Rob took the words out of my mouth -- I'd only add that for years, American Motors was in ascendancy and people insisted that these "new little companies" from Japan and Korea couldn't win without a partnership with one of the Big Four.
Just like people say the Libertarian Party is irrelevant and thus shouldn't be invested in, Wall Street declared Toyota, Honda and Nissan as jokes to be written off.
Just as people today say "this race will be won either by a Democrat or a Republican" and that people would pass the LP and Greens by, people in the 1960s and 1970s said "consumers are going to choose either a Plymouth or an Oldsmobile or Gremlin, since the Toyota and Honda aren't real cars."
Have you tried buying a new Oldsmobile, Gremlin or Plymouth lately?
Change happens when people reject obsolete paradigms. The "influence the Republicans" paradigm has been front and center in the "libertarian movement" since the late 1970s. It has dismally failed. It should be abandoned for new thinking, where we talk about how to achieve our goals rather than write off a new strategy based upon short-term prospects (that are largely a result of the LP not thinking in the long term).
There's no magic bullet -- just hard work and common sense. Common sense says the GOP, which has moved steadily away from libertarianism for the past 25 years, will continue to do so. Just look at its candidates and leadership.
Common sense says that a libertarian future isn't going to be built by a 72 year old man who isn't that libertarian to begin with and will likely retire in another couple of years.
Common sense says that a libertarian movement made up mostly of suburban white straight guys needs to reach out to a constituency that's increasingly diverse by developing leaders from the African American, Hispanic, and other communities. Not to mention women, who I hear are a pretty big chunk of the voting population.
Is it hard work? You betcha. But we've got to make the decision to do it. If we're not going to do it, we might as well just give up the ghost and go home -- Republican half-measures like the Ron Paul campaign are just big wastes of time, money and energy.
Cheers,
Brian
Rob <robpower@...> wrote: Well, first, Brian said American Motors (which went out of business)
not General Motors (which barely survived).
And, second, I used to work for Saturn. It was a lot like the Ron
Paul campaign -- it showed a lot of promise. But in the end, GM (the
RNC) was way more powerful and ended up bending Saturn to fit the GM
mold. Nowadays, all the things that made Saturn a promising upstart
in the early 90s are completely gone, and Saturn is now just another
typical GM line.
As apt as Brian's analogy was with American Motors, yours is even more
apt regarding Ron Paul and Saturn. Ron Paul cannot fix the Republican
Party any more than Saturn could fix GM.
Rob