[613] in libertarians
Re: Harry Browne for President
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Vernon Imrich)
Thu Feb 9 14:00:51 1995
To: libertarians@MIT.EDU
Date: Thu, 09 Feb 1995 13:55:15 EST
From: Vernon Imrich <vimrich@MIT.EDU>
|> >to work with in congress and it showed. Who cares who's in the White
|> >House if the congress is still GOP (or libertarian, or whatever) and
|> >pushing the other way?
|>
|> Because so many influences are led by the presidency, including the entire
|> "Justice" Dept., the import denials, and all the firearms destruction in the
|> DoD, and hell, even the assault weapons ban isn't being considered as
|> readily because of Clinton's stated intent to veto.
But neither are any advances of gun bans being considered. Nothing is
getting worse. And a Clinton victory because of a split vote would
be the WORST case senario. I call it an investment for the future.
But mostly, a Browne candidacy would only bring enough votes or energy
to split the GOP PRIMARY vote, not the general election (remember the
electoral college is "winner take all"). There ain't no way Browne's
going to get the 20% necessary to let Clinton win with 43% again. The
only way Clinton wins is if massive vote splitting ensues ala Perot, or
if the GOP falls on it's face during the campaign.
|> > Gramm may
|> >get in office but will have a hard time getting the support since
|> >few will be more extreme than him. Thus, he becomes only slightly
|> >better than a Dole once in office.
|>
|> SOmeone who holds some lines isn't better than one who holds none? I'm not
|> getting sucked into the LP vs. GOP/whatever, but your statement is wrong.
|> Whoever leads via the Presidency wields tremendous power, albeit far from
|> ultimate power.
The best example of what I was trying to say is Clinton. He came in
wanting to do almost half the latest contract with America stuff (make
laws apply to congress, line item veto, reduce staff, reinvent government
and so forth). Early on the Dem leadership said, "no way, not if you
want us to go to bat for your health care plan." So Clinton's whole
change message (what got him the election IMHO) was lost before he
even started because he couldn't convince his own congressional party
leadership to enact it. The kind of pull that a Mitchell and Foley had
on Clinton is the same kind of tug that Gingrich would have on a Gramm
presidency. "You want a flat tax, Pres? Ok, great, but don't veto
school prayer then."
It's not a total thing one way or another. As someone else mentioned
the power of just setting up the Justice Dept. is huge. What I'm
afraid of is all this Gramm libertarianism getting sold down the river
once he's in office in order to work with his party. As more of it
get's sold off, he becomes less and less an improvement on Dole or
any other GOP candidate.
As that improvement diminishes, the small but non-zero effect a good
Browne candidacy would have starts to be comparable. Of course,
this has to all be weighed against the largest factor, Gramm doesn't
need my vote to win. The probability it would even effect the race
in a tight 50-50 split is still something like 10 to the minus 8 power.
(I can post the calculation if you want). Even multiplied up to
1 to 2 percent the numbers do not improve that much. Hell, if there
weren't an LP I'd probably not bother to vote at all in many races.
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| Vernon Imrich | market failure, n. The inabilty of the |
| MIT, Dept. OE | market to recover from a blow by |
| Cambridge, MA 02139 | intervention. (The Exchange) |
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| MIT LP: http://www.mit.edu:8001/activities/libertarians/home.html |
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