DL Tracking Poll — Carper leads all, but will a Green-Libertarian alliance boost Groff?
So apparently, the Delaware Libertarian Party has endorsed Green Party candidate Andrew Groff for the U.S. Senate. Many people are looking for a third option to Tom Carper and the Republican Party, and Alex Pires seems too teabaggerish and anti-Democratic.
So is Andrew Groff the longed-for option? Here is what Tully’s page has to say about a Green-Libertarian alliance:
[Tully’s Page] is devoted to establishing alliances between libertarians and progressives – something that I find very natural, but which is often viewed with suspicion by purists on either side. I am delighted, then, to be able to report on this ‘under-the-radar’ development in Delaware:
Delegates from all three counties in Delaware (New Castle, Kent, and Sussex) voted Saturday at the Libertarian Party of Delaware’s annual state convention in Dover to endorse Andrew Groff for US Senate. The party could not nominate Groff as its candidate because the Green Party has already nominated him, and the General Assembly recently abolished fusion nominations in Delaware. But the endorsement means that the Libertarians will not nominate a competing candidate, and will support Groff’s campaign. […]
At the convention, Groff told the Libertarian Party, “I have always been one of you in spirit.” He opposes the Patriot Act and the Federal “war on drugs,” and supports marriage equality. “The government receives its power by consent of the governed,” Groff said. “States have no rights other than those consented to by the people.”
Groff also discussed the barriers that Democrats and Republicans in the General Assembly have created to make ballot access and successful campaigning possible for “alternative candidates.” “Raising the number of members in a political party necessary to appear on the ballot nearly extinguished several independent parties,” Groff said. The Constitution Party has lost ballot access this year, and the Greens are scrambling to gather the final registrations necessary to assure that his name will appear on the November ballot. “I think we’ll be all right,” the candidate said.
Both the Libertarian Party of Delaware and the Independent Party of Delaware have sufficient registered members to guarantee their candidates will appear on this year’s ballot.
“I intend to give Tom Carper a good hard run,” Groff promised. “This year will be about a citizen against the corporate candidate.”
I like the Libertarian Party’s social issue positions and civil liberty positions. They go off the rails on their economic theory and their desire to eliminate the social safety net. So we will see how this works out.
In our tracking poll, here is how our readers judged the four man race:
If the election for U.S. Senate were held today, for whom would you vote?
U.S. Senator Tom Carper (D)– 47%
Andrew Groff (Green) — 18%
Bank / Bar owner Alex Pires (I) — 16%
Kevin Wade (R) — 7%
Undecided — 5%
Neither — 5%
Other — 2%Total Votes: 189. Started: June 4, 2012
Great post. I hope that progressives and libertarians can work out their differences on economic issues. I truly believe that we share the same goals, only disagree over methods. We also have a lot of progressive/libertarian alignment on foreign policy.
New poll is missing Scott Gesty (L) and Bernie August (G).
It is challenging to think about how radically individualist libertarianism can be reconciled with socialism on economic issues. At first glance, it does not seem possible.
I agree, Valentine. We have areas of common ground, but the huge deal breaking stumbling block is economics and the social safety net.
There can be strategic alliances on certain issues, but no grand alliance into a new party.
I think we’re more closely aligned on economics than you give us credit for. We’re against safety nets for banks too, and would like to see more vigorous prosecution against them for defrauding their investors in the lead up to the financial crash. Why aren’t these people in jail instead of hanging out at the Fed discount window?
There’s also a big difference between voluntary sharing of resources and State Socialism. Libertarians aren’t so much “radical individualists” as “radical anti-statists”. If you want to share your stuff and help others, our argument is that you can do that more effectively than government can, and even more effectively when government isn’t taking away a bunch of your money to do it for you.
Maybe we’re wrong, but that could be empirically proven. It’s not like we don’t WANT people to be prosperous and taken care of in times of need, we just don’t think government is the appropriate tool to accomplish those goals.
There probably shouldn’t be a grand alliance into a new party, but as the GPDE and LPD have shown here, we can very easily and happily cooperate during elections, especially if it’s to remove Tom Carper.
And we don’t think the private sector is the appropriate tool to accomplish those goals. Indeed, if Social Security had been privatized as Bush and the Republicans wanted in 2005, then tens of millions of the elderly would have lost everything in the 2008 Crash and would now be dead or in the streets.
Indeed, an unregulated private sector, which is what you want, has proved to be wholly incompetent at managing risk, and full of fraud.
And you admit that you are against the social safety for all.
Well, that means you are against Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
Like I said, Dealbreakers.
There can be strategic alliances on certain issues, but no grand alliance into a new party.
Agree completely. The so-called “libertarian-conservative fusion” that prevailed in the GOP until the early 1990s should be a lesson for everyone.
By the way, DD, the section you quoted from Tully’s page is a press release I wrote right after the LPD convention, and which he then re-blogged. So it’s more or less what I had to say, not what he had to say.
And as far as social and economic positions, and perceptions of dogmatist libertarians, it is important to note that we voted to support Andy, and that today he has received Libertarian Presidential candidate Gary Johnson’s endorsement (for what it’s worth in Delaware). But if you visit Andy’s website you will discover that he advocates single-payer healthcare. There is a significant wing within the LP (including people like Michael Munger and Mike Gravel) that supports similar ideas.
We endorsed Andrew Groff because his stand on most social issues; his stand on military interventionism; and his stand on the end of corporate welfare are all within the best traditions of pragmatic libertarian thought–“socially tolerant and fiscally responsible”–and because many of us in the LP are trying to get away from “single-issue litmus tests” in order to find better candidates.
I’m personally far more comfortable with Andy Groff in the US Senate than Tom Carper, Alex Pires, or Kevin Wade, and that’s why I will be voting and campaigning for him.
“Alex Pires seems too teabaggerish and anti-Democratic.”
Are you kidding? I think he’s more left leaning than Carper. I think maybe because he lives in Sussex County, you automatically assume he is right wing.
Alex Pires is a joke, an asshole who thinks that because he made some money he must be smart. Who cares what his politics are? He’ll get fewer votes than Mike Protack.
We don’t want an unregulated private sector, we just don’t like crazy, complex regulations that often as not are written by corporate lobbyists. We want a lean, mean, regulating machine to hold people accountable for fraud and the initiation of force. We believe that tort law and civil liability are better mechanisms for additional “regulation” as they imply the existence of an actual victim and regulatory agencies are no longer in the position of issuing indulgences for bad behavior, fines that are calculated as the cost of doing business.
Bush’s scheme for “privatizing” social security is hardly the libertarian position on the matter. Forcing you to prop up the stock market is little better than forcing you to prop up the Federal government’s balance sheet through FICA taxes.
I’m also not sure how you interpreted from my comments that we are against social safety. Again, we just don’t believe that governments can provide this efficiently or effectively, and certainly not without infringing on freedom of choice. Our presidential nominee, Gary Johnson, takes the position that these funds should not be taken from the states and laundered through the federal government before being returned a few cents lighter with strings attached. The current system lets the Feds maintain a monopoly on “social safety” and history doesn’t seem to indicate a very successful track record in that regard.
It’s a legitimate difference of opinion, but please do not assume that we don’t care about the poor and disenfranchised because we do not support your solutions.
Geezer, I don’t know. Pires made money protecting minority farmers. Although I’ve heard his ego is enormous, he hasn’t made as much money from the government as Carper.
I don’t care how he made his money. I don’t like Carper either, but I can’t think of a problem to which Alex Pires is the answer.
Geezer: baldness?
Will: Your libertarian ideas aren’t original, and they’re widely ignored for good reason. You can’t even get Republicans to sign on to your program; please don’t use that as an excuse to bother liberals here.
I realize that you think you can come here and spout your tired ideas and people here will play along. Perhaps some will. But please don’t take the failure of most to engage as acceptance of your ideas. We just don’t give a shit, and wish you’d spread your shit somewhere else.
Where did the money from the farmers case come from? Taxpayers.
Reis: Good one. But if I had to choose between Pires’ hair and none, I’d swiftly choose none.
I’m almost positive I heard him say something on the radio the other day that seemed odd to me. He said that Carper was a 7 million dollar millionaire and that he was only a 5 million dollar millionaire. The guy owns a bank, doesn’t he?
……and like half of Dewey Beach.
Carper’s wife had a high-ranking job at DuPont for many years — the kind that pays mid-six figures annually. I guess that kept him from smacking her around.
As a republican I cannot vote for Kevin Wade with the Delaware DA & FBI investigating him and the GOP Chair. I want to vote for
Alex Pires. I hope he makes it on the ballot. If he does not I might vote for Carper.
Geezer, haters gonna hate.
It ain’t hate, sport. It’s telling the children that it’s bedtime. Go to bed, little boy.
ok.
I think a version of libertarianism that is compatible with socialism would be called anarchism, which is anti-statism on the Left.
Alex is not a teabagger. He may be a populist blowhard with a big ego but his views are more left than right I am afraid.
– raise the minimum wage.
– end “too big to fail” banks and bailouts.
– term limits
– minimum wage pay for elected congress people.
– US out of the Iraq “10 years is long enough”
The comments on this site are hilarious! Telling someone who writes respectfully to stop spreading your shit around and “Go away”! Yeah! That’s it! Stay in your insular little circle of ideas. We’re near a depression through the collusion of both Democratic and Republican politicians with their corporate overlords, but you want to limit the ideas.
I sure do wish the Green party could really get off the ground in the US. I will probably be voting Green in November.
David, the trick is to blow off the trolls. I’m assuming that the readers who’d prefer not to comment are more reasonable. I agree with Valentine 100% here. The Greens would be a vast improvement over the Dems. There are a lot of self-described anarchists in the LP. I maintain that there’s a lot of common ground between progressives and libertarians. Many of our disagreements are lost in translation or a matter of means rather than ends. It’s not enough to justify a “grand alliance”, but it is certainly enough that we should all be working together by now, given our circumstances, or we will all surely fall to corporatist fascism.
I agree with what Steve Newton said. “There can be strategic alliance on certain issues, but no grand alliance into a new party. I would like to ad that you need to ad Scott Gesty (L) and Bernie August (G) in the new poll.
Telling someone to take their shit and go home we are tired of hearing about it is not limiting free speech, its a curt response. The posts of the debate you are referencing are still up for everyone to read. Make of it what you will, but we are sharing ideas.
Some of us are tired of Libertarian theory being bandied about as somehow a serious and viable alternative. If it was so serious and viable, a libertarian would have won something, somewhere. Yes, libertarians have won a handful of elections throughout the country, but the party or movement never grows from it. I wonder why that is? Natural selection comes to mind.
So, no, we are not limiting ideas, we are just expressing our ideas. And at least one of us apparently thinks libertarian ideas are good fertilizer.
Yes, because we have an open and fair electoral system.
As I said, the attitude of the other commenters on this site doesn’t phase me. The quality of their reactions, in my opinion, speaks volumes.
Your US House poll is being confused by the failure to include all the options. Who knows how many of the “Neither” votes are for Scott Gesty(L), Bernie August(G), or Rose Izzo(R).
It wouldn’t have been enough to surpass Carper’s 47%. Or even Wade’s 7% most likely. But I guess if crumbs is what you got, crumbs is what you whinge about.
US House, not this Senate poll. I’m grateful that all of the choices were included here.
Pires has a snow balls chance in hell based on his appearance alone. People are shallow, including myself I suppose. And all, don’t hate on Geezer, he hates everything (including Pires hair) don’t take it personally.