Good evening Lowell! Lowell C. Savage wrote in response to Chuck Muth's commentary...
> The problem with his analysis is that Ruth Bennett (the LP candidate in the > gubernatorial race) did her best to run to the left. She emphasized > personal freedoms, was thoroughly "out of the closet" as a lesbian and > favored "gay marriage." She claimed, immediately after the election, that > she had cost Christine Gregoire (Dem.) the election. Now, it appears that > she only "nearly cost Christine Gregoire the election." You "might" look at it in that way. However, the neo-conservative hawks and pro-government wizzards that currently seem to run the GOP machine do not represent necessarily the 'old Guard' (Taft) Republicans in which Barry Goldwater represented, and that various segments of the GOP grassroots STILL hold today. Barry is no longer around to defend himself, but based upon various 'surprises' during the last years of his life, I suspect Barry wouldn't consider making lesbianism a political issue, and he most certainly would have gravitated (I suspect) with her message of 'personal freedoms', much of which the neo-conserative bunch running the GOP today have ignored. It's hard to say how many of her votes came from 'would have voted Democrat' vs 'would have voted Republican', since the data just isn't there, and I doubt exist polls would have even asked. My personal vote pattern upon entering the polling booth goes something like this: 1. My first vote goes to ANY Libertarian running for a specific office; 2. My secondary choice, when no Libertarian is running, to vote for a Constitution Party candidate, if one is available and running; 3. My third choice, given no other Third Party alternative that I *MIGHT* be able to live with as an alternative to the two major parties is to vote GOP if I can stomach the candidate at all; 4. My fourth choice, if I can't find a way to personally stomach the GOP candidate since he is a fake and a fraud, is not to vote for ANY candidates for that office at all. True enough, not all voters who voted for Ruth Bennett, would have followed my sequential process in the voting booth, but my point is that lesbianism or even gay marriages did not in any case play a pivotal role in the way I would have voted. Not all GOP patterned voters who want more personal liberty believe that lesbianism or gay marriage is a giant of an issue insofar as their own personal liberties are concerned either. Now, one hell of a lot of Democrats do not support either lesbianism or gay marriage! Please grant me at least this possibility, just maybe Ruth Bennett may have conceivable misjudged the source from the major Party she was corting in this election, given the fact that western Washington seems to be going Democrat these days. It is probably correct to assume that the GOP voter would have been in most cases, more likely to vote for a 'leave me alone' Libertarian candidate who showed some guts in her own personal choices in this election. Back in the mid 1980s, a 'call girl' prostitute ran for the California attorney general seat under the Libertarian Party banner, and garnered hundreds of thousands of votes throughout the State! I forget her name now, but I read her book years ago, "Cop Turned Call Girl". Although being incarcerated in California for Prostitution several times, she managed to field a larger percentage of votes than other more "mainstream" Libertarian candidates had previously done, and even since. Now again, even under such an extreme candidacy, who is to say whether these votes came from likely GOP voters versus Democrats? I don't know, since the data is not available, but you seem to suggest that because Ruth Bennett assumed she got the majority of votes from Democrats is at best speculate and probably grossly unreliable. If you look above again at my criteria, I usually, most of the time, would likely vote GOP absent a Libertarian or other Third Party candidate, and I would have most likely voted for the Prostitute in California and Ruth Bennett, if in the later case I resided in the State of Washington. So the picture painted by you and Ruth Bennett doesn't make it necessarily so, particularly absent any credible evidence that would suggest either way. Kindest regards, Frank _______________________________________________ Libnw mailing list [email protected] List info and subscriber options: http://immosys.com/mailman/listinfo/libnw Archives: http://immosys.com/mailman//pipermail/libnw
