No choices? What about those rowdy Libertarians? | R. Bruce Anderson
We live in a two-party universe. This is largely due to the way the Constitution allows elections to take place, pushing a “first past the post” system in which “one person” has “one vote.”
In simple terms, this has meant that third parties fail: running for one office, or for all offices; in one state or many. We’ve tried it on. Remember the “Know-Nothing Party”? The “Populist Party”? The “American Independent Party?” What about Ross Perot? … or maybe Ralph “Unsafe at Any Speed” Nader?
All fails. Some miserably fading after a first and last attempt, others simply eaten by one or more of the two major parties then gaining ground. The Whigs were a thing for much of the early constitutional period but were split by the issue of slavery. Northern Whigs became abolitionist Republicans while southern Whigs evaporated into the slave state Democrats.
All the same, frustration and comatose boredom with the lockstep granite-hard seriousness of the established parties and their aged, cartoon-like caricatures of candidates may drive us all nuts in this election cycle. Politics is supposed to be fun, and the unremitting grimness of the purpose and silly pretentions of the major parties is wearing very thin.
Fortunately, for at least a short break from this bleakness, we can turn to a party that has some life, if no chance whatever of winning: the Libertarians.
The Libertarians are a raucous, ungovernable force of nature as much as they are a political movement. Political science defines a political party in the U.S. as an entity that is office-seeking. And to be considered a political party worthy of mention, they must seek office in all venues: all levels and all states.
The Libertarians fit this description, sort of. They seek office, though they only very rarely find it. But along the way, they’re loud, they are issue-rich, and they can change the geography of the politics of the moment. Their platform says: “[We] hold that all individuals have the right to exercise sole dominion over their own lives, and have the right to live in whatever manner they choose, so long as they do not forcibly interfere with the equal right of others to live in whatever manner they choose.”
That covers a lot of ground and can be interpreted in lots of ways, but there’s no “lockstep” here. Libertarians are chaotic on issues (I look forward to the instructive “fan mail” that will surely follow my interpretation of their take on things), but they have them and they talk about them – endlessly.
I’ve often wondered, with these folks, whether we were looking at moralists – or anarchists. They’re likely both. Fiercely anti-big government, aggressively skeptical without being annoyingly conspiratorial (mostly), you would think they’d be a great fit for the right wing.
They might be. But not, apparently, for Donald Trump.
The convention reception Trump had — among conservatives in that “Mises/Adam Smith/Edmund Burke/Ayn Rand” kind of way — was instructive. Showing no restraint whatsoever in the presence of a former president (Libertarians are nothing if not highly suspicious of the pomposity of government) they shouted him down at points, booed throughout, and laughed uproariously at his plea for them to support his candidacy. “If you want to win”, he told them. They booed some more. Winning is not something the Libertarians have done much, and their expectations are simply different.
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With the voter difference between the two major candidates so thin, a few Libertarians shorting out and voting for a major party might turn the tide. The point of Trump’s rejection is not that the Libertarians would go to Biden — they won’t. They will likely vote for their own slate, or perhaps RFK.
The point is that they will not be Trump voters. And with the vote narrowing so closely at both ends, this loss to Trump on the right could mean a loss across the board.
R. Bruce Anderson is the Dr. Sarah D. and L. Kirk McKay, Jr. Endowed Chair in American History, Government, and Civics and Miller Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Florida Southern College. He is also a columnist for The Ledger and political consultant and on-air commentator for WLKF Radio in Lakeland.
This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Libertarians are a loud, ungovernable bunch, as Donald Trump found out
