The Liberty Papers

Former United States Senator, and Democratic Candidate for President, Mike Gravel has, apparently, joined the Libertarian Party:

I just got off the phone with Libertarian Party Executive Director Shane Cory and he confirms the following information: Former US Senator and Alaska House Speaker Mike Gravel has joined the Libertarian Party. Cory says he’ll provide more in a media release to be expected over the next few hours.

And here’s the official LP Press Release:

Washington, D.C. – Mike Gravel, a former Alaskan Senator and Democratic candidate for president, has joined the Libertarian Party.

“I’m joining the Libertarian Party because it is a party that combines a commitment to freedom and peace that can’t be found in the two major parties that control the government and politics of America,” says Gravel. “My libertarian views, as well as my strong stance against war, the military industrial complex and American imperialism, seem not to be tolerated by Democratic Party elites who are out of touch with the average American; elites that reject the empowerment of American citizens I offered to the Democratic Party at the beginning of this presidential campaign with the National Initiative for Democracy.”

Gravel served in the United States Senate from 1969 to 1981. Most recently, Gravel was a Democratic presidential candidate, though forced out of national debates by Democratic Party leadership and the media. Gravel officially became a member of the Libertarian Party today.

Gravel is the most recent former member of Congress to switch to the Libertarian Party. In 2006, former Republican Congressman Bob Barr joined the Libertarian Party.

“It is a distinct honor to have another former member of Congress within the Libertarian Party,” says Barr. “Just as Senator Gravel believes Democrats have lost touch with the American public, I too concluded Republicans had lost their core principles, and could no longer associate myself with the GOP. While coming from opposite sides of the aisle, Senator Gravel and I definitely agree on the fundamental need for systemic change in our political system, and that the only way we have of effecting that change is by supporting and working in the Libertarian Party, which is the only political party in America that consistently works in word and deed to maximize individual liberty and minimize government power.”

While this move is interesting, I agree with the guys at Freedom Democrats that there needs to be some skepticism about what Gravel is actually up to here:

Not surprisingly, Gravel’s campaign team has already announced Gravel’s intentions to possibly seek both the LP and Green Party nominations, to run a “fusion” candidacy. As I obliquely alluded to in my original post, skepticism is warranted in digesting the possible motives of Gravel in making this move. Is this legitimately about Gravel identifying more with the Libertarians now or is this more about Gravel smelling some of that Ron Paul fundraising cash.

A fusion between the LP and the Greens ? How would that even be possible without one or both parties abandoning some of their core principles. The Green Party is unlikely to welcome economic liberty, and the Libertarians, unless they want to sell their soul, would seem to be unwilling to accept an agenda that says, among other stuff, things like this:

Consumers have the right to adequate enforcement of the federal and state consumer protection laws. Health and safety are of paramount importance, so we oppose lax or inappropriate regulatory actions.

a. Consumers should have the right to participate in decisions that affect their lives and protect their interests, beyond simply voting on election day.

b. We support the creation of consumer advocacy agencies in order to protect the interests of consumers against corporate lobbyists who have too often successfully argued before regulatory agencies against consumer rights. We would require legal monopolies and regulated industries (including electric, gas, water, and telephone utilities) to set up statewide consumer action groups to act on behalf of and advocate for consumer interests.

c. We call for better information for consumers about the products they buy, and where and how they are made. We endorse truth in advertising, including the clear definition of words like “recycled” and “natural.”

d. We defend the rights of individuals to participate in class action lawsuits against manufacturers of unsafe products. We call for restrictions on secrecy agreements that may prevent lawsuits by not revealing damaging information.

e. We support laws to protect “whistle blowers.”

Or this:

We have a special responsibility to the health and well-being of the young. Yet we see the federal safety net being removed and replaced with limited and potentially harsh state welfare programs. How will social services be adequately provided if local resources are already stretched thin?

We believe our community priorities must first protect the young and helpless. Yet how will state legislatures and agencies, under pressure from more powerful interests, react? We believe local decision-making is important, but we realize, as we learned during the civil rights era, that strict federal standards must guide state actions in providing basic protections. As the richest nation in history, we should not condemn millions of children to a life of poverty, while corporate welfare is increased to historic highs.

The Green Party opposes the privatization of Social Security. It is critical that the public protections of Social Security are not privatized and subjected to increased risk. The bottom 20% of American senior citizens get roughly 80% of their income from Social Security, and without Social Security, nearly 70% of black elderly and 60% of Latino elderly households would be in poverty.

If that’s the kind of future Gravel would bring to the Libertarian Party, he would, effectively, destroy it as an advocate for individual liberty.

Update: The New York Times has picked up the story and reports that Gravel intends to run for the LP’s Presidential Nomination:

Fed up with being excluded from the debates and otherwise marginalized, former Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska announced today that he will seek the Libertarian Party nomination for president.

That’s right, we said Mike Gravel, who had been running as a Democrat – not Representative Ron Paul, who has run on the Libertarian ticket in the past, but recently submitted his name to appear on the ballot in the remaining Republican primary contests.

Skyler McKinley, a Gravel spokesman, said that Mr. Gravel would try to pursue the Libertarian nomination at the party’s convention, which will be held in Denver on May 22-26.

Whether or not some of our delegates will accept Mike Gravel with some of his positions, that has yet to be seen,” said Andrew Davis, a spokesman for the Libertarian National Committee, adding that Mr. Gravel’s advocacy of universal health care, paid for with a national retail sales tax, could turn off some Libertarians.

Frankly, the fact that the LP is even welcoming this crypto-socialist into the party is strong evidence that it no longer deserves to be taken seriously.

In April’s print edition of Reagan Reason, David Weigel conducts what will undoubtedly be the first of many post-mortems of Ron Paul’s Presidential campaign.

The most libertarian candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, began 2008 with an army of 100,000 enthusiastic donors. Before the primary season began, many of his fans clung to the hope that polls showing Paul stuck in single digits were cooked. Many, more pragmatically, hoped he’d play the kind of role Sen. Eugene McCarthy filled 40 years ago in the Democratic primaries, shaking his party out of its hawkish stupor and relocating its soul.

Neither of those scenarios unfolded. Nowhere was the disappointment greater than in the “Live Free or Die” state of New Hampshire, where the large independent vote and Paul’s substantial war chest were primed to shock the political system. Before the election, pollsters such as John Zogby and Scott Rasmussen thought Paul might come in third place. ABC News embedded a reporter with the campaign just to see if lightning might strike, and CNN sent cameras to cover Paul’s election night party live.

But, of course, that didn’t happen. Instead, Paul finished a disappointing fifth and did worse in the Live Free or Die State than he did in a relatively pro-government state like Iowa. After that, it was pretty much all downhill. With the exception of a caucus or two, Paul never finished higher than fourth place and, even when there were only three candidates in the race, he was never a serious contender and had a statistically insignificant impact on the race.

So, what went wrong ? Weigel argues that it all started going downhill when the campaign went off message:

[A]fter a spike in fund raising and polling, Paul pivoted to the more crowded anti-immigration field, with mailers showing a work boot stomping on the Constitution and the legend: “Illegal immigrants flaunt [sic] our laws.”

This lunge for the Minuteman vote didn’t work. According to exit polls, Paul won only 8 percent of Republican voters who want to deport all illegal immigrants. That was 16 points less than immigration compromiser John McCain, six less than amnesty waffler Mike Huckabee, and even one point less than “sanctuary city” mayor Rudy Giuliani. Paul finished a poor fifth among voters who cared about immigration but came in a strong second place among voters angry at the Bush administration. In other words, he came in second among his natural constituency and fared poorly on an issue every candidate was already scrapping over.

That ad, which started running a few weeks before the New Hampshire Primary, attempted to characterize Ron Paul as somewhere to the right of Tom Tancredo on immigration and, as we later learned in Texas, it wasn’t an anomaly.

Would things have been different in the Granite State had the campaign stayed on message ? It’s unclear but it would’ve been worth a try. Pandering to the nativists certainly didn’t accomplish anything. But the truth of the matter is this — for over a year Ron Paul did pitch a limited government anti-war message to Republican voters, the people you have to convince to vote for you if you’re going to win the nomination, and they either ignored it or rejected it.

Is that Paul’s fault ? In part, perhaps, it is. He was, even his most ardent supporters would admit, not the most articulate spokesman for his message. But nobody can call McCain, Romney, or Huckabee great public speakers either.

The hard truth, it would seem, is that people don’t want to hear the message right now.

Finally Weigel wonders what’s next for the coalition that Paul brought to together:

Can the Paulites make lasting change? Eve Fairbanks of The New Republic described Paul’s supporters as “the closest thing this race has to the Deaniacs of ’04.” Those Web-savvy, young, and excitable supporters of former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean may not have powered their man to the White House, but their influence remains a potent force in Democratic politics. Dean’s Web team, including Matthew Stoller and Jerome Armstrong, became some of the loudest voices in the lefty blogosphere and go-to gurus for all Democratic Internet campaigns. Ex–Dean staffers populate the Courage Campaign, a liberal activist group in the MoveOn.org mold. And Dean himself has run the Democratic National Committee since 2005. If Paul’s people wanted to copy a movement, they could do a lot worse.

I heard the idea of a Ron Paul RNC chairmanship tossed around by Paulites in New Hampshire, and I heard it afterward. They know it’s a pipe dream, but they’re starting to ask: How might an activist libertarian splinter movement influence a larger and more moribund Republican organization? “

There are, of course, significant differences between Howard Dean in 2004 and Ron Paul in 2008. The biggest one being that, for the most part, Howard Dean and his supporters were largely within the mainstream of the Democratic Party back then, at least on the issues that matter. The same cannot be said for Ron Paul. That’s why Howard Dean easily became Chairman of the DNC, and the outsider of 2004 became the ultimate political insider.

Lightening is not likely to strike twice. Whether John McCain wins or loses in the fall, Ron Paul is not going to be named Chairman of the RNC now or anytime in the near future. Unlike the Deaniacs, the serious Ron Paul supporters are faced with the task of remaking the Republican Party and turning it back into what it was in the 1980s.

The question is, given the clear rebuke that the libertarian message received from Republican rank-and-file voters this year, how do you do that ?