[220] in libertarians
Re: elections
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Vernon Imrich)
Tue Sep 20 15:54:32 1994
Date: Tue, 20 Sep 94 15:48:49 -0400
From: vimrich@flying-cloud.mit.edu (Vernon Imrich)
To: libertarians@MIT.EDU, sjens@MIT.EDU
>The primaries, it would seem, are a day away, and I still don't know who
I want to vote for. Does anyone know enough about the primary races to tell me
who's like what (I'm registered Republican 'till the primary's over)?
First off, you can vote until 8pm tonight. If you are already a Republican
(registered that way at least) then the main race of any importance is
the Senate (the others are all minor things, that even I haven't been able
to get much info on). Mitt Romney is the classical Pat Boone Republican,
but is clearly the front runner, has the most credibility, and last I heard
was in a dead heat with Kennedy in some polls. A vote for him would help
him to claim "a resounding victory" possibly giving him a bump in the polls
for his November face-off with Ted Kennedy. The other candidate is John
Lakian. He seems to be the better libertarian (doesn't harp the "family
values" social order line) of the two, and has some good tax cutting ideas.
Problem is, he has lots of baggage. He apparently lied (exaggerated) on
his resume in an election a while ago, and has had several such stretches
this time around (once claiming he did some spying in the military and
then backing down from that claim). It may be that he is just bad with
publicity, but IMHO, his credibility is badly damaged.
If I were voting in this race, I'd hold my nose, drink a glass of milk
and vote for Romney. Depending on the polls near election, I may vote
Republican for the Senate race in November as well. The LP's most
serious candidates are for Gov/Lt. Gov and Treasurer/Auditor. A good
vote in any of those races helps the LP out as far as ballot access etc.
Beating a Kennedy in MA may be too sweet to pass up come November.
Vernon
P.S. If you vote in the Dem's primary, the lastest strategy seems to be
to vote for Bacharach, the raging socialist of the three Governor
candidates. This will set up a Bacharach Weld battle that should give
Weld an easy victory (and might also mean the LP gets the 3 or 5% trickle
of protest votes that it needs). The other two Dem's are both "New
Democrats" making the statist/socialist/etc. label harder to pin on them.
