Former Tea Party Republican Gets Libertarians Their Highest Ever Federal Senate Percentage [UPDATED]
Joe Miller fights his old Republican Party, and his own Libertarian Party's vice presidential candidate, to hit a record 30 percent for the L.P.
Joe Miller earned the Libertarian Party (L.P.) its highest-ever vote percentage in a federal Senate race this week, with his 30 percent in Alaska.
Generally when an L.P. candidate gets into double digits it is because one of the major party's isn't contesting the race at all. But Miller impressively got this 30 percent L.P. total coming in second place against a Republican (winning incumbent Lisa Murkowski, 44 percent), with a Democrat (Ray Metcalfe, 11 percent), and an independent (Margaret Stock, 14 percent) far behind him. Miller beat the combined total of the Democrat and the 3rd place independent.
Miller pulled this off possibly despite the Libertarian label more than because of it; he was well-known to Alaskan voters, having been the official GOP Senate candidate in 2010.
In that race he famously was beaten by the incumbent Murkowski, who Miller exceeded in the primary by running a Tea-Party insurgent campaign. Yet in the general election she triumphed via write-in, a rare collision of dual near-impossibilities in modern politics: beating an incumbent and winning via write-in.
Miller did not start off this election season necessarily intending to contend with his old foe Murkowski again, but in September the L.P.'s original candidate for the Senate seat, Cean Stevens, dropped out and the Party substituted Miller, after what Associated Press reported as failed past attempts on the L.P.'s part to recruit him.
Miller's ability to win what must have been normally Republican votes is a vivid sign of major party disenchantment that the L.P. should try to further capitalize on, said Jon Watts, the Alaska state L.P.'s chair, in a phone interview this week.
It's an example of how "moving forward there's a huge opportunity to enlarge our tent," Watts says. "As much as we talk about open borders," Watts says (Miller's Tea-Partyish belief in border walls was a sticking point with many Libertarians), "we want folks to come in to our Party, to assimilate and actually become libertarians and understand the non-aggression principle and self-ownership and negative individual rights and the whole platform."
Watts says he saw something similar, if not on the same specific issues, with the national presidential ticket's Gary Johnson and William Weld, that "they needed some Libertarian schooling, and that happened throughout the process." He invites more cross-party defections to the L.P. as long as "everyone understands the purpose is for them to come to us, not turn us into them."
Watts acknowledged the controversy in some parts over Miller's Libertarian bonafides; parts of his Party constituency "did ask these questions, isn't this a Tea Party Republican guy? What are you doing?"
Watts shared an endorsement memo he wrote in which he concluded that, even in social or criminal justice issues where Miller was not necessarily a consistent Libertarian on the federal level, most of his views and his beliefs about how at least the federal government should deal with them were sufficiently similar to Ron Paul's that Miller should qualify as libertarian enough for the Senate nomination.
Despite Miller's early high polling, the Libertarian National Committee (LNC) declined to help Miller's campaign with money; LNC member Daniel Hayes noted in an LNC business email list post that he's "not looking to enable a Republican retread just looking for ballot access that plans to caucus with the Republicans" though admitting he hadn't done a deep dive into Miller's specific beliefs.
Miller for his part said in a phone interview this week that he's been, even when he was a Republican, "talking about the corruption of the two-party system since the '90s" and is mostly happy with his new Libertarian Party home. Miller's web page, though, mostly refers to him as the "liberty candidate" without explicit L.P. branding.
Incumbent Murkowski, he says, is "part of the crony capitalist system, all about directing money to those close to her, a problem at the core of both major parties."
Miller says he managed to raise as much as $300,000 even in his short campaign season, most of it in-state and individual, though he's "not aware of any national libertarian groups" that got engaged in his campaign. Incumbent Murkowski raised over $4 million. (Miller and his old party tossed mutual accusations of technical federal election law violations at each other in the late days of the campaign.)
Miller is aware of differences of policy opinion on matters like abortion and marriage and drug laws, and offers a compromise that he thinks could be quite successful with the Tea Party right, calling himself a "federal Libertarian."
That means he thinks agreement can be found in a 10th Amendment approach that at least sees some issues as outside of federal power. (He is not personally willing to make that compromise on abortion, which he thinks as a 14th Amendment matter should be federally illegal. "If we are protecting liberties," he says, "life needs to be foremost among them.")
"We may have fundamental differences on how communities and societies should be organized," he says, "but those are battles best fought on the state level, with a purely libertarian approach on the federal one." Miller believes many on the Tea Party constitutionalist/traditionalist right may be able to support such an approach via the L.P., though he knows that can make for "weird bedfellows."
As well as he did with 30 percent, Miller was shocked he didn't do better. "Our ground game and canvassers often reported on multiple occasions that they didn't run into even one Murkowski voter, so it was really strange."
He is agnostic on whether the Libertarian Party label helped, hurt, or was neutral. If there was a negative aspect—Miller admits he does not know if there was, but if—he blamed it on "shenanigans at the national convention" like the stripping dancing national chair candidate James Weeks and vice presidential candidate William Weld "essentially endorsing Hillary Clinton."
Weld also, Miller points out, came to Alaska and endorsed his Republican opponent Murkowski.
All that "reflects a lack of discipline and a lack of maturity and lack of seriousness, and those are factors if the Party is going to grow, it can't conduct itself that way."
While not sure of his future as a candidate right now, and while dissatisfied with no national support from the L.P. and Weld's support for his Republican opponent, Miller stresses that "the state Party were solid, I can't thank them enough; though not very big, I really appreciated what their activists did on the ground, including outreach to native and rural communities."
[UPDATE: As pointed out by an opponent of Miller's within the Party, lack of support from presidential ticket to Miller's candidacy within the L.P. ran both ways, with Miller speaking in support of Trump at a Senate debate. See also this discussion of why to vote for Trump appearing on Miller's web page (though not bylined by Miller) and this positive discussion of "Why vote for Trump?" on Miller's Facebook page, as well as a statement on a Miller-promoting Facebook page that Miller himself was for Trump as a selling point to Republicans disenchanted with Murkowski, who was not for Trump.]
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Weld also, Miller points out, came to Alaska and endorsed his Republican opponent Murkowski.
You’d had to be some kind of uber-cuck to vote for Bill Weld
My wife voted for Weld because they both went to the same high school.
She’s not an uber-cuck.
See, there was more than one reason to vote for him.
I thought Weld only endorsed Democrats. :confused:
“Weld only endorsed Democrats establishment hacks”
FIFY
Amazingly from an LP perspective, what Weld was doing was actually worse than “secretly” being a member of another party: he was cheerleading for the establishment _regardless_ of party.
That’s about as far as you can get from the LP as humanly possibly.
Weld’s political career is over. Nobody will ever give him the time of day again. I’m enjoying that.
Pretty sure the hag is permanently gone from politics, too. Trump will always have that in his favor.
Murkowski is a democrat who runs as a republican.
I used to think that McAfee was punking the LP in his bid for nomination.
Now I know that Johnson/Weld has punked the LP.
The LP needs to quit running GOP retreads unless they publicly swear a loyalty oath on one of the following: Atlas Shrugged, Free to Choose, or For a New Liberty.
It’s the down-ballot candidates that matter most.
Second Place! Just like the Cleveland Indians.
Zing!
Does that make Alaska the most libertarian state? Even with half of its population currently being reality TV production staff?
At least they are employed by private industry.
It is a damn good place to get King Crab legs in a restaurant. Right off the boat. Mm-mm-mm tasty.
It probably is in all honesty. Closest state you’ll get to “just do whatever the fuck you want.”
Although I know there are some dry counties. So that’s pretty non-libertarian. Non-libertarian? Unlibertarian?
Which counties in Alaska are dry?
The ones where it’s so cold that alcohol freezes.
I thaw that comin’
Icy what you did there…
Do dry counties have a meaning? I lived in one a long time ago. We either drove across the county line to get alcohol or went to the bootleg store.
I grew up in a dry county (they finally voted to go wet in 2014). There were plenty of liquor stores in the next county.
Also, we had ‘private clubs’. They were restaurants where you paid a $5 ‘membership fee’ that included a $5 coupon for your meal.
Oh. i forgot to mention that every third ranch had a still.
My county is strange. It has two county seats because it bisected by the arkansas river and at the time the seats were chosen, there was no bridge. The northern half is wet, even selling on Sundays while the southern half is dry. I buy beer on a regular basis at the county line cattle auction grounds. There is a small beer store there just over the county line, about 5 miles from my house.
That sounds like Blackwell.
Or not.
I think that municipalities can go dry. A lot of native towns do because of all the alcohol problems they tend to have. I think there is plenty of informal trade in alcohol in those areas, though.
Wow. What a snake Weld turned out to be.
Funny, I don’t remember that getting reported here at reason.
It was in between the articles citing The Libertarian Case for Troomp. Though, Shikha, of all people, really highlighted it a few days before the election. Welch, to his credit, also did shine a light on this sleazy jack-off.
It was Kennedy, ironically enough, who really Gelded him with a verbal smackdown and telling GayJay, “Please, keep this guy away from us…WHY!?!!One!
You mean by the staff? I think they finally admitted to something that the commentariat knew from the get go.
Try a search for “Bill Weld”. It was definitely reported on.
It keeps getting better. First the salty prog ham tears and now this:
http://twitchy.com/dougp-3137/…..denfreude/
Now what we need is for the shameless and unprofessional liberal media to get its comeuppance.
I’ll bet quite a few IT workers at the DOJ, IRS and FBI will be reading BleachBit documentation in the next few days. The job market for temps with paper shredding skills will peak by next Wednesday.
Well isn’t that just an interesting turn of events.
@kerpen @EENewsUpdates Good. Now go out in the real world and try to actually contribute to society.
? Fred Garvin (@realfredgarvin) November 12, 2016
Who is this Trumpet, making government parasites cry? He some for of libertarian or something?
I don’t know but I took the time to look him up on twitter and retweet him.
Just when I thought my shaden couldn’t get any more freude.
schaden that is
When I was old enough to register, I registered Libertarian in protest against Bush Sr. breaking his no new taxes pledge.
I knew that Milton Friedman was a libertarian, and I’d read Free to Choose because I was a big fan of Reagan, and I’d heard that if you wanted to understand Reagan’s ideas, that was what you were supposed to read.
In other words, I registered Libertarian before I really knew what it was.
Very few of us were born into Libertarian homes. Almost all of us were persuaded away from something else.
How do you fault a guy for being like the rest of us libertarians were at some point in time?
“Very few of us were born into Libertarian homes. Almost all of us were persuaded away from something else.”
Except for Michael Hihn.
Michael Hihn spake himself into existence–fully formed and fully enlightened.
“Michael Hihn spake himself into existence–fully formed and fully enlightened.”
And more than happy to inform the un-washed masses.
Michael Hihn spake himself into existence–fully formed and fully enlightened.
I thought he sprung forth from the split skull of Nolan himself.
Thus Spake ZaraHihnstra
*applause*
If he was not born an immaculate Libertarian (meaning to a pair of Mexican illegal immigrants via anal sex) then he is not the one true Libertarian Lord, and must be crucified as a heretic.
Thank you for that.
I voted for Pat Buchanan in the 1992 GOP Primary in protest of Bush Sr. issuing the executive order “assault weapons” import ban (which is still the law) . I also joined the NRA and have been a member ever since.
Imbecilic moment!
I figured it out in 2007 after finding the LP website on the intertoobz. I’ve always been a libertarian, I just didn’t know it. I suspect there’s still many in society today who don’t really have a political identity. Not saying you have to have one, but it does clear some of the confusion. I never could figure out how I could be for both free markets and the end of the drug war when none of my friends were in favor of both of those, it was one or the other.
I was never a libertarian (I’ve always registered as an independent), but I’ve been pretty yokeltarian for my entire adult life.
It imprinted on me in high school, when I would get pulled over and harassed by the local cops at least once per month (on three occasions it ended up with me in handcuffs with absolutely no cause; one time it ended with me in jail for no cause (although they claimed mistaken identity after my dad went nuclear on them)).
I decided that a government that could do this to a random kid could do it to just about anyone, and that was a Bad Thing.
I never could figure out how I could be for both free markets and the end of the drug war when none of my friends were in favor of both of those, it was one or the other.
That’s about how it happened with me. I also took an interest in Russian history when I was 16 or so. Reading about how the Russian revolution led to Stalin will really get you thinking about how a big powerful centralized government that controls the economy is a very bad thing.
I was born an anarchist. As an infant, I saw no use for government. Then, when I got older, I realized that the childruns need roadz to get to school.
This is the best thing ive read in a while.
Weld was a mistake. Johnson should have chosen Jesse Ventura. Seriously.
He ain’t got time to veep.
“THAT’S RIGHT! You chew this stuff and you too can be a seks-choo-all Tie-ran-oh-saurus…. *BIG SMILE* Just like me!”
**lifts up rifle**
“Yeah, Weld, why dontcha scratch this on your sore ass!”
**GROUP LAUGH**
until I looked at the paycheck saying $4730 , I did not believe that…my… brother woz like actualy bringing in money part time from there computar. . there friend brother started doing this for less than 7 months and resently paid for the morgage on there home and bought a new Cadillac …….
…….. http://www.jobprofit9.com
Bugger off, peasant.
So William Weld, a northeast Republican ex-governor, runs for vice-president on the Libertarian ticket, has to be goaded into endorsing his running mate, all the while volunteers endorsements of Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Lisa Murkowski.
James Weeks campaigning in all his bethonged glory couldn’t have done a worse job for libertarians or Libertarians.
Should have been McAffee/Weiss, two real libertarians.
Carey and Penn
Penn “I’m voting for Hillary!”? That Penn?
He sold his vote. What’s more libertarian than that?
The Libertarian Party candidate for the Georgia Public Service Commission seat got 1.2 million votes. The only way to get Dems to support a LP candidate is to run one against an otherwise unopposed Republican.
Yeah, but libertarians want to leave people alone, that’s crazy!
Random thoughts
Saw The Arrival movie today. It’s about decoding an alien language. I liked it a lot. It made me think.
What if an alien race communicated primarily through body language and used speech the way people use gestures? Would human linguists be able to figure that out?
How do I know that the version of English I speak is close enough to the version other people speak?
There were a few things that were a little off. There was an Army colonel who didn’t have his rank and name tape sewn on his uniform, which was hard to believe.
As for the election, it basically boiled to a slobs vs. snobs comedy, where SJWs and progs are the uptight, fun-hating jerks whose downfall is celebrated.
Yeah, there was a question earlier in the P.M. Where somebody pointed out that in his head, Trump sounds like Rodney Dangerfield. I didn’t want to necro the thread, but isn’t uncouth, incorrect guy who pisses off the establishment pretty much the character Rodney Dangerfield plays in most of his movies?
Couldn’t you see Dangerfield in Caddyshack telling somebody that if you’re rich and famous enough, chicks will let you grab them by the pussy?
Yes, with that “where the fuck am I” shocked surprise look.
And not telling you how to do your job, but that seems like that could be a fun Spot the Not. Rodney Dangerfield vs. Donald Trump.
Couldn’t you see Dangerfield in Caddyshack telling somebody that if you’re rich and famous enough, chicks will let you grab them by the pussy?
Dangerfield did, almost verbatim, in Back to School Back to School, honestly, is practically the Troomp Presidential Campaign as a documentary. The only thing missing IRL is the Triple Lindy.
Easy Money ranks a close second, IMHO.
I have to admit, Dangerfield arguing with an economics professor reminded me a hell of a lot of Trump’s message.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlVDGmjz7eM
Winning the nomination & then the election was his Triple Lindy.
The world became a poorer place when Dangerfield passed away. Yeah, he’d grab ’em by the pussy.
Or Chris Farley.
The bigger problem for me is that aliens advanced enough to build interstellar spaceships would also presumably have the technology to help crack human languages far faster and more reliably than humans cracking their language.
You also have to think the aliens would have visited other planets and have far more practical language-cracking experience than humans.
And finally, the aliens would have 100 years of radio and especially TV broadcasts to get a good head start; I’d be really surprised if they hadn’t cracked human languages before they even got here.
It wouldn’t be that hard for the aliens to make pamphlets that show their coffee stain writing next to pictures of various objects. The military has and still uses pointy-talky sheets when there are no interpreters.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Government is spending money trying to figure out how to keep future generations 1,000 years from now from digging up nuclear waste, and they have yet to come up with anything more effective than a mummy’s curse.
The general problem of most sci-fi is that aliens have to fit into our human mindset. So therefore they can’t be truly alien, since we can imagine them.
Giant Bugs, yeah, I can see that. Bumpy forehead aliens, I grew up watching them .
What if I told you that there was an alien race that didn’t have fur skin or scales, no chitin either. It was an entirely different evolutionary path, the aliens are covered with Aswa. I have no clue what Aswa is until I meet the actual aliens.
“Write me a creature who thinks as well as a man, or better than a man, but not like a man.”
-John Campbelll
That would be my wife.
Unless I’m missing the obvious joke or media reference.
Then, it’s still her.
Of course, I know the real reason the story is so improbable — no one wants to make a movie of aliens deciphering human languages — way too much work, probably wouldn’t make money.
So dumb aliens it is.
Or maybe you just figure out teleportation or wormholes before the ships.
Interstellar ships would need to use some kind of wormhole or space warping thing, most likely.
“Advanced enough to…would also presumably have…” doesn’t work for me. It’s too easy to imagine scenarios by which some technologies would be advanced & others retarded. What if the aliens had been visited by some beings who were more advanced in all ways, & then the aliens reverse-engrd. their travel tech?
Re: noticing uniform flubs in movie/TV. It’s only going to get worse and it never ends.
The problem is that an alien race that communicated through body language probably wouldn’t be able to learn how to make starships.
How would you convey abstract thoughts and ideas through body language? You can’t.
H. Beam Piper wrote a similar story ages ago. Naudsonce. The aliens talked (we went to them, not vice-versa), but they didn’t hear, they felt. Sound to them produced a body sensation.
How could you convey something like the laws of thermodynamics by poking omeone or pulilng their ears?
And to answer your question, no, we don’t know what the word they hear is what you hear. But the meaning of that word is what is mutually understandable.
“How would you convey abstract thoughts and ideas through body language? You can’t.”
Deaf people would disagree.
Yeah, sign language isn’t just a cipher for spoken language. They are complete languages in their own right.
Also, just an FYI, The How do do I know that what I see as a blue sky Isn’t a garish yellow to everybody else is a Quilia argument. Philosophers have been arguing over that one for centuries.
Derp,
Congrats on the DLI posting. It’s still in Monterey, right? Or did they end up moving it to Arizona?
Anyway, though I’ve not seen it, I do know the movie’s based on a Ted Chiang novella, “Story of Your Life.” You can find a .pdf of it if you prowl around. I understand it goes into much more detail than the movie about the linguistics points you mentioned.
What if an alien race communicated primarily through body language and used speech the way people use gestures?
Shaka, when the walls fell.
Hey everybody, were all going to get laid.
So basically you’re saying the Libertarian party needs more Republican wash outs?
WE ARE THE WELD!
Never forget this scumbag, people. Hated him from day one….
Same, the first time I saw Johnson and Weld on live TV, Johnson came off as a stoner who had to think through any question, no matter how obvious, while Weld came off as a knee-jerk statist who forgot he was running as a Libertarian.
The problem with Johnson is that he quit smoking weed and now he has something like PAWS. Never cold turkey quit any type of substance habit before running a political campaign. If he had any advisers, they were all morons.
When my wife saw them in the 60 minutes interview she thought they were an older gay couple. I had to laugh and tell her no, that’s the LP presidential ticket.
Yeah, usually candidates have ads with their wives and kids, the LP ads were Gary and Bill. NTTAWWT.
And reason was still trying to throw whitewash on Weld up until the end. Never forget that either.
The Jacket also posted an article about the Trump loss a half hour before the polls closed. How’s that working out for him?
You’re making that up, right? Was obvious to me right after the near miss in VA that Trump was going to win.
No, i remember something being posted, me being Fist, and then the post disappeared.
here
Link doesn’t work.
Which of these articles is a “whitewash” of Weld?
https://reason.com/search?q=bill+weld
Weld is what you get when you define libertarian as “socially liberal and fiscally conservative” and seek to be respectable enough to be invited to DC cocktail parties.
I’ve made $64,000 so far this year working online and I’m a full time student. Im using an online business opportunity I heard about and I’ve made such great money. It’s really user friendly and I’m just so happy that I found out about it. Heres what I do,
—————- http://YoutubeJobs.Nypost55.com
Sorry, it looks like CGI is going out of business, so no more opportunities there.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GLG9g7BcjKs
Not sure if this has been shared yet but if not, here you go.
A leftist who’s honest with himself and his movement; what a refreshing idea.
Basically he just said that lefties have a losing argument and they should shift to the right.
No. Shit.
They had better stop with the identity politics, period, or things will continue to decline for them. Some on the left are trying to say this is all about how bad Clinton was. Well, that’s true, but this election was also a big middle finger to the left’s PC non-sense. PC is not a winning strategy, most people actually have some real life situations to worry about. Sure, the political elite, Hollywood, and immature college students don’t know about that, and they’ve probably learned nothing at all.
Refreshing. But Sanders would not have beaten Trump. Seriously, no one was going to beat Trump, period. People in the middle of the country are sick of a decade of the left talking down to them. They’re tired of the political establishment. And socialism really is a failed ideology and at least half of Americans actually know that.
I wouldn’t say no one could have beaten Mr. Trump, but I will say that no one who the Dems would have nominated in 2016 could have beaten Trump. Jim Webb could have won, a moderate-to-conservative Dem senator could have won too (Evan Bayh, Mark Warner, etc.).
I don’t think so, just my opinion. But this was an anti-establishment vote. Bernie would have lost in a landslide, his economic ideas are pure lunacy.
Are you kidding? Many of Bernie’s ideas, such as anti-free-trade, are what ANIMATES Trump voters.
If it was Bernie vs. Trump, both would have been “outsider” candidates and Bernie would have won based on the giving-out-free-stuff and corporations-are-the-enemy platform (which, let’s be honest, a lot of middle America erstwhile Trump voters are at least persuadable on).
I think we’re making similar points from different directions. I think there are people who could have beaten Trump, but the Dems were never going to nominate someone who could do so.
The Dems were always going to pick someone like Mrs. Clinton, or VP Biden, or Sen. Sanders, or Sen Fake-o-hantas, or some other hard left identity politics hack. The Dems were never going to nominate a big-tent type because the Dems NEVER nominate a big-tent type*
* (before you mention Bill Clinton, look at his pre-1994 positions. Bill was never a moderate, he just played one on TV).
But Sanders would not have beaten Trump. Seriously, no one was going to beat Trump, period.
I’m gonna have to call bullshit. Running against one of the most despicable Democrats in the country, he won by a total of just over 100,000 votes in three states (PA, WI, MI), one of which the Democrat didn’t even campaign in after she won the D nomination.
I don’t think that Bernie could have won, but a Blue Dog Democrat from the Rust Belt? That would have been a winning ticket.
What you and SimonD said.
I won’t pretend to tell you exactly what this election means, but I think that to Hillary was so utterly bad that her defeat can’t be used to say that proggie-ism is dead.
An “out” socialist might not have won, either, but a D who avoided the s-word, was only ordinarily (as opposed to extraordinarily) corrupt, showed empathy to all races and both major sexes, disavowed the ultra-stupid varieties of PC, and matched Trump’s economic appeals, could have made it.
Well, we all have an opinion. But a Blue Dog? Is that even a thing now? The Democrat party has been taken over by progressives. They’ve went so far left that Marx would blush if he were still alive. They don’t want no stinking blue dogs. They got their identity politics and fiscal recklessness and they’re sticking with it until the end.
Sure, the Dem establishment has done all it could to excommunicate the Blue Dogs, but the Rep establishment had the same attitude toward protectionists and immigration restrictionists, and Trump overcame that.
Where does Gov. Hickenlooper stand ideologically? I keep hearing his name, paired with Corey Booker or “an Hispanic” as the Dem ticket in 2020.
O’Malley could have won, but the Democrats had to give Hillary her lifetime achievement award. That, and the Democrats really, really wanted to be the first to field a woman presidential candidate. (Of course, Hillary was not really the first woman candidate for the office, and neither would she have been the first to wield the power of the office.)
It reminds me of how the GOP gave its lifetime achievement awards to Dole back in 1996 and to McCain in 2008.
We fielded Tonie Nathan–a heartbeat away from the top spot, and thereby forced the Sublime Court to decide for Roe in Roe v. Wade.
Jonathan Pie’s rant is pretty much a humorous interpretation of the situation described by Codavilla’s class analysis in The Ruling Class, and his shorter essay America’s Ruling Class ? And the Perils of Revolution.
It’s a leftist’s take on the situation, but at least Pie recognizes why left wing politics failed in 2016. He’s wrong about Bernie, though: there’s no way Americans were going to vote in a full-fledged, red diaper, Ben’s, Brooklyn commie who called himself a “democratic socialist” but wouldn’t say what democratic socialism really means. And, of course, Pie’s politics are the politics of coercion rather than liberty.
Not only was Joe Miller endorsing and campaigning for Donald Trump, he *was attacking Murkowski for not supporting Trump*.
That seems like a relevant thing to mention. Miller was attacking the L.P. ticket long before vice versa.
True. This only shows that Weld was far more anti-Trump and pro-Hillary than he was libertarian.
That’s why the LP should insist on public loyalty oaths for GOP politicians to be sworn on the candidate’s choice of Atlas Shrugged, Free to Choose, or For a New Liberty.
Also, the NAP.
I don’t think this has much to do w the strengths of the parties. It’s just a matter of 2 popular politicians, one somewhat more popular than the other.
The LP is riding Miller’s coattails on this one. The guy is popular there. He talked about eliminating the 17th Amendment when he had the Republican nomination and nearly won that race as I recall. He’s the best candidate the LP could hope for anywhere, and Alaska for it’s part might be the best electorate anywhere for the LP.
I think Johnson/Weld got 6% in Alaska.
4% in Arizona, where Johnson had supposedly demonstrated his popularity and electability as a Republican.
4% in Massachusetts, where Weld supposedly bowled over the voters as a “fiscall conservative, socially liberal” Republican governor.
Johnson was Governor of New Mexico.
The Libertarian National Committee decided Miller wasn’t pure enough for them? LOL.
And bear in mind that Rand Paul has also said that the 14th Amendment protects the right to life of the unborn.
So if Miller is a heretic, so is Rand.
Joe Miller should be the 2020 nominee. He’d get my vote, he’s a real thinker, a constitutional originalist and a staunch federalist. If his views on the republic were the prevailing wisdom politically and judicially I wouldn’t be such a strong proponent of secession and the breakup of these United States into 4 or 5 less shitty republics.
Both are superstitious mimics. Ron Paul at least sees abortion as competition for crony pediatricians. These other jerks are Millerites praying for Armageddon with the Saracen Antichrist and The Rapture in a burst of gamma, infrared and neutrons. I am for this, provided they all do it someplace close to Rome, Mecca or Salt Lake and sell tickets to the event.
The place is crawling with ku-kluxers now, so I may as well ask. If your faith-based organization gets to burn crosses, why can’t hippies burn flags?
Another girl-bullying superstitious impotent bigot impersonating satirizing a libertarian. If these assholes want the looters to understand “shall not be infringed,” they themselves should bone up on “All persons born…” National did right in giving this mole “not a penny!”
It’s funny because the plain text of the 14th Amendment clearly anticipates persons not “born…” (to use your weaselly ellipses)
Cutting out the irrelevant parts, the 14th Amendment obviously says:
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States” “are citizens of the United States”.
“No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens”
“nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
The strongest claim that you could possibly make without shitting on the 14th amendment is that they didn’t intend fetuses to be citizens. But why would I expect you to argue in good faith? You’ve never done it before.