Explaining Away Failure in the LP

Via Catallarchy, we have an analysis of the Libertarian Party's repeated failures:

The truth? America's closest thing to a third party cannot even do to George W. Bush what Ralph Nader did to Al Gore (an accomplishment that might have done our country and the world tremendous good, even without electing a candidate.) Libertarians are not only on the fringe. We are pathetic. If the LP had pulled a Nader in just one state, the salvation and gratitude of the Union might have been overwhelming. But no, men like Browne cannot even see how we let the country down.

I had been told by organizers that Mr. Browne would debate me about pragmatism vs. idealism. Finding instead a camp meeting, featuring monologue pulpit sermons, I grew frustrated listening to calls for perfect fealty to the precise liturgy of Received Faith, reiterating that failure after failure at the ballot box need never provoke significant reflection upon the message itself.

No, we must stick to a purist party line that the American people have relentlessly rejected (in one form or another) for 70 years. No tweaking. No fresh approaches to replace stale ones. No gradualist proposals for free-market alternatives that might compete with statist solutions. No concessions to an American consensus that the best-educated people in world history have generally ratified in biannual elections for three generations. No, we must continue to rant at our neighbors that their consensus is 100% idiotic. Hallelujah.

Mr. Browne preached that we must reject incrementalism and stick to "educating" the foolish, unenlightened masses, hoping that someday, like the Berlin Wall coming down, a sudden change of state will miraculously occur. This has all of the hallmarks of a religion, not a political agenda grounded in assumptions of individual sovereignty.

In a market, you would laugh at a businessman who kept blaming his failures on the customers. Or whimpering that the market is biased to favor big players. A competitor with a good product should be able to get past such obstacles.

[snip]

Blaming citizen-ignorance is the profoundly stupid and hypocritical premise of LP platonism and the root of all its failure. It must be called what it is. An emotional crutch and the core reason why a party based on adult-sovereignty relentlessly insults Americans instead of offering them pragmatic alternatives. The fault is not theirs, it is ours.

My impression is that the Libertarian Party (of which I am a reluctant member) consists of three coalitions: Randians, anarchists, and Constitutionalists. Randians are devotees or fans of Ayn Rand (but not necessarily full-blown ultra-wacko Objectivists). Anarchists view all forms of government activity as some kind of criminal enterprise. We Constitutionalists mostly want to enforce the Tenth Amendment, which would naturally curtail federal power.

The anarchists are, by far, the dominant voice in Party leadership. They are completely unwilling to compromise with the American people, who are not anarchist. Result -- winning less than 1% in Presidential elections, year after year.

BTW, I didn't even vote the LP ticket last year. Post 9/11, I became a single-issue voter (national security) and voted for Bush, although I did vote Libertarian in every other race.