My Ideal US Presidential Candidate
I’m surprised how neatly the Republican candidates are clustered at the bottom. More proof a two-party system stifles political variety, especially if you consider the libertarian candidate is really just a Republican, and the Green candidate is a Democrat with a specific issue she feels more strongly about than the party at large.
I’ve mostly ignored Kucinich because they’re just no chance in hell he’s going to win the primary, so I wasn’t aware how solid he is on most important issues. Kudos to you, Kucinich.
(Via Larry Moran.)
echomikeromeo said,
May 13th, 2007 at 5:37 pm
I got very similar results.
Duncan Hunter is my Congressional representative – people (including the local paper) have been urging us to vote for him because he’s a “local boy”. I have to say, I’ve never seen such ridiculous logic.
B. Dewhirst said,
May 14th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
One correction: It isn’t necc. the case that a Libertarian candidate is a Republican with a funny hat. The current Republican candidate has drifted sufficiently far from what they said in order to maintain the R/L alliance that there is a significant gap between the two.
The #2 Libertarian candidate in the presidential race (and yes, that is something of a joke, because he’ll only get like 10,000 votes total) is essentially a single-issue pot legalization candidate. The #1 Libertarian candidate is a Physics Professor from Massachusetts (disclaimer: he used to be my PH prof.), and one of the key planks on his platform is a withdrawal from Iraq and balanced federal spending, as well as decriminalization.
Cairnarvon said,
May 14th, 2007 at 5:23 pm
Oh, I know it’s possible for individual libertarians to be relatively sane, and that a lot of moderate Republicans have defected to the Libertarian Party, but this one isn’t.
I admit I don’t know a lot about the general stances of the US Libertarian Party at large beyond the obvious (small government, fiscal conservatism, &c.). Most of my information on it comes via the Cato Institute, which really just tends to be as wrong as the GOP on issues that matter, with only a few exceptions.
Alon Levy said,
May 15th, 2007 at 5:08 am
The most important fact about American libertarianism is that it arose in response to the New Deal, not Prohibition. Even for Friedman and Hayek, right-wing economics always came first – Friedman was a lifelong Republican – and the real nuts were too much into abolishing the government to get worked up over things like civil rights.