Taunting The Libertarian Bull
By Chuck Muth (12/27/04)
There's an old saying my dad taught me as a kid: Don't fool with the bull or you'll get the horns. It appears Washington state GOP chairman Chris Vance missed that day in Life's Lessons 101. And a Republican candidate is now paying the price.
Of course, I'm talking about Dino Rossi, who now appears to have LOST the 2004 Washington gubernatorial election by just 130 votes out of darn-near 3 million cast. The Fat Lady hasn't finished her aria on this one yet, but she's choking out the final chorus. Rossi will need to complete the political equivalent of a "hail Mary" pass to pull this one out.
When you lose an election this close, you face a flood of "what ifs" and second-guessing. So while acknowledging that a miracle is still possible, if unlikely, I say let the Monday Morning Quarterbacking begin.
In light of this loss, Rossi and the Republicans will do what they always do. First they'll ask if there was anything they could have done to get more votes from women. Then they'll ask what more they could have done to attract black votes. Then they'll question if their outreach to Hispanics was up to snuff. And then, "could we have done more to turn out evangelicals?" Oh, and how about the union vote? You get the drill.
But there's one critically influential voting bloc which Republicans, if they stay true to form, will somehow neglect to consider. And it cost them dearly in 2004...again.
Let me first point out that there is no Woman Party which runs candidates in elections. There is no Black Party. There is no Latino Party. There is no Fundamentalist Party. There is no Labor Party. None of those constituencies have their own political operation running their own candidates who have the ability to siphon off votes from one or both of the two major parties.
But voters who want the government to get the hell out of their wallets, their bedrooms, their businesses and their hair; voters who just want to be left alone; voters who still embrace the Founders' notion of limited-government and good, old-fashioned freedom to pursue life, liberty and happiness...they DO have their own party.
I'm talking now, of course, about the Libertarian Party.
And while the LP comes in for plenty of criticism for its own political short-comings (they too often run "fringe" candidates with no hope or even intent to win, but rather put themselves on the ballot merely as "spoilers"), Republican candidates and party leaders who dismiss and/or ignore them do so at their own peril. Just ask Slade Gordon.
Back in 2000, incumbent Republican Sen. Slade Gordon faced a challenge from Democrat Maria Cantwell, not coincidentally in Rossi's state of Washington. Gordon reveled in his well-established "moderate" Republican record and blew off the limited-government, libertarian-leaning voters, including many in his own party. And because his hubris, Cantwell snatched away his senate seat...by a scant 2,229 votes out of almost 2.5 million cast.
The LP candidate in that race pulled 64,734 votes...a whopping 62,000-plus more votes than Gordon needed to keep his seat (and the GOP majority in the U.S. Senate as it turned out, by the way).
Now, the LP tries to deny that they throw races to the Democrats. Their "spin" is that they pull equally from both parties. But ask yourself this question. The candidate of a party which espouses strictly limited government is more likely to pull voters from which of the major two parties: The party which actively and openly promotes bigger and more intrusive nanny-state government or the party which talks the limited government talk but all too often fails to live up to its rhetoric and walk the limited-government walk?
'Nuff said.
You would think that a party which lost such an important and close U.S. senate race due to the "LP factor" just four years ago would have learned a lesson. Gee, do you think the GOP maybe ought to consider adding libertarian-leaning voters to their "outreach" programs?
Fat chance. Instead, GOP state chairman Chris Vance made the incredibly foolish political decision to taunt the LP bull by constantly waving red flags in its face. Frankly, for his bone-headedness Vance deserves that set of horns now firmly implanted in his backside.
Here, let me give you some examples.
In August 2001, a conservative Washington state senator "joined" the Libertarian Party. A quirk in how things work here means a person can retain their official voter registration with the GOP while "joining" the LP. It's kinda like registering as a Republican but joining the Chamber of Commerce...only in this case the "Chamber" also fields its own candidates, as well.
>From a practical political perspective, the senator's move was merely symbolic. It simply sent a message to Republican leaders that many conservatives were more than a little concerned, if not angry, with Republicans wandering so far off the limited-government reservation. It was a serious, but ultimately harmless shot across the GOP bow.
But when questioned about the state senator's action by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Chairman Vance exclaimed, "You're kidding!" Libertarians are "a bunch of radical extremists" who "have a lot of kooky ideas," he told the paper.
Ah, how to win friends and influence people. Dale Carnegie, please call your office.
A few months later, the Post-Intelligencer ran a generally positive story about the Libertarian Party gaining some credibility at the ballot box in Washington, though primarily in non-partisan races for obscure offices. Nevertheless, Vance couldn't help but rain on their parade. "The Republican Party is running a little campaign this year...trying to get out the message that the Libertarian Party is the party of the loony left, not the conservative party," he told the paper. "What Libertarians believe in is small government carried to the most ridiculous extreme."
Hmmm. Small government carried to the most ridiculous extreme, huh? Let's consider the words, then, of some other "extremists."
How about starting with that "extremist" Barry Goldwater who famously noted that "extremism in defense of liberty" was "no vice." Which, by the way, was a take-off from the words of another "extremist" of his day, Tom Paine, who wrote that "moderation in principle is always a vice."
Or how about this "extreme" belief articulated by that 21st century Republican "extremist" Ronald Reagan who said, "Government is not the solution, it's the problem."
Or how about that "extremist" Thomas Jefferson who wrote that "Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare but only those specifically enumerated." Or that "extremist" James Madison who wrote that "Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government." Or Paine, again, who wrote that "Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil."
OK, I digress...but you get the point. As far as "extremism" when it comes to small government is concerned, the Libertarians are in pretty darn good company.
Unbelievably, and with not just a small amount of foreshadowing, Vance also acknowledged in this 2001 interview that "in a very, very, very close race, the Libertarians hurt us."
Gee, you mean like in a gubernatorial race where the Democrat wins by 130 votes out of almost three million cast...and the Libertarian Party candidate chalks up over 63,000 votes? Duh. Vance reminds me of Ray in "Ghostbusters" who ended up naming the means of his own destruction by thinking of the Sta-Puff Marshmallow Man.
Let's now fast-forward to 2004. As it turns out, no Republican candidate filed to run for Washington State Auditor by the normal deadline. Under current law, the party itself then had one week to fill the vacancy if it so chose.
Now, a Libertarian Party candidate DID file in that race by the original deadline. So this could have been an interesting statewide race between a Libertarian running head-to-head against a Democrat candidate. But Vance just couldn't let it go. So he scraped the bottom of the barrel and came up with a GOP candidate...who turned out to be a political loon who had been arrested 19 times for disrupting Tacoma City Council meetings. Boy, there's a candidate to make you proud, huh?
In an internal GOP memo issued after the embarrassing appointment was exposed by the media, Vance tried to justify his decision to the party's membership. His intent, he explained, was solely to deny the Libertarian Party any shot at getting even 5% of the vote in any statewide race because that would enable the LP to enjoy automatic ballot access for the next four years.
You see, Vance doesn't want to compete with the LP in the arena of public opinion; he wants to choke off any opposition. And if that means tapping a melon-head from the Planet Zircon to run for state auditor rather than let the LP have a clean shot at a Democrat, well, that's just a price Vance was willing to pay.
There's another old saying in sports: If you want to be the best, you have to beat the best. What kind of political victory is achieved against a non-existent opponent? True, it really IS a lot easier to win the game when you never face any opponents (just ask Saddam). But then...what's the point? Power for power's sake?
All of which is to say that Chairman Vance in particular, and national GOP leaders in general, have handled the Libertarian Party "problem" in recent years foolishly, if not stupidly. Rather than admit they have serious trouble in their own glass house, they resort to pointing out that the other guy's glass house is dump, too. The problem here is that the GOP's glass house is MUCH bigger...so they have a LOT more to lose if it comes crashing down.
Truth be told, the Libertarian Party isn't so much of a "problem" as it is a reality and a challenge. The GOP needs to find a way to deal with it in a competitive manner...or continue suffering expensive and embarrassing losses such as Gordon's and Rossi's.
That means GOP leaders need to factor in not just how to pander to...er, "reach out" to women, minorities and other special interests, but how to reach out to voters who have imbedded in their souls the extremist notion that government isn't the solution, it's the problem. That means competing against the LP instead of slashing its tires so the bus can't make it to the game. That means competing for limited-government voters instead of ridiculing their principles and taking their votes for granted.
And that means replacing Chris Vance as the Grand Imperial Pooh-bah of the Washington State Republican Party, post-haste. It's one thing for the LP to serve the role of electoral "spoiler." It's another thing altogether for the Republican leader to throw kerosene on the fire through childish taunts and bush-league machinations to keep them off the ballot. Vance fooled with the LP bull...and his party and his candidate got the horns. Stupid is as stupid does.
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