In both cases, I got to deliver the state delegation vote totals for the presidential candidates. So that was kinda cool. I got my 30 seconds of fame on C-SPAN.
I sorta remember my speeches for both, in 96 it was something like, "Mr. Chairman, the delegation from West Virginia, where the state motto is Montani Semper Liberi, Mountaineers are always free, we cast our votes for the following....."
In 2000, it was, "Mr. Chairman, the delegation from Iowa, the birthplace of (I forget, it was somebody from Iowa who had just died or something), the birthplace of Super Bowl MVP Kurt Warner, and the future birthplace of Captain James T. Kirk, we cast our votes for the following..." I knew Libertarians tend to be Star Trek nerds, so I knew the Captain Kirk reference would get an applause line. It did.
I've always had kind of a love/like relationship with the Libertarian Party. For the most part, politically I am a libertarian. There are all sorts of definitions, I've heard "Pro Choice on Everything", "socially liberal, fiscally conservative", "Republicans Who Smoke Pot", "South Park Republicans", among others.
So there are libertarians (with a small "l"), who have a political philosophy. Then there are Libertarians (with a big "L"). That is a party member. The problem with being a big "L" is that America just doesn't, as a whole, vote for 3rd party candidates. It can be Greens, Reform, Libertarian, or whatever. Once any 3rd party starts getting too big, one of the 2 big parties will start endorsing what the 3rd party is pushing, and then the 3rd party goes back to irrelevancy. So to run or a support a Libertarian generally means you are voting for somebody who is not going to win. "Wasting your vote" is the frequent mantra. So to be active as a Libertarian means getting your brains beat in on Election Day. You don't get money because you can't win, you can't win because you don't have money.
Then I've found many Libertarians want to run a debating society, and not too the hard political work. People run for US Congress as Libertarians that have never even been elected to anything, don't belong to any civic organizations, but are the masters of online message boards. That's not a way to win elections. They may be great people, and great ideas, but that is like showing up with a bunch of 5 foot tall guys to play a NBA team in basketball.
So anyway, I was watching the convention today, that was taking place in Orlando. It was the same stuff that drove me crazy about those conventions. It is a meeting, run with 1000 people, with Roberts Rules of Order. So there are always people making "points of order" or "points of personal privilege". Then motions to argue all sorts of arcane crap. There is a certain segment of people that seem to get off on being Roberts Rules gurus. You even see it locally at the caucuses here in Iowa. "Mr. Chair, I move to suspend the rules to allow Joe Blow to make a 2 minute presentation to comment on the withdrawal of his nomination to be the party's Vice Presidential nominee". Then someone else hollers, "Point of information" "The Chair recognizes microphone #2. Please state your name." "Mr. Chair, John Doe, delegate from Ohio, is the 2 minute presentation now, or after the discussion of the motion to cease nominations?" ARRRGH!
Today was the awesome sauce of the LP tho. The Republicans and Democrats have highly scripted conventions. They care about what it looks like on TV, and nobody is getting to the stage without being properly vetted. But today....The LP was doing nomination speeches for individuals who were interested in becoming their national chairman. So the first speaker was some guy around 30 years old, about an 8" long beard below his chin, and weighing around 300 bills. He had the convention audio-visual people start some song, and he proceeded to slowly strip down to a thong. No one bothered to get him off the stage, and he danced in a thong for his allotted 2 minute time. Hilarious, sad, and pathetic all at the same time. At the end of the 2 minutes, he withdrew his nomination for chair. Here is American Democracy in action.
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