Third Parties as Unpersons

From the very useful libertarian political blog Hammer of Truth comes an infuriating roundup of the extent to which media outlets will ignore reality when it comes to third party politics.

Comments

joshua corning | October 13, 2006, 5:56pm | #

hey joe this must be a good example of that phontom poll of yours that found a large percentage of MSM were libertarian.

I actually did some in-depth investigating into this today and called several national media organizations to find out if there was even a lame explanation for this oversight. If you look at their election coverage, you’ll notice with the exception of a stray independent campaign (notably in TX and CT), there’s only the two major parties represented in any race… period.

Mike Espinoza | October 13, 2006, 6:07pm | #

James Werner was mentioned on KXAN News 36 in Austin, but only because he had filed a lawsuit for being left out of the Texas Gubernatorial Debate held by Belo Broadcasting. Kinky Friedman and Carole Keeton Strayhorn were included in the debate despite the fact that they are independents.

Lowdog | October 13, 2006, 6:12pm | #

If you look at their election coverage, you’ll notice with the exception of a stray independent campaign (notably in TX and CT), there’s only the two major parties represented in any race… period.

Yup, and it totally pisses me off. Especially here in AZ where the LP has been the 3rd party for quite some time. They have to actually show the % reporting LP when they post the election results coming in, but no one talks about the LP, definitely not in the run-up to the election.

Nick | October 13, 2006, 7:02pm | #

To be fair Lowdog, I did see an article in the AZ Republic about a debate at which Barry Hess debated with Napolitano and Munsil. Granted, I think most of the article was dedicated to Munsil & Napolitano, but Hess was in included.

Nick

Lowdog | October 13, 2006, 7:31pm | #

Actually, I did see that, Nick. I don't watch or read a lot of local news except to see how badly our sports teams are doing, but I did catch that.

I liked what my LP representative candidate had to say in the answers to the little questionnaire they pass out to all the candidates (my apologies, but I think I may have said it was the guy running for Senate here in AZ when I was talking about this previously, which is not true. That guy's too worried about immigration and doesn't come across as erudite as Severin). I wish he'd get more exposure. That Hess guy comes across a little loony.

Derrick | October 13, 2006, 9:44pm | #

Yeah, this is unfortunately widespread. For example, the Georgia LP's candidate for Governor, Garrett Hayes, performed strongly in a 3-way debate with the major party candidates. Yet, many news stories about the debate do not even mention that he was there. If they do, it's a simple one-line aside that "Libertarian Garrett Hayes also participated in the debate."

It's not like this guy is a marginal 1% factor. He's pulling 8-10% in the polls and could force a runoff between the two major candidates. So, why has he been excluded from 99 out of every 100 news stories about the event?

Ghenghis Kahn | October 14, 2006, 1:56am | #

That Hess guy comes across a little loony.

Seems like most of the libertarians who are willing to run for office have that problem.

Joseph Majsterski | October 14, 2006, 4:24am | #

Things like this make me think, why bother even trying? David had it easy against Goliath compared to this.

Mike Laursen | October 14, 2006, 8:25pm | #

Lack of press isn't the reason the Libertarian Party has an unsuccessful track record. The fundamental problem is that the Libertarian Party has been dominated for a long, long time by a hardcore fringe who are always doing and saying things that have lead to widespread dismissal of the party by the general public. We've done to much espousing of ideas that are either impractical or ill thought out, or need to be introduced incrementally because they are so foreign to the average person's world view.

If the Party had gone in a more relevant and practical direction over the past 30 years, the voting public would have grown more and more interested in what Libertarians have to say. The press would have followed the public's interest.

Fortunately, there's still time to change the Libertarian Party, start another party, or get involved in non-partisan ways of promoting freedom.

Robert Goodman | October 14, 2006, 9:42pm | #

How about getting involved also in partisan ways of promoting freedom, via parties that get more traction than LP?

Mike Laursen | October 15, 2006, 1:38am | #

Sure, if someone wants to try to use the Democratic or Republican parties to promote freedom, fine with me and good luck to them. They'll need it.

Derrick | October 15, 2006, 2:50am | #

Mike,

The Libertarian Reform Caucus has made some good headway in turning the LP around. If you support their efforts, do them a favor and sign up via the 'Join' link. IIRC, they keep stats on the number of people they can bring into (or back into) the LP, and use those for leverage with the LNC.

Robert Goodman | October 15, 2006, 10:55am | #

"Sure, if someone wants to try to use the Democratic or Republican parties to promote freedom, fine with me and good luck to them. They'll need it."

They'll need luck no matter what vehicles they try to use to promote freedom -- or to promote anything else, for that matter. But at least people operating in those parties (and some other parties besides LP) have proven they can effectively promote just about anything, over more than 2 centuries.

Mike Laursen | October 15, 2006, 12:05pm | #

Derrick, I'm pretty sure I am a member of the Libertarian Reform Caucus. Although, I think it would be a more fruitful use of reformers time to start a new party rather than trying to reform the existing one.

Ruthless | October 15, 2006, 1:22pm | #

"Third Parties as Unpersons"

The party of the third part is a persona non grata/exista unless he's Green or Kinky Friedman.
Go Kinky!

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