I wanted to go to the convention in New Orleans and hang out for the week, not worry about in-fighting. Looks like now my job is going to be making sure Nick Sarwark has less to do from 2018 onward.
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I wanted to go to the convention in New Orleans and hang out for the week, not worry about in-fighting. Looks like now my job is going to be making sure Nick Sarwark has less to do from 2018 onward.
For real. All I want from the national LP is professionalism. Instead I get the LP chair attacking the Mises Institute and Tom Woods who have done more for libertarianism than anyone. Then I get other LP heads saying that military personnel are baby killers when active duty personnel vote libertarian more than R or D.
Both of these examples are nothing if not divisive and it almost seems like they are attempting to torpedo the party.
One thing I came across which might explain the Sarwark's strategy:. I've been meaning to write about it when I have time. Check out the link from Sarwark's blog:
The Sarwark strategy in a nutshell.
Creating controversy in order to create some kind of media buzz isn't a strategy, it's desperation. I hate being on the defensive with republicans and democrats who use our in-fighting as ammo. The convention should be fun, especially when we get a new chair and vice chair!
I was a Republican in the early 90s; my brother was (is still) very libertarian in his principles. I studied a lot of the material he had on hand, and here is my impression of the LP.
At the time I started paying attention to the LP (90s), it was very focused on economics and personal freedoms, period. Anti-war focus was there, but minimal. From the mid-90s onward, more and more of a focus became on drug legalization and anti-war (anti-military spending incl.).
After Bush's 2000 election, it seemed to me that the focus of the LP was entirely drug legalization and anti-war, with little attention paid to economic or other personal freedoms. As the 2000s progressed, focus began including UBI, a focus on police abuses, and open borders.
This last election? the LP ran a guy who was for gun control and telling businesses who they HAD to cater to...
If was was being a jerk, I'd say the potheads smoked the party out ;> but really I just think people whose only interest in liberty was drug use dominated it over time.
I think the focus on cannabis decriminalization was because the tide was going the other way, and as we have seen in recent years it has been successful. Going forward we should focus more on empire building, and the economy. I think there is shift happening with those topics now. Only time will tell though.