Official Count of LP Delegate Votes
After an excellent presidential debate last night, the national Libertarian Party once again proved its irrelevance and nominated another republican as their candidate for president in 2016. According to the official results from the second and final round of voting, there were only two states whose delegates voted for the best two candidates in the race, Free Keene blogger Darryl W Perry and John McAfee. Those two states were New Hampshire and Vermont. Perry and McAfee’s combined votes were higher in NH and VT than the combined votes of the worst two candidates, Gary Johnson and Austin Petersen. In every other state, Johnson and Petersen’s combined votes were higher.
It’s a continuance of a sad trend of the LP delegates selecting republicans – people who do not understand or advocate libertarian ideals – that has been going on since the 2008 presidential election where the LP chose Bob Barr, a republican former US representative (and former CIA boss) from Georgia as their nominee. Then in 2012 they chose Gary Johnson, a republican former governor of New Mexico as their candidate. Johnson was better than Barr, but not by much. He’s not a principled libertarian like Darryl is. Now Johnson’s won the party’s nomination again for 2016 despite the valiant efforts of the “radical” wing of the party.
The party’s been dead, but now it’s even moreso.
The national LP is hopeless, yet activists across the country toil away trying to wrest control of the organization from the hands of the republicans who have had control of the party for about a decade. To those remaining principled libertarians I implore you:
GIVE UP ON THE LP! Your party is dead and has been for years. Your efforts are being wasted on the national and even your state LP. Start planning your move to New Hampshire to get involved with the only proven successful strategy in the liberty movement: concentrating activists in one geographic area.
In New Hampshire we’ve had more political successes in a decade – meaning people being elected who are principled libertarians – than the LP has had in forty years. If you want to keep losing, stay where you are. If you want to see liberty advance, you have to get together with like-minded people and get active here in the Shire.
Here’s Darryl’s concession speech, thanks to Tom Knapp for the clip:
Oh, and don’t miss the best moment of the entire convention. Epic.
