Please remember that votes wasted on a third party candidate gave us eight years of the Clintons. The 1992 election ended up as: Clinton 43%, Bush 37%, Perot 19%.

Libertarians have been saying the same thing as Umm for decades. I remember these arguments in the early ’70s. It hasn’t worked, because the message of the Libertarians is simply not appealing to most people.

Libertarians have been far more successful by joining the liber-con wing of the Republicans, where they could actually influence thinking and policy in a libertarian direction.

Furthermore, even getting 5-7% of the popular vote wins you no points. It just wins you lots of angry conservatives and liber-cons who see a leftist get in power because of the libertarian’s endless quest for the perfect candidate.

John McCain is no libertarian. No question about that. But he’s a heck of a lot closer to it than the Dems.

Conservatives believe in individual responsibility, individual choice and limited government (GWB to the contrary on the latter). Not as much choice as libertarians, but a lot more than the left.

The left believes in the state as the supreme decision maker, run by wiser leftist elites who will take us towards utopia by forcing us to fall into their mold. Their fascist tendencies are far stronger than those of the religious right.

So vote libertarian, help the left-fascists. Your choice, our loss.

Especially when all three candidates are such poor choices for a libertarian. I dislike Bob Barr as much as the next libertarian, but all the other candidates are vastly better than any of the three from the two main parties.

It is the general belief that the libertarian party is a joke and could never be a significant party that truly hamstrings the party more than any failing of the party itself. It has libertarians electing not to vote libertarian and actually trying to decide between Obama/Clinton or McCain!!!!!! If all of you can help the LP just get 5-7% of the popular vote. It would help out the cause immensely.

It could help make the marginal person notice and try to understand the LP message. Voting between O/C and MC is the real waste of a vote if you consider yourself libertarian or even conservative

BEC

I’m proactively (again) voting for Darth Vader.

Health care? BZZZZWWWINNGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG.

You guys are screwed.

Of course the election probably doesn’t hang on one vote. Your argument strongly supports the proposition that nobody should vote at all!

Apparently you didn’t follow my logic on why you should vote. Please read it again.

A libertarian candidate has only one electoral effect: to reduce the votes of the main party candidate who appears closest to the views of the libertarian. So unless you truly believe that the major party candidates are exactly equal from your viewpoint, you are cutting off your nose to spite your face!

By analogy, Ralph Nader cost Gore the election, in the following sense: his voters would almost surely have voted for Gore over Bush, had Nader not been in the race. It is less clear with Perot in 1992, but probably he cost GHWB the election.

As for libertarians, they will never be taken seriously as long as they insist on pure libertarian policies, because those policies are too utopian to work – just as pure marxist policies will work.

Libertarian principles need to be a guideline to policy, not an actual policy position.

It’s no accident that the Libertarian party is a bad joke. It’s no accident that Barry Goldwater, the most libertarian of serious presidential candidates in memory, ran as a Republican.

BTW, when I was young and foolish, I used to be a registered Libertarian. Then I looked at just their foreign policy and realized they were utterly clueless.

Unfortunately libertarians are never going to be taken seriously until they show that they can deliver some poll numbers or $$, but most of us don’t like any politicians enough to pay give them another dollar, or are too rational to waste our time with voting. Democracy really favors the loudmouths, busybodies, and narcissists.

It’s sort of like a tragedy of the commons thing. For any individual, not voting is the optimal thing to do. But if everyone does it, the system doesn’t work. That democracy fundamentally rests on citizens taking on a responsibility (voting) that is not in their individual interest.

For libertarians, you have to decide what’s more important. If it’s sexual liberties, go for the dems. If its economic liberties, go for the republicans. If its national defense, go for the repubs. If you are paranoid about the Patriot Act or the NSA “domestic” (really, international) monitoring, go for the dems (but I’d love to have a chance to tell you why that paranoia is a mistake). If you’re scared of the religious right, don’t be. They aren’t into creating a theocracy, they just vote with their moral beliefs (like anyone who has moral beliefs, which is most folks).

If its free speech, it’s a tossup, although in the long run, I think the repubs win out (except for obscene expression). The dems will try to re-enact the “fairness doctrine,” which will shut down all dissenting voices on the airways. They will also expand hate speech laws (see Canadian Civil Rights commissions), and generally muzzle us the way they do now in places where they have the power (schools and universities). They will appoint justices who believe “social justice” trumps the “living constitution.”

If you vote for the libertarian in a consequential race, you throw your vote away.

My approach is to vote for the libertarian for local offices where I don’t know anything about the candidates and they don’t matter much – usually state mine inspector. That registers a protest without throwing away my vote where it does matter. I then vote for the republican for anything that counts, because I have yet to see a case where the democrat (of the choices I have had available) was preferable.