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I can't help but like Chuck Muth. He's an experienced political consultant with a record of reeling in victories. He's also chairman of the Republican Liberty Caucus, and seems to be dedicated to making that organization an effective tool to change the direction of the GOP.
For thirty years, the Republican Party has alternated between ignoring and making fun of the challenge to its claims of being the party of "small government" by the Libertarian Party. In his quest to reform the GOP, Muth is among the first to take up that challenge and declare his intention to fight.
It would be easy to make hay of that. As Gandhi said, "First they ignore you; then they laugh at you; then they fight you; then you win." That, however, is an over-simplification in this case. Muth is a worthy opponent, and can avail himself of a history of 140 years of Republican electoral successes in challenging the Libertarians for the support of voters and political activists.
The RLC, under his new leadership, has already racked up an impressive record: Terry Savage (a Nevada cabinet official) and J.J. Johnson (former militia leader, former LP Senate candidate, and publisher of the Sierra Times) have left the LP for the RLC. A prominent Libertarian activist has become chief of staff for a prominent Libertarian-leaning GOP congressman -- supposedly under the auspices of RLC persuasion on both sides.
The challenge has, indeed, been taken up, and Muth speaks to that challenge in his "GOP News and Views" e-newsletter of March 26, 2001 (to subscribe, send an e-mail to charmuth@aol.com). If it's going to come down to a fight -- and we always knew it would -- there's no time like the present to take a look at the erstwhile enemies, what they're after, and what they're doing..
"For the better part of three decades now, the Libertarian Party has been taking potshots at the Republican Party and using the GOP's shortcomings to fundraise for its operations," says Muth. "And during that time, the Libertarian Party's electoral success has pretty much been: squat. ...In THIRTY YEARS, they've never elected a single individual to Congress under their party's banner, and I think less than a dozen individuals TOTAL to state legislatures around the country. What little ballot box success they've had has been in non-partisan, down-ballot races."
This is the first area in which I have to disagree with Chuck. The last time I looked (a few seconds ago), there were 410 Libertarians serving in those "non-partisan, down-ballot" offices. While that falls well short of political "arrival," it is certainly more than the "squat" Muth credits us with. And the LP, at least in some areas, shows signs of a developing political acumen -- as in Pennsylvania, which ran 74 Libertarian candidates for office in 1998, and elected 38 of them.
I have to wonder if the GOP has a 50% victory ratio in, say, Massachusetts? Keep in mind that while the GOP is the minority party in some states, the LP is far behind them in popularity and party infrastructure in every state. And yet, 38 of 74 Libertarians won their races in a state where the LP got practical and started doing politics instead of discussing philosophy.
It's easy to point out that, in three decades, the LP has not achieved the political success that the Republicans achieved in less than a decade. What's not so easy is to look objectively at the reasons why, and to make an objective comparison between the LP of today and the GOP of yesterday.
The Republican Party was not a "new" party. It arose from two specific issues -- tariffs and slavery -- and it immediately attracted the affiliation of sitting public officials who fled the Whigs due to that party's inability to reach agreement on them. It nominated its first presidential candidate (John Fremont) in 1856, and elected its first president (Abraham Lincoln) in 1860.
Abraham Lincoln was elected not because the Republican Party took the nation by storm, but because the Democratic Party was also in disarray. It split into two conventions and ran two presidential candidates (Douglas and Breckenridge); and a significant portion of its adherents and voters defected to a new party, the Constitutional Union, and its candidate (Bell).
The Republicans started at the top, because the electorate was so fragmented that it was possible to. The Republicans started with the benefit of a shattered Whig movement, many of whose public officials simply changed their designation.
The fallout from that process resulted in more than half a million deaths, too.
I don't offer this as an excuse for the LP's slow political progress. We do have our problems. Nonetheless, it's worth noting that the GOP didn't do what Chuck seems to expect the LP to have done in order to merit respect as a political party.
The LP needs to learn how to conduct effective political campaigns. It needs to learn how to elect people to office at every level. It needs to pull itself up by its bootstraps. If it does, it will be the first political party to have managed that. The wreckage of the Populist, Progressive, Dixiecrat and Reform parties (among many others) show that it's not easy; and there is no analogous history of the Democratic or Republican parties having done so (each of those parties rose out of the shattered remains of previous parties, right back to the Federalist/Democratic Republican duopoly that came into existence when Jefferson and Adams went at it.)
But back to Muth: "LP candidates in general elections pretty much run on a platform that the GOP has failed to represent the limited-government/personal freedom agenda to its maximum effect. Heck, I'll give 'em that. They're right. Many of our candidates don't live up to the ideal."
It would be inaccurate to characterize all Libertarian campaigns as attempts to cater to a traditionally Republican constituency. Our candidates go after the Democrats, too. The common factors in Libertarian campaigns tend to be two-fold. They concentrate on issues that both parties are just plain wrong about (the War on Drugs, for example), and on issues where the Democratic candidate, the Republican candidate, or both, have failed to live up to the promises that those two parties hold out as defining -- usually civil liberties issues on the Democratic side, and economic freedom issues on the Republican side.
More to the point, though, is the idea that it is Republican candidates who don't live up to "the ideal." The clear implication is that the Libertarian Party and the Republican Party have an identical, or nearly identical, rallying point. They don't.
As much as Mr. Muth and his fellow RLC members might like to believe it, The Republican Party is not a libertarian political organization whose candidates and party apparatus have simply strayed and need to be shepherded back onto the path they meant to take. The Libertarian Party is composed of libertarians. The GOP is a fragile coalition of interests which includes some libertarians, but also a mish-mash of "neo-conservatives," "traditionalists" and myriad single-issue voter blocs.
What holds the GOP coalition together is its current grip on power, and the prospect of getting more power into that grip. That's all -- that's it. Within the coalition are any number of groups, all struggling for control of the party's platform, organizational apparatus and candidate slots. Each of these groups believes that, if it could just insert its beliefs and candidates into the GOP platform and GOP ballot lines, they'd have the shortcut to the society they'd like to live in. They also -- mistakenly -- believe that the coalition would survive their victory in attaining those ends.
There are not, at present, enough libertarians to constitute a majority or plurality. Not in the electorate at large, and not within the GOP. If, by some miracle, the RLC took control of the Republican Party tomorrow -- if they managed, through their various mechanisms, to put RLC-type candidates on all of the major GOP ballot lines for office, and to re-write the party's platform to conform to libertarian ideas -- the GOP would very quickly become a shadow of its former self.
Similarly, if the Libertarian Party were able to strip the Republicans of every ideological libertarian, and bring them over to its ranks, they would not become a party of major size or influence.
In the case of the RLC, the problem would be desertion -- to the Democrats in some cases, to other third parties in some -- of those voters and party activists who were with the Repubicans on the basis of issues not compatible with an overall libertarian approach. In the case of the LP, the problem would be the fact that we have not yet established a track record of reliable, responsible conduct in political office -- the kind of track record needed to attract the undecided, who may or may not be ideologically "pure."
The solution, of course, is to "create more libertarians," and to show those libertarians off doing a good job in political office. This presents a daunting challenge to The RLC and to the LP. The LP is handicapped in this task by its minor party status. The RLC will be handicapped by the long association, not easily shed, of the GOP with ideas that libertarians do not hold.
"On the other hand, however, the Democrats' candidates are FAR worse. This is simply political reality," Muth continues, and once again, we are at a point of disagreement. On any given issue, I can name some Democrats that have performed in a far more libertarian manner than some Republicans. It may be that many libertarians overstate the case when they opine that there is no substantial difference between the two "major" parties. The issue, however, is not the libertarian rhetoric of the GOP versus the actions of the the Democrats, but the actions of both -- in office. Neither party, as a whole, has a record that inspires confidence in its dedication to freedom.
Which brings us to the point of the "spoiler" controversy. If, as seems to be the case, Libertarian candidates draw twice as many votes away from Republican candidates as they do from Democratic candidates in a given race, then it stands to reason that Democratic candidates benefit from Libertarians contesting elections. This bothers Chuck Muth, and rightfully so: "How helping to elect Democrats advances the cause the LP purports to champion has always been a mystery to me. It's like burning down the village to save it."
Let's take a look at this. In theory, at least, the Libertarian Party has cost the GOP two Senate seats and at least seven House seats in the last few years; last November, Republican Senator Slade Gorton (WA) lost his re-election bid by far fewer votes than the Libertarian raked in.
Muth, talking with National Review Online columnist John Miller, made two observations: "(1) Libertarian candidates have historically been nothing but spoilers who effectively elect the WORST possible candidate for the pro-liberty cause in a close race, and (2) Republicans need to do more to represent the strict-constitution philosophy if it wants to attract Libertarians and other limited-government conservatives back into the GOP fold. In other words, BOTH parties bear fault."
Within those observations is the solution to Chuck's mystery: the LP, whether we like it or not, is an effective stick to the RLC's carrot. The RLC attempts to persuade Republican candidates that a libertarian agenda is the way to go. The LP ensures -- or at least raises the possibility -- that not adopting that agenda means not getting elected.
The Libertarian Party is at political war with both the Democrats and the Republicans. The voters are out there, and the party which is best able to appeal to them will attract their support. The Republican Party wants to be able to take the libertarian vote for granted -- whether its candidates, once elected, live up to their expectations or not.
Ain't gonna happen.
The Republican Party has laughed at or ignored the Libertarian Party for three decades (at least on a national scale -- as early as four years ago, I was confronted by an irate Republican candidate who had lost a run for state office by less than the margin of Libertarian votes). Now, Chuck Muth has come out shooting.
First they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
Then ... ?
The Republican Party is in a corner. Since taking control of congress in 1994, it has lost seats over the course of three elections. Its presidential candidate squeaked in to the Oval Office, like a rat under a door, on a 5-4 Supreme Court decision instead of a clear victory with the voters. It's on the fast track to third party status itself.
The question is, what is to be done? The potentials -- and potential downfalls -- of either building a victorious Libertarian Party or changing the direction of the GOP -- are arguable.
Chuck Muth is taking a two-pronged approach: he's pushing libertarian ideas to Republicans, and the advantages of the Republican name, party machinery and history of electoral victories to Libertarians. He's got a tough row to hoe on both counts. So does the LP, as it attempts to build on the (contextually not inconsiderable) political success it has had thus far.
Chuck Muth says he's coming for the LP: for the votes we command, for the members who support us, for the margin of victory we represent. "Let the competition begin," he says. I concur. I believe that such competition will build the libertarian movement and, at root, I don't care what party label that movement pastes on itself -- as long as it is successful.
