Why I Will Vote Third Party
It’s amazing how things can change in a matter of hours, isn’t it? Mere hours ago, I was pondering my options for the future, given John McCain and Barack Obama’s contempt for their critics.
Yesterday, Sarah Palin brought up the Obama-William Ayers connection , saying Obama was “palling around with terrorists.” Then hours ago, Politico had a report about Obama’s return volley in the form of the Keating 5 scandal, which McCain was embroiled in some years ago. Our own Michael ver der Galien discussed this development in another article.
Both are misleading at best. But both are the types of things I thought I’d never see from both campaigns. And thus, my support for them is lost. On November 4th, my vote goes to Libertarian Party candidate Bob Barr.
If you vote for Sarah Palin YOU ARE VOTING 3RD PARTY. She’s a libertarian Republican. She’s practically a member of the Libertarian Party.
You are obviously uninformed about her libertarian background in Alaska.
Why do you keep harping on about this? It may very well be the case that she’s a libertarian-leaning Repulbican (though you guys ought to be astonished at her record on earmarks), but a Republican she is.
Really, it’s like saying voting for Ron Paul is voting 3rd party. He is a libertarian-leaning Republican. But he’s still a Republican.
Michael Merritt,
I, too, will be voting for a third party candidate for president this year (as I did four years ago). However, while I supported the Libertarian ticket in 2004, I cannot do so again this year. While I applaud Bob Barr for standing up to his former party, I think the Libertarian Party made a big mistake in selecting him as their presidential candidate. He might have shifted in a libertarian direction on several issues, the guy is still not a libertarian and has a history of some very unlibertarian positions that he has to overcome.
Still, a vote for Barr is one less vote for McCain or Obama.
Who’re you voting for then, if you don’t mind me asking? I know there are some other libertarian-leaning third parties out there, though without the state count to match the Libertarians (aside from the Constitution Party).
I’m definitely not a purist economically, so the Libertarians don’t fit perfectly well into my box of ideals. Anybody got a good round-up of Barr’s pre-conversion economic stances? I’ve looked at his voting record, but they’re sometimes hard to follow.
Spare your time trying to reason with Eric Dondero.
Mr. Dondero is well known throughout the libertarian realm of the blogosphere as a very fervent supporter of waging war in the Middle East and yet calls himself a libertarian. He was a Ron Paul staffer back in the 1990’s, but the two parted ways after 2001 over differences in foreign policy. Ron Paul was one of the few Republicans who opposed the Iraq War while Mr. Dondero was then (and has continued to be) and unapologetic supporter of the Iraq War.
I do not use the phrase “very fervent supporter of waging war in the Middle East” lightly. I certainly would not lump anyone and everyone who supported the invasion of Iraq in the same category. But Mr. Dondero’s low threshold for resorting to military attack and support of indiscriminant killing of foreigners knows few equals. Shortly after 9/11, Mr. Dondero advocated that our government drop a nuclear bomb on Mecca. He has also endorsed several different conspiracy theories regarding Iraq and Saddam Hussein, including endorsing the idea that Saddam Hussein was behind the Oklahoma City bombings in 1995.
On October 25, 2005, Mr. Dondero went onto the late Harry Browne’s radio show to debate the former Libertarian Presidential candidate on foreign policy. Mr. Dondero put on quite an embarassing performance—launching tirades against libertarians who didn’t support the war and literally shouting at listeners who called into the show to oppose his fervent support for military attacks in the name of libertarianism. The chairman of the Republican Liberty Caucus (an organization that Mr. Dondero co-founded and lavishes so much praise upon) called into the show to disavow any relation to Mr. Dondero or his views.
If anyone thinks I am exaggerating in the slightest, please click on the links to Harry Browne vs. Eric Dondero debate below. Words cannot explain how Mr. Dondero becomes when discussing foreign policy:
mms://www.harrybrowne.org/harrybrowne/05-10-29a.mp3
mms://www.harrybrowne.org/harrybrowne/05-10-29b.mp3
Aside from the structural reasons (see "Duverger’s Law"), one of the reasons that third parties tend to remain small is because they tend to be easily dominated by ideological purists who interpret any disagreement over any issue as sufficient reason to expel the dissenter from the party. Note, for example, how Nick treats the Iraq War as an absolutist issue from which no dissent can be tolerated without permanently losing all claim to the affiliation "libertarian". That Nick so often also feels free to question the morality, ethics, and sanity of those he disagrees with only serves to emphasize my point about the toxic influence of purists.
Since the difficulty of sustaining a purist consensus increases by an order of magnitude as EITHER the number of issues or the size of the group increases, third parties often tend to remain dominated by a purist core that is so intolerant of any disagreement as to make it impossible to cooperate even on other issues. The obstreperousness of the purists also makes attempted association with such groups unpleasant, to say the least. This tends to limit the appeal of third parties to anyone not already “read into” all the various dogmas and “required thought” elements of the third party.
It is certainly true that the “major” parties also have their share of purists and intolerant ideological enforcers, but their very size and diversity makes it much more difficult for those purists to conduct ideological pogroms that forcibly purify the party and narrow it. Attempts to do so in larger parties, in fact, tend to produce backlash movements from within that result either in recapture or stalemate. The willingness and ability of purists to read dissenters out of smaller parties combined with the fact that little is to be lost in the way of competitiveness anyway tends to make schism more likely than intra-party contestation. For a recent historical example, see how quickly the Reform Party of 1992 declined and then was captured by rhetorically abusive purists from the Pat Buchanan wing.
P.S. I say all of this as a member for the past decade of a third party, so anyone who was planning to respond by attacking my motives and/or calling me a lackey of the two “major” parties can not bother.
Jason,
The overwhelming majority of political commentary that I come across in the mainstream media and the blogosphere is rife with partisan bias–defending Democrats and attacking Repbulicans or vice versa. It can even be found here at Poligazette.
I, too, am, biased. The difference is that I don’t restrict my criticisms to just one party or the other. I’m not afraid to criticize Democrats or Republicans when I disagree with them, nor do I shy away from criticizing third parties.
If that makes me a “purist”, then that’s an awfully difference meaning of the term than I’m used to.