National LP official: ‘It’s gotta be Romney, there is no choice’

By David McElroy · April 7, 2012

Cleaning out the notebook…

If you wonder why the national Libertarian Party is harder and harder to take seriously, consider this recent comment from LP National Committee member Wayne Allen Root:

“I think the important thing now is to make sure Obama is not elected,and that means in my mind, I would love for a libertarian like Gary Johnson the two-term governor of New Mexico would actually get elected President, but I think we all know that’s not going to happen so therefore it’s got to be Romney there is no choice.”

Root was the LP’s vice presidential nominee four years ago, so he’s not exactly a nobody in the party (even if he should be). He exposes the real problem with the LP. Everyone know that Libertarian Party candidates aren’t going to win, so they’re not entirely in agreement about what their purpose is. They’re schizophrenic. Are they a political party or an educational organization? Political parties exist to win elections. How many LP campaigns have you ever known of that were honestly run to win (with a halfway legit shot at winning)? I can’t think of any.

Root’s comments point to the contradiction of being a serious Libertarian if you want to make a difference in elections. If you want to influence the outcome of a campaign, about your only real option is to vote for one of the two major parties. So what good is the LP doing? I can’t figure that out. Even if I still believed in some form of limited coercive government, I don’t see any real purpose for the LP. Maybe you see one that I’m overlooking.

By the way, in a comment on a blog, Root tried to defend his advice to vote for Romney in the fall, but it still didn’t make any sense.

Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley has been promoting charter schools for the state lately, but his promotion effort leaves something to be desired. On a PR trip to New Orleans to visit charter schools, someone in the governor’s office apparently forgot to check the performance of the schools he was visiting. The state of Louisiana had ranked the three schools he visited with a C+, D+ and F. Oooops. Not exactly great models to emulate, it seems. Someone on the governor’s staff isn’t earning his salary by preventing him from doing stupid things.

Why do TV talking heads quote poll results as though they somehow determine truth? Have you noticed what I mean? On the occasions when I’m subjected to cable news — almost always when I’m in public — it seems as though I frequently hear reporters and newsreaders quote public opinion statistics as though they mean something. Polls can tell you something when it has to do with elections, but they’re irrelevant in determining what’s right or true. Somewhere along the way, this country fell in love with the idea of democracy so much that majority opinion is quoted as though it matters. It doesn’t. If 85 percent of the people don’t believe in gravity, so what? If 74 percent believe in Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster or whatever, so what? If you want to quote a statistic because it shows how absurd or crazy people are, that makes sense. To quote it respectfully — as though it means something — is insane.

After I had the April Fool’s Day piece about Mitt Romney and the Illuminati, I’ve noticed that my website is suddenly getting hits from people who are using search strings such as “mitt romney illuminati.” It’s hard to do satire when so many people already believe the parody.

A 15-year-old Amish boy and his father were in a mall. They were amazed by almost everything they saw, but especially by two shiny, silver walls that could move apart and then slide back together again.

The boy asked, ‘What is this, Father?’

The father (never having seen an elevator) responded, “Son, I have never seen anything like this in my life. I don’t know what it is.”

While the boy and his father were watching with amazement, a fat old lady in a wheelchair moved up to the moving walls and pressed a button. The walls opened, and the woman rolled between them into a small room. The walls closed and the boy and his father watched the small numbers above the walls light up sequentially.

They continued to watch until it reached the last number. Then the numbers began to light in the reverse order.
Finally, the walls opened up again and a gorgeous 24-year-old blond stepped out.

The father, not taking his eyes off the young woman, said quietly to his son, “Go get your mother.”

And, finally, here’s a thought I stole from Facebook friend Andy Daken. There’s a lot of truth in this:

“Education is free. Open a book at the library. Read more than a Twitter post on the internet. MIT posts all their lectures for free. Diplomas are not free. They are certifications that you jumped through enough hurdles. If you want an education, read. If you want a diploma, quit whining that it costs money. A diploma does not equal education.”

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Here’s the latest of my ridiculous parody shorts. It crossed my mind Tuesday to wonder what a slick and fast-talking car dealer might do right now to try to turn the high price of gasoline to his advantage. So I conceived of a fat and lovable character who tried to sell cars that don’t use any fuel — and then I started wondering if it would be funnier if all the characters were felines. Designing the King Cashpaw character took about four hours, but the rest took only another four hours, so this was a relatively quick piece that virtually wrote itself. I know it’s almost impossible for these parody videos to find a larger audience, but at least they amuse me — and there are 19 of them on my YouTube page now. The first few were very limited, but they’re getting more complex.

The Republican Party is dead. It still exists in name, of course, but it’s nothing but a shell. All that’s left are idiots and stooges and con men of the MAGA party. When Donald Trump is gone — which won’t be long — those populist idiots and pragmatic fools will have no one to follow. Democrats will thrive. They will take more power than ever and they will push the federal government further to the radical far left than ever. When that happens, don’t just blame Trump if you’re a conservative. Blame every person who has claimed to be a conservative and has given up on principles, character and everything else that Republicans once claimed to stand for. As someone who worked as a GOP political consultant for many years, this is disgusting and disturbing to me. Those who have enabled Trump to have almost unchecked power are going to be shocked when they see what they will unleash in the long run. It’s been plain all along what this narcissistic con man is. It’s your fault that you chose to pretend not to see what he really is.

We are ruled by the dumbest and most incompetent people among us — and we have a system which allows stupid and irresponsible people to force the costs of their idiocy onto smarter and wiser people. Can we get away with that? Yes, for quite some time. But we eventually reach a point at which the dumbest of the dumb — who are habitual liars and mentally ill fools — lead us to the disasters and destruction that some of us have seen coming for years. We are approaching that point. And yet most of the idiots around us still wave their rhetorical banners of support for the evil people who are leading us to ruin — and all of them point their fingers at someone else, never noticing that their own enthusiastic support of evil is to blame. When things finally fall apart, blame yourself for your blindness to the evil, not whoever happens to be in power when it happens.

I’ve been making some changes to the site lately and there are more changes coming in the days ahead, so don’t be surprised if you some small differences. This is not a wholesale redesign, but rather the addition of some features. Since they’re smarter than I am, I’ve put Oliver and Alex in charge of the technical work, which you can see in this action photo from the control room of our media complex. I recently added a series of landing pages for readers who randomly discover the site from an Internet search. I’ve also changed the YouTube link at the top of the page to go to the new YouTube channel for video essays that reflect things I’ve already published here. (Here’s a little bit about both of the YouTube channels I’m working on.) In addition, I’m trying to move away from using Instagram, so I’m experimenting with photo plug-ins that will eventually allow me to host the pictures — cats, dogs, sunsets, whatever — that I often take. So don’t be surprised to see more changes. Thanks for your patience. Let’s hope Alex and Oliver know what they’re doing.

I have no use for the theocratic and repressive government of Iran. The people who run the country are cruel at best and evil at worst. The Iranian people deserve freedom. But I have no personal quarrel with anybody in Iran. While I’m not thrilled about a future Iranian government having nuclear weapons, I’m just as concerned about nukes in the hands of politicians in Israel, Pakistan, India, China and Russia. I’m not even thrilled with the U.S., Britain and France having them, either, because I don’t trust any politicians to be responsible with such terrible weapons. All I can say with certainty is that American taxpayers have no business attacking Iran, especially since we’re being forced to pay for this attack in order to benefit the politicians of Israel — and nobody else. If Middle Eastern countries want to fight among themselves, that’s none of my business. It’s not the business of the U.S. government, either. I have no quarrel with anybody in Iran — and having the government which claims to represent me launch an unprovoked attack against a sovereign country will only make all Americans less safe in the near future. This attack is poorly conceived and morally unjustified. Remember that when the Iranians launch attacks that we will then condemn as “terrorism.” What the U.S. is doing right now looks like terrorism to me. And let’s not forget that the attack is the latest in a long line of unconstitutional wars by various U.S. presidents — who have no legal power to declare war on their own, according to the U.S. Constitution.

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