Thursday, June 08, 2006

Good Advice for the Libertarian Party

I offered my advice to the LP here. Now, Bill Niskanen of the libertarian Cato Institute offers his, which is similar to mine; for example:

The Libertarian Party’s effectiveness in promoting their policy positions is often counter-productive when running a candidate, reducing the vote for the most preferred of the major party candidates. A disciplined group that is prepared to endorse one or the other major party candidate in a close election, however, can have a substantial effect on the issue positions of both major party candidates. . . .

This is a strategy to increase the approval of libertarian policy positions rather than the usually counter-productive effort to increase the number of votes for Libertarian candidates. Maybe it is better to term the organization that I have described as a libertarian political action group, not a libertarian party.

Precisely.