“”To all that were attracted to the Libertarian Party by my 2020 candidacy: I am sorry. It has become a terrible dumpsterfire of a shitshow. I regret my involvement in such a non functional embarrassment full of paleo dipshits, pedo apologists, and culture war fuckwads.
|
—Vermin Supreme[1] |
God, guns, and freedom U.S. Politics |
Starting arguments over Thanksgiving dinner |
Persons of interest |
The US Libertarian Party was founded in 1971[2] on the principles of libertarianism.
The Libertarian Party is the third-largest political party[3] in America. They’re active in all 50 states and have more than 280,000 registered voters, or... 0.1% of the United States eligible voting population.[4] (In fairness, it's just a mathematical fact that under First-Past-the-Post all systems will trend towards two-party.) Some people who misunderstand libertarianism see them as Republicans with training wheels, which is sorta true. Libertarians want less government, because they believe that the free market can enforce social conservatism better than the government.[citation needed] As of 2019, no party spokesman has addressed the irony of a group of individualists pooling their efforts to join an entity they despise. In the 2020s, the Libertarian Party started to shift far harder right after the Mises Caucus took control.[5]
Libertarians believe that the one-dimensional scale of the political "left-right" is insufficient to describe the general public's many philosophies. They introduced the Nolan Chart, which measures two dimensions of political opinion instead, conveniently placing themselves at the top, opposite Hitler, which is literally the truth.[6] Of course, that wasn't enough; they had to add a big arrow toward their position, mangling evolution to encourage people to join them.[7]
As with many parties, the party has much-untapped potential locked in the two main parties by first past the post. A pretty decent portion of Republicans opposes the party's conservative views while supporting its neoliberal economics. A pretty decent portion of Democrats opposes the party's moderately left-leaning economics while supporting its progressive views. These people would line up with the Libertarian Party's social liberal, neoliberal platform. Still, they can't out of fear of splitting the vote, which is why so many Democrats and Republicans oppose MMPV, IRV, and TRV, knowing they would lose much influence.[note 1] To that end, it can probably be argued that most people are closet Libertarians.
In the 2007 Elections, Libertarian Party candidates won 14 elective offices, including an election for mayor of Avis, Pennsylvania (population 1,492).[8]
Several candidates sought to become the party's 2008 presidential nominee. Mike Gravel changed from the Democratic Party to the Libertarian Party. Bob Barr, a former Republican U.S. Congressman, announced on May 12, 2008, that he would seek the nomination.[9] The final choice of Bob Barr (and his running mate, Wayne Allyn Root) was made at the 2008 national convention in Denver, Colorado in late May.
Ron Paul, who was the party's 1988 candidate, had been mentioned as a possible nominee as well, but has officially denied any intent to run under any third-party banner. On December 12, 2007, the Party adopted a resolution requesting Paul to run on the Libertarian ticket if he does not win the Republican Party nomination.[10]
Gary Johnson, former governor of New Mexico, ran with running mate Jim Gray on the top of the Libertarian ticket.[11] Johnson received slightly over 1 million votes, or about one percent.[12]
Johnson has stated that he will run again in 2016, "as long as he's relevant,"[14] whatever that may mean. Some reports had him running for the GOP nomination and, if unsuccessful, seeking the Libertarian Party nomination in a replay of 2012. Considering Johnson's relative level-headedness compared to the mainstream GOP, his support of gay and immigration rights, and love for pot, this is likely to happen. If he can gain one percentage point, he is on track to win the general election by 2412 with a literal Ron Paulbot as his running mate.
For the 2020 US presidential election, several people threw their lot in for the Libertarians, the most notable among them being former Republican and anti-war activist Adam Kokesh and the nutty, tax-evading inventor of antivirus software John McAfee.[15] Jo Jorgensen was the 2020 Libertarian Party Presidential nominee.[16]
In the wake of the Unite the Right riot in 2017, then-Chair Nicholas Sarwark wrote an open letter denouncing fascism and racism, and asking racists to stay away from the Libertarian Party. This enraged a group of Libertarians affiliated with the Mises Institute, who denounced Sarwark's statement as "woke" and went on to found the Mises "Caucus" (which is actually a PAC). The PAC made many allies with the alt-right over the next few years, including Nick Fuentes, League of the South co-founder Tom Woods, and Hotep Jesus, and gradually took control of several state affiliates as well as winning a handful of seats on the National Committee.[17] They also drew headlines for extremist posts on social media, including advocating for child labor, celebrating the anniversary of the death of John McCain by tweeting "Happy holidays" accompanied by a picture of his daughter crying over his coffin, and one by the Delaware affiliate which appeared to advocate throwing transgender people into woodchippers. In the leadup to the party's National Convention on Memorial Day weekend 2022, observers both within the party and out expressed concern that the Mises Caucus would take control of the entire Party, including an expose from the Southern Poverty Law Center.[18] Those concerns proved founded as Mises-endorsed candidates won every seat on the National Committee and succeeded in repealing a platform plank condemning bigotry as "irrational and repugnant", on the grounds that such a statement was "divisive" and would discourage people from joining.[note 2] This led to the departure of numerous long-time members who were relatively sane, or at least not raging bigots, and the attempted disaffiliation by state affiliates in New Mexico and Virginia, to which the Mises-backed National Committee responded "Actually, we're disaffiliating you" to the former and "You're affiliated with us whether you like it or not" to the latter.[19] The Libertarian Party has skidded off the rails since then, even compared to its previous standards, openly embracing the alt-right, racism, homophobia, transphobia, and anti-Semitism, and driving off any previous members who did not stand for those things. Meanwhile, the new Chair is a sovereign citizen and a proponent of German New Medicine, a pseudoscience/conspiracy theory that states that all modern medicine is a conspiracy by Jews to kill non-Jewish patients. At the National Convention, the first run under new leadership, presidential candidates Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (neither of whom are members of the Libertarian Party) were both invited to speak, drawing national media attention but creating fierce controversy within the party.[20]
The Libertarian Party website also has some polls for its members, with results that can turn out only slightly saner than WND polls.