Outstanding question Matt. And welcome to our Forum. Here's my thoughts on the matter.
I think there was a groundswell of support for libertarian ideals in the late 1970s and early 1980s. This all culminated in the highly successful Ed Clark, Libertarian for President Campaign in 1980 (and to a lesser extent Ron Paul's LP Presidential Campaign in 1988). It also resulted in 3 Libertarians being elected to the Alaska Legislature, and scores of Libertarians winning nationwide for local offices. Since then. the Libertarian Party has experienced a serious decline in electoral victories and Presidential vote totals. In 1990, Libertarian Party members started joining the GOP, and formed the Republican Liberty Caucus. Since then, virtually all of the major libertarian electoral victories have been a result of the RLC, not the LP. The LP's decline has seriously hurt the Liberty Movement. I don't see a "libertarian groundswell" out there any more like there was in the '80s. The RLC has been only partially successful. It has succeeded in getting libertarians elected to office in a spotty fashion; 1 guy in Maine, another guy in Alaska, 2 guys down in Texas, 2 guys in Colorado, and so on. The RLC has not succeeded in electing enough libertarians to make a difference. It's more like "Oh ya, that odd libertarian guy we have in our GOP Caucus here in the 'Pick-your-State' Legislature..." Unless libertarians of all stripes get super-serious about politics and trade in the on-line blogging and LP supper club monthly meetings for precinct walking, sign waving, phone banks, and fundraising for RLC-backed candidates, we are never going to succeed. The entire libertarian movement, both LP and RLC, needs to transform itself into a libertarian version of the Club for Growth. I invite you to check out my web site which advocates this approach: www.mainstreamlibertarian.com --- In [email protected], "matthew_reider" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Full disclosure: I am neither a libertarian nor a fan of unregulated > capitalism. But I am earnest in trying to figure out where > Libertarians stand - and I am not here to pick a fight. > > It seems like the Libertarian argument has gained some strength in the > last decade or more. This correlates to the strength of the fiscal > conservative viewpoint and republican success over Democrats in > representative government. > > It is my belief that these trends have much to do with one another and > that Republicans have done a good job of co-opting the Libertarian > agenda while not following that agenda whatsoever. Reagan was the > first in a line of contemporary republicans who appealed to the > public's sense of paranoia about "big government" and started what > became a twenty-five year republican mission to dismantle many of the > federally funded social programs established by Reagan's predecessors. > > My question to the group looks something like this: Do you generally > agree that Libertarian ideology has helped to elect people like George > W. Bush to the white house and, if so, do you find this troubling? > > Thanks for considering my question! > > Cheers, > > Matt > ForumWebSiteAt http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Libertarian Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Libertarian/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
