What’s a party to do?
The purpose of a political party is to run candidates for public office. There are various ways to organize a political party, the most common basis being to gather together individuals with a similar ideological viewpoint. Parties of any size will inevitably have internal conflicts and these conflicts tend to increase in number and complexity with the size of the party, although the intensity may wax and wane. When these intraparty disputes become a greater focus of the organization than it’s primary mission it tends to result in a weakening of the party as some members feel disconnected and potential new members are discouraged from joining due to the negativity and divisiveness.
The two establishment parties in the United States have switched places in many respects since the advent of what historians call the Third Party System in the 1850s. Despite constant dissension and the occasional splitting off of some faction or other, as organizations the Republicans and Democrats have never lost sight of the fact that their job is to field candidates. Alternative parties, on the other hand, have found it difficult to not become distracted by internal disputes. The Green Party is currently in disarray after the woefully disappointing 2020 presidential campaign featuring a candidate that was seen as anointed by party leadership despite being ill-equipped to perform well. The Socialists have a long and storied history of schism, with almost too many ‘leftist’ parties in this country to count. The Constitution Party and the Reform Party have both faced factionalism and wayward state affiliates. Of course all of these groups are in decline as they typically only focus on the presidential election every four years and spend the rest of the time finding ways to fight with themselves.
David Nolan and some of his associates founded the Libertarian Party in 1971 with a particularly clear and unique ideological foundation of prioritizing the rights of individuals in all things, a viewpoint that remains attractive due to standing alone in the political marketplace in calling for limiting government power rather than expanding it. Nevertheless, the LP has experienced as much if not more internal dissension than other political parties as members heatedly debate each other’s ideological soundness and political acumen. A major schism occurred in the 1980s when a more right-wing populist faction worked to drive out the ‘low-tax liberalism’ approach of Cato’s Ed Crane. Many of those paleolibertarians left the LP after Ron Paul’s 1988 presidential campaign, choosing in 1992 to back Pat Buchanan and, embarrassingly, after his loss going on to publicly support the re-election of George H. W. Bush. The echoes of that conflict have never gone away and are reverberating quite loudly today. Nevertheless, the LP has distanced itself from all of the other alternative parties by doing a much better job of doing what political parties are supposed to do. The LP runs candidates for public office.
If the Libertarian Party wishes to remain the only alternative party that matters, it will focus on it’s proper function which is to field candidates for elective office at all levels. The general public, from whom new voters and new members may be drawn, learns about libertarianism from campaigns. There may be individuals who seek office under other party labels who hold and promote libertarian views but they are always subsumed into the nature of the organization under whose label they operate. We may like that they stand apart from the rest of their partisans, but their singularity is in itself the reason they will never attain a status beyond that of being an outlier. Only by putting the brand with the candidate are we able to make it clear that we are offering something different, something that is neither left nor right. If we let the ability to do so slip from our grasp due to an internal squabbles, it may be permanently lost.
Thus, the demand put upon those who would wish to hold the positions of administration of the party organization should be to resolve conflicts in a professional manner with a minimum of acrimony. The role of party officers is to support candidates, primarily by maintaining necessary party structure. If party officers are spending their time debating ideological correctness, or even worse attempting to enforce it, they are out of line and actively harming the party. Candidates are the ones who put forth ideas into the political marketplace. And delegates in convention produce platforms. Party officers when acting in their capacity as such are administrators and cheerleaders.
We as a party will do ourselves a world of good by choosing party officers who demonstrate an ability to put the good of the organization first, prioritize following the rules, present themselves in a professional manner, refrain from engaging unnecessarily in controversy and conflict, realize that party office is not the appropriate platform for ideological debate, and know their role as support for the primary function of the party which is to run candidates. Those who want to be in the arena of ideas need to stand for public office. Nobody goes to a ballgame to watch the cheerleaders fight.
