Our Primary Goal
The primary goal of the Libertarian Reform Caucus is to fix the LP platform
so that enough people can agree that the Libertarian Party's solutions are
the best. This is a necessary
prerequisite to building a bigger party and winning elections.
Fixing the Libertarian Platform is not easy. Back when the party was founded
by anarcho-capitalists and borderline anarcho-capitalists, the decision was
made to make the platform a perpetual document, one to be tweaked from
convention to convention, vs. one that is rewritten each convention. It was the
hope that this would help keep the party pure. Alas, this has kept the party
so pure that it can win very few elections.
We are going to need to recruit a large number of delegates at the convention
in order to be able to make real change. We will need to advertise in the
Libertarian press. We will need to lobby on the message boards. We will need
to be organized at the convention to handle the parliamentary haggling...
There are some related goals that we might shoot for to make this easier.
Related Goals
Part of the problem of fixing the platform is that the rules make change
difficult. It takes a mere majority to retain a plank in the platform
while it takes a 2/3 vote to amend or replace a plank.
Perhaps we should work to change this rule.
A bigger problem is that debate on the platform is an unweildy process
when there are a thousand delegates and limited time for debate. Robert's
Rules of Order can be easily abused to stall changes. And in any setting,
Robert's Rules of order make it difficult to compare multiple possibilities
at the same time, due to the rules on debating amendments. Perhaps we
should work on improved parliamentary procedures.
Membership in the LP requires signing an oath that, if taken literally,
demands anarcho-capitalism. With rationalization it is possible to take
stances that are steps towards this goal, but even this is an awkward stance.
This oath makes it difficult to recruit moderates, or even non-absolute
radicals. It also makes it difficult for principled people who agree with
the need for incrementalism to ratify a politically viable platform. Perhaps
we should do something about the oath.
Secondary Goals
There are at least three bottlenecks to recruiting a supporter to the
Libertarian Party:
- Awareness of the party and what the party stands for.
- Belief that the party's stances are the best.
- Credibility. Is the party an effective tool for improving liberty?
Suppose that we have a platform that 1/3 of the population overall approves
of. If we achieve 1/3 awareness of the party, and 1/3 think that the
party is credible (the "lesser of two evils" problem)...then we have a shot
at 1/27 of the vote. Not good enough!
So even if we have a more moderate platform we still need to worry about
awareness and credibility.
However, building awareness when the platform is a negative is a bad thing!
Fixing the platform comes first.
Similarly, credibility is not possible unless victory is plausibly
achievable. This is not the case until we become more mainstream.
Fixing the platform comes first. (Actually, there are aspects of fixing the
platform that directly relate to credibility.)
So, fixing these other aspects of building the party are secondary not because
they are less important, but because they need to be done second—in time.
Also, some of the awareness and credibility problems may turn out to fix
themselves after we become more mainstream. But in case they don't fix themselves,
we shall discuss other LP improvements in our Strategy
pages.
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