The Practical Side of Politics
Last week, self-defeating Libertarians in Kentucky helped take themselves out of the frying pan while throwing the entire state of Kentucky into the fire, claiming the power enabling a Democrat challenger to win the Kentucky Governor's race. Afterward, Kentucky Libertarians rejoiced, enamored with the seldom-felt perception of political power when the Democrat challenger won. In so doing, Kentucky Libertarians confirmed their love of liberty in-principle much more than they could ever love liberty in-fact, publishing a statement which read that if they cannot advance liberty, they “are always happy to split the vote in a way that causes delicious tears,” ostensibly those tears shed by the incumbent Republican’s supporters.
Final 2019 Kentucky Governor's Race Results
In publishing that statement, and claiming a misguided victory when theirs was actually an overwhelming loss, Kentucky Libertarians demonstrated that there is a practical side of politics they do not, and likely will never understand. Ironically, in splitting the vote and possibly becoming the deciding factor in a Kentucky gubernatorial race in which a Democrat won the seat, the Kentucky Libertarian Party became a tool of its own enslavement, while reveling in the erroneous perception of political power a small minority might wield in a close race. Real political power does not come in a distant last place.
Libertarians are still mad, often harkening back to the 2012 Republican National Convention that nominated Mitt Romney to run for President. They recall that in that convention their star, Congressman Ron Paul, was unjustifiably silenced from the proceedings in an attempt to publicly convey a perception of unity for Romney within party ranks. Granted, that happened. It was bad and should never happen again. But that was the Mitt Romney Republican Party, which also became the never-Trumper movement among Republicans.
Seven years later the world sees Mitt Romney for who he is, the same Mitt Romney he was during 2012, an establishment placeholder and globalist shill whose purpose is not to better America, but to simply do what any made-individual must do to retain his wealth and political standing.
Today’s is not the Republican Party of Mitt Romney in 2012, far from it. Today’s is the Trump Republican Party and becoming more so each day. One by one, Republican establishment placeholders are either leaving, seeing the writing on the wall, or being voted out. It was the Trump Republican Party, who when faced with the alternative of electing a transformational socialist Democrat, defeated the socialist movement at Georgia’s front door in 2018 and elected an outstanding new Governor of Georgia in Brian Kemp. Had Stacey Abrams won and turned Georgia into a socialist repository, in keeping with the attitudes of the Kentucky Libertarian Party, the Georgia Libertarian Party would likely have been just as ecstatic, even knowing that Abrams would do all she could to deny them every right they presently enjoy. That's the truly short-sided part of all this. It is interesting that even the founder of today’s liberty movement, Ron Paul, joined and supported the Republican Party, knowing that doing so was the only way he could compete. And then there’s also Rand, his son.
But none of what I will conclude today has anything to do with whether the Kentucky Libertarian Party actually had a hand in defeating the incumbent Republican in their state. It has to do with the power dance of those who published the piece on behalf of Kentucky Libertarians, claiming responsibility for the Republican defeat in the same way a terrorist group might claim responsibility for a public bombing, whether they had anything to do with it or not. The statement published by the Kentucky Libertarian Party was a flexing of under-developed political muscles, touting a supposed achievement, citing the defeat of a sitting Republican as evidence. And now they have even worse political prospects, abetting the election to a four-year term of an individual beholden to the organized crime unit that is the National Democrat Party. Kentucky Libertarians are happy with all that, at least today, which just goes to show that even Libertarians, who forever complain of political power in the hands of those with whom they disagree, fervently enjoy fleeting moments of perceived power themselves when their limited numbers can help decide a close election.
And at the very bottom of Libertarian disgruntlement, the very foundation of their discontentment with the Republican Party and in particular President Trump, is the issue of recreational drug legalization. That’s it. The once-proud and principled Libertarian Party has become the drug party. That’s what this is all about. Just look at who they nominated to run for President in 2016, pot-smoking Gary Johnson, whose major campaign pledge had nothing to do with libertarianism, but was merely to stop smoking while on the campaign. And it is doubtful he adhered to that pledge.
But thankfully, leading Georgia into the 2020 election we have a Trump/people’s Governor in Brian Kemp, and a cast of Trump Republicans occupying both houses of legislature. And, thankfully, in 2020 President Trump will be on the ballot, which will bring patriots out of the hills and to the voting polls all across Georgia and the country.
And so I am amazed at the number of people I encounter who love freedom in-principle more than freedom in-fact. They revel when those more likely to remove their rights are elected. Obviously, there is a practical side of politics that this very small percentage of voters, who on occasion represent a deciding factor, will never seemingly understand.