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What Makes Them Run?

There’s only two reasons.

I had lunch yesterday with 15 or 20 Libertarians from the area that are hoping to organize the party at the county level.  State party Vice-Chair and 6th district congressional candidate Dorit Goikhman led the meeting and was elected County Chairperson.  She is an attorney from  Morganville.  Sitting in on the meeting was our new state chair, Patrick McKnight,  and our U.S. Senate candidate, Joe Baratelli.  Charles Measley, political director for Republican U.S. Senate candidate Murray Sabrin also attended.

I had the shrimp salad wrap with french fries and cole slaw.  It was a little heavy on the lettuce and a little light on the shrimp.

Sitting with two great candidates there I have to admit that I was more than a little jealous.  As all of you know all too well, I love running for office.  If I wasn’t involved in helping the “Belmar Rising” campaign this year I could have probably pretty easily been talked into running for Congress in this district.

It’s really great running as a Libertarian (or a strongly libertarian Republican) because it frees you from the burden of having to convince the voters that you’re smarter than they are and that you’re smarter than the other candidate.  I’ve always said, in every campaign I’ve been in, that I’m not a smart guy.  You don’t want me running your affairs.  I’d screw everything up.  But at least I’m smart enough to know that I’m not smart enough to run your affairs and that I’d screw everything up.  So I and people who think like me, such as Dorit and Joe, we run on principle.

And that principle is that people own their own lives and if they are honest, and peaceful, they have a right to live their lives absent the threat of force or violence being used against them.  Once you understand that, the issues are clear.  Just apply your principles.  This is why libertarians rarely get caught flat footed at a debate.

Now ask any of the normal candidates to describe their governing principles.  Oh, they’ll tell you about all the good things they want to do and all the great ideas they have.  They’ll tell you how they graduated magna cum friggin laude from some great school and all the important jobs they’ve had.  They’ll work so hard to try to convince you that they have some sort of special wisdom that you lack.  They can solve the problems that you can’t solve and that their opponents can’t solve.  They are smart enough to run society and to run your life.

But they can’t talk about principles because they don’t have any.  And once they are in office, their sole principle is to use the government’s power to make themselves popular with enough people so they can get themselves re-elected over and over again.

I’ve never met an egotistical libertarian.  We understand it’s not about us.

But for your typical politician, it’s always all about them.

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