http://pauliecannoli.wordpress.com/2008/11/08/restoring-the-libertarian-brand-name/

http://pauliecannoli.wordpress.com/2008/11/09/barr-pay-your-petitioners/

Nader went to all of the states this year, but I don’t think that is quite what George meant, necessarily. Personal appearances by a candidate are not always the only way to campaign.

I sometimes think we support redefining the definition of marriage to pander to homosexual groups.

Baloney. It’s a civil rights issue, no less so than “interracial” marriage, and there should be no way for majorities to rule that same sex marriages are invalid, any more than majorities should be allowed to rule that “interracial” marriages are invalid.

George if that is the criteria any one who assisted Bob Barr getting on the ballot where he did not campaign could make the same claim. Are the criteria that our candidate for President campaign in all 50 states and the Washington DC? Is that even possible? Ed Clark did not campaign in 50 states.

The only candidate who campaigned in all 50 states was Richard Nixon in the 1960 election and that was a mistake. He spent time in Alaska a state he was sure to win in the final weeks of the campaign.

. . .not to mention that his depraved legislation attacking my state’s laws on marriage made him unsalable locally.

I sometimes think we support redefining the definition of marriage to pander to homosexual groups.

And . . .

Perhaps the better “Coke” analogy is to view the LP as going through the testing phase in the1880s. The formula and brand are still not stabilized.

Nice try but they have the metaphore wrong. It should be:

Coke is launching a very important new caffeine free soda product nationally and some executives at Coke do everything possible to undermine the new product, other executives urge customers to drink 7-UP, and other executives assist Pepsi.

I’m glad to see someone else realize that the Reform Caucus’s plans were co-opted by conservative hijackers, and the abuses of the LNC, and the sad sorry state of elitism in the LP higher-ups at state and national chair levels. But this corruption was here longer than 2006…

The problem is Less is making one of the mistakes I made in diagnosing the faction fight that’s killed the LP. Those that lean towards anarchy are not “radicals”, they are the Purists.

The RADICALS on the other hand are the ones that have been running this failed educationist platform and treat the LP like a social club instead of the basis for anything meaningful (like Thomas M. Sipos among others here at the CA LP).

The rest of Less’ analysis is spot on, however. Whether you’re a reformer or a purist doesn’t necessarily make you a MODERATE libertarian or anything of the sort. But in my opinion, the LP has kicked out the true reformers and brushed aside the purists, to recreate their faithful little microcosm, which mimics the real world.

In this miniature society, the Radicals and “Conservatives” duke it out, but are really part of the same TOPDOWN faction, much like the Democrats and Republicans are part of the WAR PARTY in real life. It’s a shame most libertarians don’t realize that.

And that is why electoral success is forever doomed in the LP. As long as this persists, it’s a failed brand, and since damage to brand names is very time sensitive, don’t expect any significant effort to help the party rebound for a long time. Leaving the LP though- that’ll send them a message.

Your example of blue ink to cover a white palm card is an excellent one. It shows how little respect the Barr-Root campaign had for volunteers and supporters. One of the reasons a top-down structure fails is because it gets all the little things wrong. It causes resentment from people who end up with three empty ink jet cartridges because they cared, but were provided poor materials to print out – and it doesn’t even know it caused the resentment.

I think the Boston Tea Party has some design features to make that sort of difficulty go away. We don’t have a powerful central committee making all the choices nationally. We’ve done our best to raise a banner and call on individuals to do things locally when and how they care to do so. Which means we aren’t getting uniform coverage – results are spotty that way.

But it also means that we get the best out of those who volunteer. We aren’t riding them with criticisms. Our people are paid promptly when we hire any. And we aren’t putting power in the hands of people, like Shane Cory, who tell others to go f#ck themselves.

Nor indeed are we empowering such detritus to screw over paid petitioners like he did with Angela O’Dell.

— to my knowledge, Barr never set foot in or advertised in Massachusetts —

Did the Barr campaign spend advertising dollars anywhere??

PEACE
Steve

As the kids say:

Like, duuuu-uuuh!

This is soooooo true. I’ve noticed this for decades, when I first began attending dinner clubs in my 20s (I’m now in my 40s).

Ironically, one of the things that the mostly stodgy old white men whine and moan about, is how we’re all just a bunch of stodgy old white men who sit around whining and moaning.

I kid you not. That’s the literal truth.

Will do. Or just email me. Better yet, call.

Dupuy is a Barr front man. I give him the attention and respect that he deserves.

Here in Massachusetts, I spent large amounts of my personal time and money putting his worthless candidate — to my knowledge, Barr never set foot in or advertised in Massachusetts — onto the ballot, a complete waste of my state party’s time and money. I did try to put Barr volunteers in touch with Barr’s volunteer operation, but so far as I can tell there was no identifiable volunteer operation. My inquiry as state chair ‘what is the point of contact for Barr volunteers’ received a beautiful song and dance answer, the essence of which was that there wasn’t one. Their downloadable palm card was a masterpiece of wrong design, namely it was 90%+ coverage in blue ink with white lettering, i.e., it was unreadable and required incredible amounts of ink to print on personal printers, not to mention that it failed to identify the party of the candidate.

Unsurprisingly, Barr did very poorly in Massachusetts. Thank you, but we got rid of our witch burners something like three centuries back, not to mention that his depraved legislation attacking my state’s laws on marriage made him unsalable locally.

George

I’m surprised that George Phillies hasn’t responded to rdupuy’s rather shocking suggestion that George be removed from the LP. George has a home in the BTP any time he wants one.

The introduction of left vs. right started in the National Assembly in France. It is a feature of the French Revolution, much like death sentences for violating price controls and the metric system. Not everything that came out of that revolution was good.

The “left” has certain ideals and attitudes I do not share. Ditto the “right”. I’m not either, as far as I’m concerned. I doubt I’m alone in this. So why bother? It’s unneeded controversy.

The introduction of left vs. right into politics was an unfortunate happening from the very beginning — it’s a gross oversimplification, and will remain such even if left is defined as anti-statist and right as statist. It’s not something that should be embraced or extended.

Even if it were a good idea, it’s not feasible. Good luck telling people that communism isn’t leftist. Or, for those who view libertarianism as rightist, good luck saying that fascism isn’t far-right. It’s far easier to bypass centuries of preconceptions by denying the validity of the left-right spectrum than it is to completely redefine it.

“Left-right” is hogwash.