This is something I dashed off really quick tonight.  Let me know what you think of my ideas.  I consider myself a Goldwater conservative and a Republican, not a Libertarian, by the way.  I think we as a nation would benefit by having a viable Libertarian Party, though.

Have you given up on reforming the Republican Party?  Do you think it's time to offer a third party alternative? Do you think the Libertarian Party is the one you want?  Here are a few principles that you should follow to make it grow and thrive.  This is politics 101 for most people, but based on our performance for the past few decades, we libertarians need a refresher.

1) Start small

While I understand the draw that running a Presidential candidate has for reasons of publicity and presence, everyone knows that getting a third party president elected is an impossibility at the moment.  All it accomplishes, when it even accomplishes this much, is to split the conservative vote and put the greater of two evils into office.  Even in the astronomically unlikely event of the election of a Libertarian president, he would be isolated between two hostile parties in Congress intent on discrediting any threat to their own existence.  Nothing would be accomplished.  The LP will need to continue running a Presidential candidate just to maintain presence on the national stage, but this is not where your energies or funds should be devoted, nor should you expect to get anything more than 0.2% of the vote.  Our presidential candidate, for the near future, should, to put it bluntly, be a throw-away.  The LP can't waste their best people on a race they are destined to lose.

Start on the local level.  Mayoral elections are county councils are important.  The Libertarian Party has no experience governing, and few experienced in the art of politics.  This institutional experience needs to be developed just like anything else.  

In state and federal elections, the emphasis should not be on the gubernatorial or presidential races.  For the Libertarian Party to have any success, it needs to take up a parliamentary model.  This means gaining a significant minority in legislatures and forging coalitions with the other parties.  Select districts for the US House and the state legislature in which libertarian sentiment is strong or democrats are running unopposed and run your strongest people in them.  The LP needs to actually get some people elected and do some things in order to raise their exposure on the state and national scenes.  This is a way to increase exposure and leverage as much political power out of your presence as possible.

2) Be tactically flexible and accept incremental advancements

Libertarians won't get everything they want immediately.  Libertarians need to learn to accept some compromise for tactical reasons.  It's part of the coalition strategy mentioned above.  It's better to get 50% of what you want, or even 25% of what you want, rather than 0% of what you want.  You can always go for the rest later.  And, you usually have to give a little to get a little.  At any rate, presenting a laundry list of objectives to the American public is a sure recipe for failure.  You need to distill your ideas down to a few fundamental principles, apply them to a few attention-grabbing issues (as seen by the general public), and run on the platform.  This is a particular strength of the Libertarian Party, as our membership tends to be intellectual and ideologically strong.

It might be necessary to abandon some ideas temporarily, and it might be necessary to abandon some ideas permanently.  Immigration is not a winner, and the free and open border idea that used to be proposed by the LP is not going to get any traction.  The less said about that one, the better.

It might be necessary to scale back some ideas.  Reducing penalties attached to some kinds of illegal drug use is an easier sell than legalizing everything, immediately.

Make friends with the Christian right.  Libertarianism and Christianity are fundamentally compatible, although a lot of people on both sides of the divide don't understand this.  You might have to give a bit on abortion (although you shouldn't have to give anything if you think a fetus is a human life) or faith-based initiatives to achieve significant gains in gun rights or tax reform.

The LP needs to be open to outside ideas.  The Libertarian Party doesn't have a core of experienced technical advisors who can be used in governments.  These will need to be borrowed from other, but similar, groups.  Competence will sometimes come at the expense of ideological purity, but competence is more important than abstract ideas to the average American.

3) Communicate core principles and don't abandon them

Libertarians need to effectively communicate their core principles, and they need to communicate them simply and clearly so that the average American can appreciate them.  This means translating them into terms through which any person in this country can see the immediate and direct benefit from libertarian policies on his or her daily life.  This is not a laundry list of legislative objectives, but something more fundamental.  The LP's message needs to be positive, constructive, and unrelenting in its consistency.  Ronald Reagan was the master of this kind of communication.

It's an old truth that actions speak louder than words.  Half of this text has been about the importance of compromise.  This part is going to be about the importance of sticking to your core principles.  Any compromise made should only be made to further your goal.  Progress toward a freer, more just society should always be the one underlying goal of any libertarian activity.  That means no compromise unless libertarians get something they need out of it.  Also, anything given up during a compromise should not be something that cannot be easily remedied further down the road.  If you become too agreeable to compromise, it destroys your credibility on your core principles.  If you never compromise, you get nothing done.  It is a fine line to walk.

4) Quiet the fringe elements

There should be no tolerance for this.  None.  Alex Jones is not helping.  First impressions are lasting impressions.  We need educated, rational people to serve as the party's face to the world.  This is all the more important since almost no Americans have heard of the LP.  Conspiracy theorists, goldbugs, and assorted moonbattery undermines the LP's credibility and makes libertarians seem unable to govern.  Reference Nancy Pelosi and some of the nutso leftists for an outside example of this phenomenon.  This trivial nonsense and ignorant, batshit insanity also takes away from the core messages the LP is trying to convey, i.e., small government and more personal and economic freedom.  Don't take your eye off the ball; don't forget the ultimate goal.  Also, for the love of God, educate yourself and think critically about your ideas before you set off to spread the word.  You are the first impression of that most will get of the LP.  Do it right.

Some do, and that needs to change.

Outstanding  write up, OP.

Very sensible and sane, therefore it will get zero traction with our libertarian contingent.

If more would follow your lead, libertarians would get a lot more accomplished.

All you have to do is support those within the party who are for limited .gov:



http://www.rlc.org/about/



There's no need to reinvent the wheel.

That particular wheel has been getting the crap beaten out of it by the likes of John McCain and Michael Steele for the past twenty years.  I'm all for working within the GOP, but it just hasn't been getting results.

No, I just want a decent republican candidate/party.

If the LP becomes stronger, the GOP will adopt more of their policies.

Yep. The LP is a joke and will never be anything but without a total realignment of their thinking. The fact that their main support base in the USA is a fringe of the Republican party doesn't help them either, but even with that they could be a MUCH bigger fish (as in several times what they are now) if they didn't have a permanent cranial-rectal inversion.

POINT   #4

is +1

That is where it all starts.  Good job OP.  Lets start

I've been saying the same things since the 90s, and I am sure a lot of other people have as well.  No one in the Libertarian Party leadership seems to be listening.

Start small and work your way up. That's the ticket to success.

I think those are all valid points and already see them being used. The largest ostacle to the LP is obstructionist attitudes from Republicans. They love to paint libertarians as whack jobs and the media does too. I consider myself in between libertarian and republican with a few others thrown in.   Regardless I think that more parties... left right and center... is a good thing. As for experience, many candidates do have experience already, at least as much as some candidates for the big 2.

I've seen some of these ideas, as applied to the LP, in print before.  It's just basic politics.  I guess we need to keep saying it.

good old Ross Perot
was the closet to success.
when you are worth 4 billion you have a good shot of doing anything.
We need a Ross Perot to pave the way.

While I am opposed to the war on drugs, LP needs to back off of that issue a little. I've watched their conventions before on C-Span. Drugs, drugs, drugs. It gets old after a while.

I gave up on the Libertarian Party about 8 years ago, when Harry Browne publically blamed 9-11 on American Middle East policies.  That was the last straw for me.  I had been very sympathetic to them before that, despite disagreeing with them on a couple issues, but Jesus Christ, there's a time for that sort of debate and a couple months after 9-11 was NOT the time.

I agree.  Like it or not, it just isn't an important issue to most Americans.  It's not a viable campaign plank for that reason alone.  Also, there are large blocs of people who are resistant to any large move towards legalization.  Slow, incremental progress is the name of the game when it comes to the war on drugs.

And so has everybody else, and it tells them, "These guys are a bunch of idiot potheads, why should I listen to them?"

Maybe that should be telling you something about the true size of the Libertarian base - If there aren't enough of them to have much influence in a party that shares many of their core beliefs, what makes you think there are enough of them to defeat both parties on their own?

If the Libertarian party shushes its fringe elements it might as well do this:

I think the party system needs to be abandoned totally.

How about just Americans in DC. Real salt of the earth ones.

Have you looked as obamas resume?

Yup, everyone on this list thinks that POTUS is entry level. That's why none of these people hold elected positions


Just my state as an example -
Colorado
Doug Anderson Lakewood City Council
Robert Dempsey San Miguel County Coroner
Lisa Dowdney Leadville City Council
Michael Dunafon Glendale Planning and Zoning Committee
Jake L. Harris Collbran Town Trustee
Carol Hill Leadville City Council
Carol K. Hill Lake County Board of Adjustment
Joe Johnson Trustee of Frederick
Mike Kien Oak Creek Town Board/ Oak Creek Mayor Pro Tem
Ken Kirkmeyer Longmont Cable Trust Board
Howard P. Lambert Gold Hill Town Mayor
William S. Masters San Miguel County Sheriff
J Brent Shroyer Rangely Town Trustee
Cyril B. Smaling Aurora Veterans Affairs Commission/ Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum
Galen Wallace Township of Palisade Council
Frank Atwood Arapahoe County Liquor Board and the City of Littleton Victims' Assistance Compensation Board

Got any more inaccurate generalizations?

Washington agreed; no political parties, just individuals campaigning on their own merits.

Pretty much!  I'd settle for just having a decent number of parties, say 6-10 viable ones, enough that nobody had much of a majority.  If everyone actually voted for the candidate that most represented their own personal politics, this would probably happen as well.  Instead, we continue down this fucked up road of voting for the lesser evil.  I'm done with that noise, I don't care about the lesser evil anymore, I'll vote for whoever is closest to my beliefs and damn the consequences.  If more people did so it just might work out for us.  This would probably mean a Libertarian candidate more often than not, but certainly not always.

I've never said that the libertarians could defeat both parties on their own.  I do think they can achieve success out of proportion to their numbers by leveraging their unique position on the political spectrum, and that their success will grow once people understand their ideas and see that those ideas work.  

Why do I think this?  Because the predecessors of the libertarians did have sense enough to achieve significant influence once, during the Reagan revolution, and the coalition built then was wildly successful and changed the course of this nation.  Today, though, the Libertarian Party is its own worst enemy, and the libertarians within the GOP are overpowered by social conservatives.

A viable Libertarian Party would restore some bargaining strength to libertarians and allow good coalitions to be formed again.

Same here, we had a bunch of Libertarians running for local office here in Texas, I voted for all of them.  Unfortunately I also voted for McCain and I still feel dirty having done so.

A lot of people get it.  The next step is putting them in charge of the Party.

The elections of 2010 will roll around and the RINOs will be ushered in as the dominant faction and all the Libertareian bashers will still be on arfcom bitching about the RINOs selling us out and how nothing ever changes.  Meanwhile the real opportunity for change will keep getting overlooked and in 2012 or 2014 the tards will be returned to power to teach the RINO dominated GOP "a lesson".

That will never happen...
The LP has already shit the bed by embracing & reaching out to hippies....
When I was in High School, it seemed that Libertarians were about less government, privatizing inefficient bureaucracies, and free market ideals... And I really didn't/don't have a problem with that... Back then, I would say that I 'leaned libertarian' - and YES, I did follow politics in HS...
Of course, that was the 1990s... The LP was much, much less known than they are today (yes, it's possible)...
The problem? They decided to 'do something about it', and WHAT they did, was try to straddle the fence, by emphasizing traditionally left-wing concepts (drug legalization & pacifisim) under the belief that 'some support - ANY support - is better than no support...
Which brought in hippies... Lots, and lots of hippies...
Right now, the first two things that come to mind when one hears 'Libertarian Party' are 'legalize drugs, no more war'...
To your average Republican, the LP seems LIBERAL because of the hippie infestation....
If you talk about such things as privatization, lower taxes, and reducing the span of government, you will get people's attention... But then you're essentially Republican anyways...
If you talk about legalizing drugs, and how America is an evil imperialist nation that should bring all her troops home... The reaction is more like that of the 'reporter' from John Stewart's Marines vs Berkley piece... 'ARRRRGHHHH!!!! HIPPPIIEEEEEEESSS!!! BOARD!'



Also, a party that becomes known as a home of truthers, anti-bank kooks, and gold-bugs... Is never going to be mainstream...
 

EXACTLY, bee...





 

The problem is that the best and brightest, or the folks who should be running the country, want absolutely nothing to do with it.

The OP is spot on. I've been trying to tell my Libertarian friends this for years. Start small, build your party up at the local level, and work from there. If Libertarians had a rational game plan, then in 20 years they could be a formidable force in the American political mosaic. The two-party system would go the way of the dinosaur. And a viable third party would act as a "check and balance" to the two established parties.

Unfortunately, many do not listen. We live in an age of "we want it all now!"

Term limits would go a long way here. We should not have lifelong career politicians.

Each national level office should have a two term limit.



You are also limited to 15 years in political offices.

This would be cumulative, lifetime, and include time spent in ALL lower offices.



 

he labels "liberal" and "conservative" mean nothing today.   The political spectrum has two sides, the "collectivist" and the "individualist".  Both the "Conservative' and "liberal" versions of the "collectivist" ideologies ARE the problem.  Ironically I think the "collectivist" make up much of the center of both political parties.  That's why it is so easy for some politicians to switch political parties.  It does not matter if they have an (R) or (D) behind their name....they are collectivist.  

D-collectivist and R-collectivist have DEMONSTRATED their propensity to GROW government and regulations.   The only difference between liberal "collectivist" and conservative "collectivist" are the types of regulation they wish to enact and which parts of government they desire to grow.  It's insane.  

The founding fathers knew this could be a problem.  They tried to prevent it by putting in place the Constitution.   Our most sacred national documents where designed to LIMIT government.   Why?  Simple if you support the ability of government to expand regulations and government with which you AGREE you have just given the opposition the ability to do the same.   At its heart that is the motivation behind the Libertarian movement.  Strip, or severely limit,  the ability of government to regulate the individual.  That is the ONLY way you can ensure INDIVIDUAL liberty.

The other core VALUE of the Libertarian movement is PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY.   YOU are responsible for your own actions, and only you should be subject to their consequences....good or bad.  

Small central government....
lower taxes and fiscally responsible government....
personal responsibility.....
Individual liberty.....

sounds good to me.

The only good purpose of the Federal Government is to protect INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY.....that's it.   History has shown that any time it deviates from this core purpose it screws it up.

   

Which is exactly what I covered in the OP.  It's what needs to change.  I'm for ending the war on drugs, but I'm willing to put that aside to achieve many other things that are much more important to me.  Some of the other stuff, like the isolationism and the gold standard, is pure nonsense, in my opinion.

With the exception of the drug issue, which we will probably just have to agree to disagree on, that stuff you mention is the stuff that needs to be put aside and suppressed as batshit insanity.  I've leaned libertarian since the late 1980s, but that stuff always kept me from closing the deal.

The operation of a 300-million-person nation, with 3,000+ thermonuclear warheads & a $13TN economy...



IS NOT A JOB FOR INEXPERIENCED AMATEURS (ref, current occupant of the WH)....



It's a job for folks who 'could' be (or were) CEOs, Generals, and such on the outside...



Not 'Joe Blow'...





 

How about Joe Biden?  Who graduated from law school and went straight into the Senate, having never worked another job in his life.  You want him second in line to press the big red button?

We need talented Americans who have achieved success outside of politics to get into the system.  You're right that we don't need 'Joe Blow', but we sure as hell don't need the likes of Joe Biden either.

ignoring the philosophical 'should we/shouldn't we' arguments





The problem with 'End the War on Drugs' as a political plank...





Is who it attracts...





Specifically it attracts flaming liberals, by the droves





If you want to have a 'viable' party, you need to keep all your issues on the same page, so as to attract a 'specific' kind of voter...





When you 'add' liberal planks, you get liberals, who then try to shape the party into a liberal entity... Large number of liberals tend to make conservative-minded voters say 'aw, fuck that', too....





See the LP as it is today, with hippies...





The 'price' of keeping the hippies out... Is supporting the war on drugs, and an active foreign military presence...



You cannot build a 'freedom coalition' with hippies/liberals...





 

And if the Libertarians change their platform to support social conservative policies, they stay marginalized and become even less credible.  That isn't the Libertarian Party's strength.  The strength of the LP lies in their promotion of both social and economic freedom simultaneously.  That is what no other party in this country offers.  

Drugs are not a huge issue in the minds of most Americans, and the less said about them, the better, at least for the moment.  Whatever the Libertarian Party's intentions on the matter, it won't help them win elections and public discourse on the issue should be minimized.  But you can't change a policy that derives from one of your most fundamental beliefs just because you fear the influx of "hippies".  The moonbats must either be reined in or driven out of the Party without changing the stance on drugs.

The current party is too radical. I think a majority of Moderates would adhere to most of the ideals if they toned it down a bit.

You gotta start in easy - not go in and abolish everything the next day. Put forward a set of solid, attainable goals and achieve them.

ETA - nothing has done more to rob you of civil liberties and given local, state, and fed gov. more authority to watch over you than the 'war on drugs'.

'Conservatives' who think drugs are bad and icky and should stay illegal should pull their collective heads out and realize this is just another front the gov. uses to chip away at your rights.

Most Conservatives don't buy the 'government conspiracy to chip away your rights' stuff...





We tend to have a positive view of the system of government, and focus on adjusting the implementation...





The 'OMG, we're losing our rights' stuff doesn't fly, in the face of a world where the Courts are finding new 'rights' every few years, gun laws are becoming more and more permissive, etc...




Trying to convince people who are upset about judicial activisim and 'rights creation' as it is, that there are 'more' rights out there, and that recreational drug use might be one of them, is a non-starter...





 

College Student - Community Organizer - State Legislator - Senator - President, oh and Socialist Fuck
 

Uh, no. A lot of those, especially the gun rights, are rights we had before and are regaining, and that we may not have lost if people were a little more vigilant about not letting the government chip away rights. And we wouldn't be getting them back if people weren't vigilant and vocal about getting them back now.

I'm not a big fan of recreational drug use and abuse either, but making it criminal is not the answer imho.