Calling Paul's refusal to run a betrayal and denigrating Paul's "march" idea as a "march to nowhere." Steve Gordon is saying that the grassroots leaders in Alabama are pissed off. While I believe Paul has advanced the cause of liberty he clearly the left the LP demoralized at this point. While I think Barr would help, I find myself in agreement with my more leftish LP members that it's time people to shit or get off the pot when it comes to the GOP, and that includes Barr. I would like to see him make the run but not if he goes saying shit like he's the one true conservative. I've had it with the libertarian/conservative axis. Libertarians are not conservatives and vice versa.

First, the LP Candidates collectively received 14 million votes in 2006. They do get elected at a respectable clip to local office. The LP has always has been a blip in terms of national office and that will never change unless it were to supplant one of the 2 major parties. The electoral college system precludes any chance of a sustained successful national 3rd party and that can be demonstrated from a econometric/game theory type of analysis.

In terms of Paul, his voter demographic actually fit the independent/democratic profile much better than the "conservative" profile. Even though Paul took "conservative" positions on abortion and immigration, his voter demographic in many ways demonstrated the raison d'etre of this site, that a political alignment is taking place that is causing a break-up of the old conservative-libertarian axis toward a libertarian-liberal axis.

Back to marketing, you know the LP has been in a major fight between radicals and reformists, the latter trying to be more inclusive. i would tend to favor the reformists, except that was a code word for including pro-war, closed-borders, pro-drug war people into the party. No thanks, that shit needs to stay in the Repub party. I would be open for reformist meaning incorporating more leniency for the social saftey net, while maintaining strong stances on civil liberties and non-aggresive foreign policy.

-14 million votes nationwide - over all the thousands of federal, state and local partisan races - isn't impressive. Five candidates running just in California: Phil Angelides, Tom McClintock, Bruce McPherson, Tony Strickland and Chuck Poochigian, received over 17.5 million votes between them in 2006. They all lost.

-Winning an obscure nonpartisan election and then saying you're a Libertarian doesn't count. Sure, there may be actual card-carrying Libertarian Party members on a rural electrification board somewhere, but nobody cares. Even in more prestigious stuff like city council races, if it's nonpartisan, people rarely pay much mind to the labels if they even know about them at all (they often don't, especially in more rural areas).

If the LP wants street cred, they need people to win with that big L by their name on the ballot. Are there any Libertarian officials at the state legislative level or higher right now, or even any county commissioners or something like that? I mean actual, honest-to-God partisan Ls who were elected that way, not the wimpy "I'm a Republican who likes Libertarians" variety.

-Few people outside the Libertarian Party know about the fight between the radicals and reformists, and even fewer care. Might as well talk about the ideological hair-splitting in post-Mao China. The relevance is roughly the same to the average American. The only way there's going to be any upward movement in the polls for Libertarians (or for any third party, actually) is if it starts locally or regionally somewhere as a serious independent movement that features community leaders from the get-go. What's more, it'll most likely happen in spite of both the "radicals" and the "reformists."

-Ron Paul might have done better as an independent, but I have to say his supporters seriously creeped out a lot of more progressive-leaning people who might otherwise have given him a chance. He didn't help himself any in that regard, either. Had he actually made an effort to reach out to groups that didn't fit in the neat parameters of Ronald Reagan's support base circa 1976, and consequently moderated some of his stances without losing the core libertarian ideals, he probably would have done better. But he didn't.

Here in Idaho he's perceived as the single most right-wing candidate out there by a lot of people, particularly Democrats. Perception is reality, and the Ron Paul "Revolution" is a cheap knockoff of the Buchanan Brigades in the minds of many. I don't know if that's what he wanted, but if not, boy, it didn't go well.

but you're diagnosis is wrong...it's not a question of marketing, it's a condition inherent in the electoral college system, without such, America would be split into roughly 5 national parties. You get rid of the electoral college system, I would show you a libertarian party that would comprable to a conservative party, a liberal/progressive party, a populist party, a green party, etc. However, a Libertarian Party strong enough to be a major party in a 2 party system is highly unlikely at this point, just not enough constituency to be that strong

Why do you think the electoral college is so important? There's a pretty strong case that an electoral system based on single member plurality elections will tend towards a two-party system. Exceptions to this rule are sometimes explained by regional parties such that each district has two parties but the legislature as a whole has multiple parties. I'd expect this dynamic to be suppressed by any single national election such as our election for president-- because this election would tend towards a two-party system it would encourage voters to think in terms of those two parties at all levels.

I don't see how the Electoral College really changes anything. It may exaggerate the two-party system when states allocate their votes in a winner take all manner, but since the election is inherently winner take all this shouldn't make much of a difference. 

As for the rest, Libertarians aren't winning those either.

Right now I think minor parties should field candidates for president and other major offices, not because they can win, but because they can give more winnable down-ticket races more exposure. If you're running a candidate for president, but not doing much in the other races, from their standpoint the purpose of running for president in the first place is utterly defeated.

The Idaho Democrats are in a similar situation, albeit not as acute since as a major party we don't carry the "wasted vote" stigma the third parties do. Often times there aren't enough state legislative candidates running to compose a majority even if every single one of them won. Statewide office campaign slots sometimes go unfilled, or the nominees who do bother to file are clearly not up to the task of either campaigning and/or the office itself. In 2004, we even managed to let a US Senate race filing come and go without fielding a candidate.

One of the by-products of many years of this is a chronic shortage of good candidates for major offices - a "bench" if you will - a shortage one simply doesn't see in most other states. My exploratory run for governor in 2010 is in no small part an attempt to address that. If I were running this year (which I'm not because I promised my wife I wouldn't), or if I were satisfied there were enough quality candidates on the horizon, I'd most likely take on a state legislative race first. I may still do that in 2010 depending on how strong the campaign organization becomes. But I digress.

Back to the LP. Once the Libertarians are consistently drawing 140 million votes as opposed to 14 million, have a good number of partisan county officials, state legislators, a few members of Congress, and perhaps even a handful of governors or US Senators, then they can start seriously thinking about presidential politics, and therefore make the anti-EC case from their standpoint much more effectively.