| I'm a registered Libertarian, and I voted for Badnarik in the primaries, but I have to admit that I'm not a huge fan of the LP. Even though Badnarik is the most worthy Presidential canidate, I will not vote for him in the election. I don't have enough of an incentive to throw my vote away on him. I'd rather vote for the least evil of the two canidates who have a chance at actually winning, so as to nudge the nation in the direction of more liberty as opposed to less liberty.
I hardly think it's the case that the Libertarian Party is to blame for it's lack of large-scale support. Anybody who thinks that modern American voters get down to detail and research the issues before voting is fooling themself. It is clear that American voters really don't care about the issues anymore. They care about the personality, image, etc. of the canidate they are voting for. Just turn on your television and see for yourself. Why is it that anything associated with a campaign looks more like a sporting event than an intellectual debate? When is the last time you've seen graphs, charts, or any type of statistic in a canidate's advertisement? Instead you see attempts to boost the canidate's image. Honestly, I couldn't care less what Kerry did while he was in Vietnam. I want to know specifically how his policies are going to affect the nation if he becomes President. Look at the canidate's websites and see how vague their "Issues" sections are. Since Bush and Kerry have such similar platforms (which both include expanding government, in one form or another), why don't we see any fine-picking on the issues which they disagree on? Do you ever really expect to see Bush and Kerry on television debating (with facts and statistics) over whether or not outsourcing has an overall positive or negative affect on Americans? I don't. |