GOP Struggles To Deal With Libertarians and the LP

Republicans try to decide what their party stands for as libertarians increasingly vote third-party

It was a historic election for the Libertarian Party — at least, by Libertarian Party standards.

So at what point does this become a problem for the GOP?

Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson took about 1 percent of the vote, winning more raw votes than any Libertarian candidate ever has (about 1.2 million).

Johnson fell shy of the previous Libertarian record of 1.06 percent of the vote (the record belongs to 1980 nominee Ed Clark). But he did take at least twice as much of the vote as any Libertarian candidate since Clark — including Ron Paul 1988 — and he got more than 1 percent in most of the swing states.