less clear on Phase 2, at least at the time.<\/p>\n It took me about four years to realize the LPM was never going to get to Phase 2, and that the GOP was my best bet for working for a party that would<\/em>, someday, reflect enough of my beliefs to let me get behind it.\u00a0<\/p>\n And today – 12 years later, on the eve of swearing in a new, conservative-with-tinges-of-small-“l”-libertarian legislature – I feel pretty well vindicated.\u00a0<\/p>\n But some of the same dynamic I saw in the big-L Libertarian Party – the enthusiasm for the “Phase 1” process, the agitation and enthusiasm and the pulling like hell for ones core beliefs – is very much at play among the hordes of newly-minted conservative activists.\u00a0 We saw it in spades a couple of years ago, when GOP caucuses were inundated with Ron Paul supporters.\u00a0 They stormed the caucuses, full of piddle and vinegar, all fired up to enact “Dr. Paul’s” policies.\u00a0 Many got discouraged when the GOP – those who’d in the party for years, doing all that boring “Phase 2” stuff – didn’t embrace them with open arms.\u00a0 Some stuck around, long enough to see the Tea Party – a tidal wave of new activists that dwarved even the Ron Paul tide – sweep the GOP into power in a wave of “Phase 1” fervor.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now we’re into Phase 2.\u00a0<\/p>\n And some of the people who’ve had to do all that tiresome Phase 2 stuff – all the words that share their roots with “politics”, the ones that require persuasion rather than ardor, and even occasionally compromise rather than absolutism – are nervous.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n And much as the Phase 1 firebrand in me hates to say it, some of them have a point.<\/p>\n