Thank you for taking the time to read my proposal and respond to it. Interspersed below I will respond to your comments. DM
----- Original Message ----- From: "Steve" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, December 05, 2005 12:15 AM Subject: [badnarik2008] Re: No National Convention in 2008! > David - There are two very good reasons why this proposal doesn't work: > > 1) In order to take advantage of it, we would have to attract someone > as a candidate who wanted to campaign full time, first for the > nomination and then for the election, beginning about 2-1/2 years > ahead of Nov 2008. As it is only one out of our last set of candidates > was willing to devote ALMOST that much of his life to such a purpose > (though admittedly Gary Nolan jumped in not too long thereafter). I > really doubt that given both the likelihood of election of a labeled > Libertarian, anywhere above a state legislator seat in a small > district in a small state, and the level of funding possible to even > pay the way for a road warrior like Michael showed he was ... anyone > else will be quite that self-sacrificing and congenial next time. We attracted Roger McBride in 1975, Ed Clark in 1979, David Bergland in 1983, Ron Paul in 1987 and Andre Marrou in 1991. The early convention in '83 provided a little more time to repair the results of the schism. Harry Browne began his first campaign in early Spring 1995 and, to some extent, was running for the next four years. Michael Badnarik began his campaign on Washington's Birthday (the real one) 2003. Former Ohioan Gary Nolan also started very early. There is nothing to compel candidates to run early full-time although Michael Badnarik has set a high bar and if there is opposition to him in 2007 part of the evaluation of any such opposition, which I would not recommend or support, would be to campaign as diligently as he did. DM > > 2) You said it yourself, we are not going to gain media coverage, no > matter what we do. The game is fixed and the dice are loaded. Why then > put any more effort and time into a sabre dive like the Presidential > nomination is? Far better to worry less about that, than about how > many laws we can change through local action and plebiscite where > possible, and by continuing to elect and raise issues with our > candidates at the local level... You are correct that, for the foreseeable future, the game is fixed and the dice are loaded. This does not prevent us from using presidential campaigns to outreach to people and recruit activists. More activists will enable us to change corrupt laws and have much more impact on local races. The two projects are complementary, not exclusive. Since most members want to run a presidential campaign it would be much better to have a fourteen month campaign than a four month campaign, especially is such states as Ohio where the first month is usually spent My observation of alternate parties causes me to conclude that those parties which ceased to run presidential candidates soon ceased to exist. If you can provide an example to the contrary, I would appreciate you refreshing my memory but I don't think that there are any. For life and liberty, David Macko > > > --- In [email protected], "David Macko" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> >> The Libertarian Party should not have a National Convention in 2008! >> Now that I have your attention, let me assure everybody who is > reading this >> message that I am not a neocon saboteur hellbent on destroying the > Libertarian Party. >> I recommend that we hold our National Convention to nominate a > presidential candidate >> for 2008 in 2007. >> This was our practice from 1976 until 1996. The arguments for the > change seemed plausible at the >> time, including more publicity in an election year. Since then it > has been proven conclusively >> that the establishment media is our enemy and will not give us fair > coverage. >> The most blatant proof of the media bias is the fact that if two > presidential candidates had >> been arrested in Russia, Iraq or Iran it would have been front page > news and covered by all >> the networks. Yet when Michael Badnarik and Green Party candidate > David Cobb became the >> first presidential candidates in American history to be arrested > while campaigning, not to mention >> that they were handcuffed and jailed for attempting to commit free > speech, even Libertarians >> without access to the internet did not know about this atrocity for > weeks. >> Nominating our candidates a year before the convention would give > them more time to campaign >> with unified party support. It would make petitioning easier in many > states with more time and >> less expense for paid petitioners where necessary since there is > less competition in odd-numbered years. >> Now is the time to promote this return to our original practice > through all available media, including LP News. >> >> For life and liberty, >> David Macko ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> AIDS in India: A "lurking bomb." 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