We have seven weeks until Convention 2006! I, for one, am both excited and scared. We have over 570 members recruited. But how many will show up for the Convention? How many delegates who are not Caucus members agree with at least some of our proposals? How much will we be able to persuade delegates at the Convention?
One recent data point gives me a big boost of hope. Last weekend was the North Carolina LP convention. At that convention I placed a copy of our “Bait and Switch” ad on everyone’s table. It was quite well received, earning praise from some tough critics. (One said it was the most persuasive thing I had written to date on the subject. Whether this constitutes “good” or “less bad” is another story…)
So, I have reason to believe that our next ad in LP News will have a positive impact. And we can target the ad to delegates via other channels as well…
In this issue:
Convention 2006. We now have an event page posted for the national convention. Please go there and let us know if you are coming. And feel free to comment on what we should do there. (But see the next item.)
Introducing: The Action Team Discussion Boards. We need a private area for Caucus activists to discuss strategy. Now we have it. We have areas to discuss advertising, pre-convention lobbying, convention floor strategy and more.
The Results are In. We now have pages showing the vote totals for platform proposals and essays. See where we currently stand.
“Proposed 2006 Manifesto of the Libertarian Reform Caucus,”by Kristan Overstreet. This is a proposal for the message we, as a group, will send to the Libertarian Party and all its supporters. The time has come to make our proposals concrete, declare what we want changed this year, and call on other libertarians, small-l and big-L, for their support.
Convention 2006!
The Libertarian National Convention will be held July 1-2 (actual business meetings) with some events on either side of this date. Be there! National conventions can be great fun. There are great speakers and fun parties after the business sessions. And this convention has the potential to be one of the most important in LP history—if enough of us show up.
Are you planning to show up? Please go to the event page and register your intent.
Haven’t decided yet? Please consider it. Most state conventions have already happened, but it is not too late to become a delegate. Most states, especially those east of the Rockies, still have empty slots in their delegation. Ask your state chair if you can be added to the delegation. Even if your own state says no, you may find that you can be a delegate for another state. (Yes, that seems wacky, but the rules state that only one member of a state’s delegation actually needs to be from said state.)
If you have comments on strategy for the Convention that you want open to the general public, this event page is the place to put them. If you want to strategize in private, see the next item.
Introducing: The Action Team Discussion Boards.
Question: Who is on the Libertarian Reform Caucus Action Team?
Answer: Anyone who is doing something to promote the goals of the Caucus. If you are telling others about the Caucus, lobbying the Bylaws and/or Platform committees, going to the National Convention as a delegate, donating to the PAC, etc., you are part of the Action Team.
Now, the Action Team has a place to meet and discuss strategy. In particular, we have a series of stub essays which have comment areas that are closed to non-members:
Advertising. Should we continue to advertise? Or are we done with that phase. If yes, where?
Pre-Convention Strategy. What else do we do between now and convention time? How do we contact and persuade those who have been chosen to be delegates? How do we convince more of our own to become delegates?
Convention Strategy. Who does what for the Convention? Do we rent a hospitality suite? What handouts do we produce? How do we get our message across to the delegates?
Feel free to suggest further topics using the essay submission system.
The Results are In
Which platform and bylaws proposals should we push? Which existing planks should we work hardest to abolish? Which platform areas should we simply have no plank?
We now have pages which summarize the results of our votes to date. Under both the
platform and
bylaws areas we have
a set of reports on the votes to date. In particular, we have:
By Relative Popularity.
On this page you can see the votes on all the platform proposals ordered from most popular to least popular. This is a relative popularity score, however. Some proposals may show up as popular simply because few people have bothered to vote on them.
By Absolute Popularity.
On this page you can see the votes on all the platform proposals ordered from most popular to least. Absolute popularity (votes for - votes against) is used. This method can overweight older planks or planks closer to the top of the left sidebar.
Least Popular (Relative) Existing Planks.
On this page you will see the votes for "Keep the Existing Plank" ordered from least popular (relative) to most popular. This should should give a good indication on which planks we most want to either change or get rid of entirely.
Loudest Calls (Relative) for Silence.
On this page you will see the votes for "Say Nothing" ordered from most popular to least popular (relative). This report should give an indication of where we want the platform to be silent.
If you disagree with the consensus we have achieved to date, VOTE!!! Most of you have not yet voted on the full set of existing planks and proposed changes. Please, even if you mostly agree with the current consensus, vote if you haven’t already.
Yes, this takes some time. However, it takes less time than it did when the site was first set up. I have spent many hours improving the ergonomics of the site. The existing planks are now listed in a small scrolling box in the left column, one which scrolls to the current plank each time you change planks.
For those of you who have already voted on many of the planks, there is an “Unread Proposals” link in the upper left corner. Click it and a small popup window appears, which has the list of planks you have not voted on yet. As you click and vote, this window refreshes itself, shrinking the list of planks that need to be voted on.
Proposed 2006 Manifesto of the Libertarian Reform Caucus
by Kristan Overstreet
We are the Libertarian Reform Caucus.
We are dedicated to expanding freedom and reducing government power through the political process. Toward this end, we believe that the Libertarian Party is the only national political party which in any way agrees with this fundamental principle. However, we are dismayed at the Libertarian Party's consistent and overwhelming failure at winning contested partisan elections. It is our view that the primary reason for this failure is the extremism practiced by the Party and its leading thinkers, who place party purity of principle above victory.
Some of us are Libertarian Party members and officers. Some of us are past party members, driven out by hostile and abusive purists who accuse us of being socialist because we believe in incremental change but not anarchy. Some of us are anarchists and former purists who have tired of repeating the same strategy year after year for no result. Some of us are people who are sympathetic to the party's overall stance but unwilling to support its most extreme and radical proposals. We are united in one belief; that the Libertarian Party must be reformed if it is to achieve its promise of more freedom and less government.
We hold these truths to be unavoidable: that the purpose of a political party is solely to elect its candidates to public office; that the strategies of exclusionary membership, uncompromising radical change, and education and enlightenment of the voting public have not worked, do not work, and will never work; that voters will not vote for those who advocate revolution, chaos and anarchy unless they have nothing to lose; and that slow, incremental change works where immediate, all-or-nothing changes fail.
We have, in the past, attempted to change the direction of this party on an individual basis. Our efforts have met abuse, personal attack, and even efforts to drive us from the party entirely. We have united in a last effort to make this party a viable political force rather than the philosophical society it currently resembles. Over the past year we have proposed and debated various changes within our membership. What follows represents those points on which the greatest majority of us agree, and which we shall support at state and national conventions with our votes and our active political activity.
To reform the Libertarian Party into an organization more suited to its goal of electing candidates committed to expanding liberty in the United States, we therefore present the following proposals:
We call for the following changes in the rules and bylaws of the Libertarian Party and its state affiliates:
The Membership Pledge has been misused by party purists as a means of excluding those who might threaten the ideology of the party. It has failed of its original purpose, which was to reassure the public that the Libertarian Party does not seek violent revolution. By a majority of eighty-eight percent of our membership, we advocate the repeal of the Pledge with no replacement.
The platform of the national Libertarian Party contains many planks which work against our candidates. These are weapons in the hands of our enemies. Inertia, and the desire to create new planks before revising the old, keep such planks in the platform long after support for them has waned. We therefore call for the permanent platform clause of the bylaws of the national party, and all state affiliates, to be replaced with a platform sunset clause which purges all planks from the platform with each election cycle.
We support the policy of zero dues for membership in the Libertarian Party. We call for an end to all efforts to repeal zero-dues or to reverse the decision of the national executive committee at convention.
By a majority of at least 60% of our voting members, with no other proposal gaining majority support, we call for the following planks to be repealed from the national party platform immediately, replaced with nothing:
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