Why We Shouldn't Abandon Our Principles

by Kimberly Ruff

Barack Obama's campaign for President in 2008 is incredibly impressive to me. Through creative political language, Obama, potentially the most left-leaning candidate for office in 2008 (Kucinich notwithstanding), was able to paint himself as a moderate vying for the highest office in America and spin the centrist McCain as the second coming of George W. Bush. Somehow, this tactic worked and Obama secured the nod from the DNC and went on to win. The public adored him, the media lionized him, and he became for many the hope and change he spoke of so passionately. We were wooed by his words, but very few actually bothered to ask what exactly he was hoping to change.

You get what you vote for.

Libertarians look at success stories like Obama with a mixture of bewilderment and curiosity. It is, after all, incredibly bewildering that a majority of the public would allow themselves to be blindsided by disingenuous rhetoric, especially when there was no shortage of evidence contradicting his words. Yet we are also curious at how a relative political unknown peddling repackaged Big Government could convince that many people that his offer was somehow new, different, and better than what we purchased in other elections.

Since our founding in 1971, the Libertarian Party has struggled with how best we can win office, but despite our best efforts, we continue to come up short in every election. Thus, within the party is the recurring debate: do we cast a wide net when finding our base and take a more moderate approach, or do we continue to hold firm and fast to our core principles, drawing a non-negotiable line between libertarianism and other ideologies?

To answer this, we must look at how Obama has fared since November.

While President Obama may have won favor with the public on the campaign trail, he's quickly lost approval already nine months in office. Support has waned considerably, and many Americans of all political stripes are taking to the streets in public demonstrations against government and debt-increasing measures, like the Auto Industry takeover, Cap and Trade, and ObamaCare. The general sentiment is that Americans have been sold a bill of goods.

In effect, he may have won the battle for office, but he's losing the war for his agenda.

Thus, Obama's initial success should not be used as a model for office-seeking Libertarians. In the past, the Libertarian Party has experimented with running candidates on the ticket of one of the two major political parties, as well as having ‘reformed' major political party candidates run on the Libertarian ticket. Both attempts have backfired on us; Libertarians masquerading as Republicans or Democrats has been perceived as deeply dishonest, while running Republicans or Democrats as Libertarians has only served to alienate our more hardcore supporters. This has left a sour taste in everyone's mouth.

Americans are fed-up. Election after election, they have been lured by the pageantry of the political campaign only to find themselves stuck with a big bill for all the festivities at the end of the day. They are tired of being lied to by slick politicians and being fed the same tonic of more government for their ailments. They are looking for an alternative.

Libertarianism is this alternative as long as we hold firm to our principles, and Libertarian candidates will secure office if they communicate these principles honestly. To do anything less would be both philosophically and politically foolish. Philosophically, we would no longer be libertarians. Politically, we would no longer be better than the two major political parties who have either lost sight of, or just choose to ignore, their underlying principles by preaching one thing and practicing another. We would become the proverbial wolf in sheep's clothing.