The Little Brown Reader

Knapp on Party Loyalty of Libertarian Leaders, Part II

This is Tom Knapp's follow-up article to his first article about "Libertarians for McClintock", the break-off group that supported the conservative Republican in last month's recall election here. He does a good job of clarifying and responding to people who had problems with his first article -- which sort of includes me, although I wrote my response to his first commentary before I read his follow-up. In other words, he had answered my complaint before I wrote it. ;-)

He does make one factual error, however:

There was no particular reason that the California LP couldn't have said "none of the three registered Libertarians running represent our positions as well as Tom McClintock does. We're endorsing him."

There was a particular reason that they couldn't do such a thing: they are prohibited from doing so by the Bylaws of the California LP.

And he makes one error of judgment, in my opinion (though he seems to hedge this point in a way that corrects the error when he mentions these points elsewhere):

It's a matter of public record that the California LP's executive committee chose, instead, to endorse Ned Roscoe, one of the three registered Libertarians running in the election. Once that endorsement was undertaken, officers in the California LP had two reasonable and ethical options:

* Resign their positions of trust within the California LP and endorse or support McClintock.

There was a third reasonable and ethical option, in my opinion: to wash one's hands of the whole torrid waste of time that the recall ended up being, and take no firm position, nor engage in any substantial action, relating to the candidates in said election.

To say that because 10 people made a misguided decision via e-mail relating to a rushed, nontraditional election (that would be the LPC Executive Committee voting to endorse Ned Roscoe), that all the leaders of the California LP had to get behind them or resign their position, is going too far with the "positions of trust" angle. Nothing about my Chairmanship of the Nevada County LP, to my knowledge, mandates that I have to endorse and support anyone that the "higher-ups" choose to endorse. To borrow a popular phrase, they're not the boss of me. And that's especially true in an election that defies the conventional mold, as this past one did, big time.

My job is to support Libertarian candidates, and nominally, I did so. I didn't think it was a good idea to support Ned Roscoe's campaign, and I didn't think I had much of a chance of convincing anyone to vote for Jack Hickey. Our executive board, like most regjonal boards (I think), decided not to try and come up with an endorsement under the rushed schedule and weird format of the election. So, Hickey got my glancing support, for all the good it did. All things considered, there were better ways for me to serve the LP as a regional leader during that time, and that's what I focused on. The recall, candidate-wise, was a wash for the California LP, and that's being generous. Making us look silly and tiny, by campaigning actively for Jack Hickey, or making us look ridiculous and foolish by helping Ned Rosoce promote his "smoker's candidacy", would, in both cases, not have helped advance liberty, or the LPC.

It didn't have to be that way, but that's how it ended up. I don't oppose or disparage Tom Knapp's view that the "Libertarians for McClintock" who were currently holding LP offices were wrong to to do both things at once (though I think to include gubernatorial candidates from 5 years ago is an untenable stretch). I do oppose his view that leaders should have supported Ned Roscoe or left the party.

(As I noted, he does clarify this elsewhere by saying, effectively "or at least don't support the other party's candidate" -- but in his maxim about the "two options", he includes no such clarification, and implies that to do other than one of those options indicates a lack of integrity, among other things. That's wrong. It simply wasn't that simple.)

Tom's column:
Party loyalty redux:
The Life of the Party, part 10
by Thomas L. Knapp

Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: .9
Learning Percentage: 22%