Monthly Archives: May 2008

Seven Candidates Qualify for Presidential Debate

Press Release:

Seven candidates qualify for presidential debate

Half of candidates vying for nomination cross threshold for debate participation at the 2008 Libertarian National Convention

Denver, CO – Half of the candidates vying for the Libertarian Party’s nomination for president have qualified to participate in tonight’s presidential debate at the 2008 Libertarian National Convention.

Since the beginning of the convention on May 22, the 12 presidential candidates who made the trip to Denver for the National Convention have been petitioning Libertarian delegates for their support in the form of delegate tokens, which go towards qualifying candidates for certain events at the national convention. Candidates must collect 30 tokens in order to qualify for a 16-minute nominating speech to be given on Sunday before the voting begins. For the presidential debate, candidates had to collect 10 percent of the delegate tokens available by Saturday morning. That number was 57.

The candidates who qualified for Saturday’s debate are as follows:

Bob Barr (94 tokens)
Wayne Allyn Root (94 tokens)
Mary Ruwart (94 tokens)
Mike Gravel (67 tokens)
Mike Jingozian (63 tokens)
George Phillies (62 tokens)
Steve Kubby (60 tokens)

“We’re very excited to have a healthy number of candidates involved in tonight’s presidential debate,” says Libertarian Party National Media Coordinator Andrew Davis. “The competition that it will bring will only improve the political discourse at our convention. Republicans and Democrats could learn a thing or two about the inclusion of multiple voices in presidential debates, which ultimately is better for the nomination process and helps delegates choose the best candidate for the party.”

The debate will take place tonight at 7:00 PM (MST), and will be moderated by Fox News contributor James Pinkerton. The debate is scheduled to be broadcast live by C-SPAN.

As of noon on Saturday, more than 620 delegates had registered for the convention.

A nominee will be selected by delegates on Sunday afternoon.

The Libertarian Party is America’s third largest political party, founded in 1971 as an alternative to the two main political parties. You can find more information on the Libertarian Party by visiting www.LP.org. The Libertarian Party proudly stands for smaller government, lower taxes and more freedom.

For more information on the convention, or to arrange a media interview, please call Andrew Davis at (202) 333-0008 during normal business hours, or at (202) 731-0002 during any other time.

Scenes from the Libertarian National Convention

This first day of covering the Libertarian National Convention has been very exciting so far. I haven’t had an opportunity to spend much time at any of the events but I have been talking to delegates and presidential candidates (interviews will be posted later). Jason Pye has been busy posting his experience and insights at the convention at JasonPye.com.

Booths at the convention

Booths at the convention

Libertarian Presidential Candidates George Phillies and Mike Gravel

Libertarian Presidential Candidates George Phillies and Mike Gravel

Steve Kubby

Presidential Candidate Steve Kubby

Presidential Candidate Christine Smith – I spoke to her briefly before the pre-debate tokens were counted. Smith is not a fan of Bob Barr or Wayne Allyn Root; she thinks they are Republicans running as Libertarians. She did not receive enough tokens to participate in the C-Span debate but she is still technically running.

Libertarian Party platform debate winding down

Stage set for the C-SPAN debate; the last debate of the Libertarian Convention and the 2008 campaign.

“Blog Row” – Spot set aside specifically for bloggers throughout the convention. This was taken during the debate (left to right, myself representing The Liberty Papers, fellow Liberty Papers contribuer Jason Pye, Dave Weigel from Reason, and Drew Ferguson from Liberty magazine.)

Post debate press conference (Left to Right: Dr. Mary Ruwart, Bob Barr, and Wayne Allyn Root)

Barr campaign’s hospitality suite after the post debate press conference

Bob Barr’s first press conference as the LP’s nominee

Looking Backward: The Future Of Libertarian Ideas

James Pinkerton looks at the future of libertarian ideas by pondering where we might be in 2058:

First, true freedom—camouflaged from all-seeing eyes in the sky, hidden even from the all-penetrating Google Grid—can flourish only in a few small and isolated places around the globe, where self-selected populations can gather together as ex-pats and exiles, to live free or die. These places have been mostly small islands, protected by nuclear booby traps, although a few have existed on the poles, or under the sea, or deep underground. Poignantly, one such place was called “Galt’s Gulch,” named after the place where the capitalist strikers hid out in Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. But this time, the strikers were real enough—until, of course, they met their tragic end at the hands of bounty-hunting looters.

So the second lesson: No permanent victories for freedom can be found in this finite physical earth. Hobbes was right: The nation-state—sometimes, the imperial state—is the most effective monopolizer of force, thus the inevitable master of territory.

The third lesson: The true frontier of freedom will have to be elsewhere, not in this physical world as we commonly think of it. Many freedom-seekers have experimented with virtual reality as an escape hatch, or various kinds of nanotechnology. We wish those dematerialized libertarian voyagers well—but, frankly, we don’t know what has happened to them.

The fourth lesson is the keeper: A free world is a new world, the farther away, the better. The next significant victory for freedom—a return to Randianism—will be best realized via transportation to somewhere else, off this earth. Flight beats fight, especially when the freedom-fighter is guaranteed to lose to the statists in the end. The Europeans who came to America found liberty in the empty spaces of the New World; the same was true in Australia. It’s no accident that North America and Australia have traditionally been among the freest countries in the world. And if they are now less free, in the middle of this grim 21st century, that’s because they are increasingly filled up. They have regressed to the regimented condition of the rest of the planet.

Is Pinkerton right ? Is the future of liberty so bleak that we’ll have to hope for the interplanetary space travel of Robert Heinlein, or the alternate realities of Harry Turtledove and S.M. Stirling as the only true hope for creating a free society ?

Does The Libertarian Party Matter ?

Bruce Bartlett doesn’t really think so:

Although this may turn out to be a banner year for the Libertarian Party, the LP is not a real alternative to the Republicans and Democrats. Because of the Electoral College, restrictions on ballot access and onerous campaign finance laws, third parties simply aren’t viable for actually electing candidates. Nor do they pull the major parties toward their position: Ron Paul’s success did not encourage other Republican presidential candidates to even pay lip service to his ideas.

I believe that libertarian ideas would be better promoted by an interest group such as the National Rifle Association than through the Libertarian Party. Such a group could use the limited resources available for libertarian ideas far more effectively by establishing a political action committee, lobbying and advertising than by a political party running futile campaigns for public office. Nevertheless, the Libertarian Party may be an interesting force this year.

Bartlett makes the mistake that many people make when looking at the role of third-parties in America’s political system.

Does Bob Barr, or whoever the Libertarian Party nominates this weekend, have a realistic chance of winning the Presidency ? Obviously, the answer is no — and this would be true even without the Electoral College.

But that’s not the only reason to run a third-party campaign, as long as you have the right candidate and the right conditions. The Green Party received a lot of attention in 2000 because they nominated Ralph Nader; in the end, they received nearly 3,000,000 votes (2.5 million more than the LP candidate) and, arguably, cost Al Gore Florida and the election. More importantly, parts of their agenda, most notably their stands on environmental issues, have become part of the Democratic Party’s agenda.

Imagine if the Libertarian Party could do the same thing in 2008. Let’s say Bob Barr pulled in 1.5 million or more votes — not enough to win, but potentially enough to cause John McCain problems in states like Georgia (15 Electoral Votes) or Virginia (13 Electoral Votes). That alone could be enough to give the election to Barack Obama.

In the aftermath of such a campaign, one would think that smart Republicans would be wondering what they could do to bring the fiscal conservative/libertarian vote likely to be attracted to the LP. And that could be the first step in changing the party for the better.

Bob Barr might not win the election, but a successful 2008 campaign could have a significant impact on where the GOP goes after defeat.

As far as Bartlett’s suggestion that interest groups are better avenues for change than political parties, I’ll admit I’m sympathetic to it. The fact that The Cato Institute has managed to become a part of the public policy debate inside the Beltway without compromising core libertarian principles is, on the whole a good thing. As is the existence of an organization like the Institute For Justice, which is on the way to becoming what the ACLU never was — a public policy law firm that truly defends individual liberty.

At the same time, though, when there’s an opportunity to make an impact in what has already been one of the most historic elections in recent American history, I don’t see any good reason for passing it up.

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