How the Libertarian Party Can Gain Serious Attention and Influence
/Well, it was another dismal performance for the Libertarian Party in this year's just passed election, especially at the presidential level.
The Libertarian Party presidential candidate, Jo Jorgenson, received approximately 1.8 million votes (roughly 1.2% of the vote).
It was a yawner. There aren't even many post-mortems in the media about the vote. No one cares.
This is a tragedy given the close elections these days between the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates.
The races are close because internal polls of the major party campaigns have gotten very accurate in determining what candidates should say to voters and thus the vote will tend to be extremely close.
These close races are a great opportunity for the Libertarian Party because often in key swing states the margin between the loser and the victor can be less than the number that will vote Libertarian. Walter Block's Libertarian Voting Rule, that in states with close races you vote for the major party candidate that is less evil and that in races that aren't close you cast a protest vote for the Libertarian Party candidate, can be applied with a powerful result if it expanded as a Libertarian Party policy.
In 2024, whoever the Libertarian Party candidate is, the candidate should announce to the country that libertarians should only cast protest votes for the Libertarian presidential candidate in states where it is clear who the Republican or Democratic presidential winner will be.
The Libertarian nominee should also announce that in swing states, libertarians should not vote for him but for the lesser of the two evils. The Libertarian Party candidate should also invite on separate nights the Republican nominee and the Democratic nominee for live television discussions with the Libertarian candidate on the topic as to which nominee will advance the most libertarian agenda.
Talk about focus on libertarian thinking!
The outcome of the Libertarian candidate announcing, after the discussions as to who he considers less evil between the two major-party nominees and who he recommends libertarians should vote for in swing states, could determine the winner!
It would be difficult for the mainstream media to avoid coverage of libertarianism and if the questions are designed properly it would introduce to the general population what libertarianism is all about.
Given this would likely determine the outcome of the election, I would expect the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates to act like Greyhound dogs chasing a mechanical rabbit to get the libertarian vote. It would be very interesting to see how they would approach their general interventionist pledges while still attempting to gain libertarian support.
Of course, there is the possibility that the D and R candidates would not participate in such discussions and in that case the Libertarian Party candidate would examine the public proposals of both candidates and still make a declaration of advice as to who libertarians should vote for in swing states.
In a very important way, the Libertarian Party would potentially have significant influence over who ends up in the White House and at the same time introducing to the general public libertarian ideas--which should be the most important goal.
Robert Wenzel is Editor & Publisher of EconomicPolicyJournal.com and Target Liberty. He also writes EPJ Daily Alert and is the author of The Fed Flunks: My Speech at the New York Federal Reserve Bank, Foundations of Private Property Society Theory: Anarchism for the Civilized Person, and most recently, Problems With Modern Monetary Theory: A Comment on Stephanie Kelton’s "The Deficit Myth".
Follow him on twitter:@wenzeleconomics and on LinkedIn. His youtube series is here: Robert Wenzel Talks Economics. More about Wenzel here.
