The Libertarian Party

What does the Libertarian Party stand for?

The Libertarian Party is small government in all its forms. That means laissez-faire economics, which is the government stays out of the free market as much as possible. It also means that the government stays out of people's private lives as much as possible, too. It kind of creates an interesting aspect where they want small government, they want free market economics, but then they also don't want the government telling people things, a lot of times, about abortion, about marriage, or about these other sorts of things, so it's kind of small government across the board. One way to put it is the term we use, which is the night watchman state, where the state's just there to make sure nothing bad happens. It's not there to actually promote things.

How did the Libertarian Party start?

It started in the 1970s. A group of people got together, took these Libertarian ideas and turned it into a Libertarian party because they were dissatisfied that free-market economics was on the Republican side and more of the staying out of the private lives was on the Democratic side. They kind of created their own Libertarian party to fuse both those things together and it really started to take off in the 1980s.

How is the Libertarian Party changing?

Well, the Libertarian Party has always had a problem in the fact that it's been a third party. American electoral politics makes it very difficult for third parties to actually win. So sometimes Libertarians are registered Libertarians but end up voting Republican at least through the '80s and the '90s, except for the ones who just couldn't stand the Republican candidate, then they'll vote for the Libertarian candidate. And as the saying goes, throw their vote away. Though, that's a perspective issue. Now since the candidacy of George W. Bush and the compassionate conservative which the Republican Party has been more willing to use the government, a lot of Libertarians have been willing to side with the Democrats on certain things.

Who votes for the Libertarian Party?

There are a lot of academics that tend to be Libertarian, that if they're not kind of more on the Democratic side, it's academically fashionable to be Libertarian to a certain extent. Libertarian has a logical consistency to it that a lot of academics like. A lot of rural, people more in the rural areas who really want to be left alone, and especially towards the west, rural California have a lot of Libertarians. So does rural Arizona, Nevada, Oregon even, they tend to be more Libertarian. But it actually can span a wide spectrum because it is more of an idea driven thing then an electoral politics driven thing.

Where is the Libertarian Party strongest?

The Libertarian Party's regional strength seems to be in the West through the western part of the state and in the rural areas of the West. So California, Nevada, Arizona, Idaho, Wyoming, Oregon, to a certain extent, eastern Washington state where it's more rural, that and Montana especially, that tends to be where a lot of the Libertarian strength lies, though again it's spread out all across the country as in terms of an idea or ideological-driven movement.