Sharoncobb

I wonder what a party with Gravel, Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul would do?

Interesting question. It's interesting because Dennis Kucinich is still a Democrat, unless I missed something in my week without a computer! And Ron Paul avows he is still a Republican and won't leave the Republican Party -- so he obviously thinks the GOP represents at some level his views. And yet, he's a former Libertarian candidate and he's widely regarded as Libertarian.

I never thought Mike Gravel had much in common with Ron Paul, though. I consider Paul's views pretty extreme, so if Gravel is now a Libertarian, and even a fraction of what Ron Paul believes can be considered Libertarian views, well, good riddance.

Well it *is* the things in common that make them both libertarians by any big-tent application of the word: opposition to imperialist war, absolutism on civil liberties, opposition to the patriot act, etc.

And it is the the things on which they're different that make *neither* of them libertarians by any precise application of the word.

In other words they are pretty much equidistant from the libertarian center, just in two different directions. Much as Hillary and McCain are flipsides of the same authoritarian coin, Gravel and Paul are flipsides of the libertarian one.

A third party with Kucinich, Gravel, Paul, Edwards, Gore.........


That would be something I could sink my teeth into.

Libertarians may not be the best thing going. A little on the money before people side, but they're not warmongers, traitors and thieves nor are they inclined to support those who are. They don't sit idly by and just it all happen either. Unlike, unfortunately, some of our own party.