If the guy is looking for "the party of FDR," the Libertarian Party is the LAST place this guy should look.

I just hope the party isn't stupid enough to accept this guy just for name recognition in hopes of getting a few more votes than whatever unknown person we might come up with.  It reminds me of when Howard Stern ran for whatever he ran for.  It was shameful to the party, imho.  To take on a tax-and-spend Democrat would be an even huger mistake.

Let me first say I don't think Mike should be our presidental candidate this year. Perhaps after a few years in the party and with a greater shift in a Libertarian direction I would consider it. That aside, having people with actual expericence at getting elected like Bob Barr and Mike Gravel has to be a good thing for our party.  Also if we are seroius about growth we will need to bring in people that hold veiws slightly askew from ours. Once they are around Libertarians we can help them see the error of their ways. Growing from the left with Gravel and the right with Barr and Paul really will make us the centerist party that America wants and needs.

I don't follow your question Mik.  If you mean did Dondero have anything to do with Gravel declaring his move to the Libertarian Party, I don't think so.

David Jahn

http://www.gravel2008.us/issues

This guy confuses the hell out of me. On his issues page he discusses introduction of the fairtax and dissolution of the IRS. Then he talks about taxes for carbon emissions. It was my undestanding that the fairtax was to do away with embedded taxes in goods and services so that we could see, everytime we choose to buy a product/service, exactly what the government was taking from us. If he is going to impliment this system, which I believe is a good start, how can he justify screwing it all up by adding taxes to corporations that will once again lead us to embedded taxes that we cannot see? i have enough trouble explaining to people now why gas prices are going up without trying to explain another broken, overcomplicated, taxation system.

I'm not even going to bother getting into his nationalized healthcare bit. I have serious reservations about this candidate. If he would win the nomination by some dumb luck, I would have to look elsewhere for a candidate to vote for. On his site he states that a citizen would pay nothing for healthcare since it is part of his "progressive fairtax". How exactly then does a citizen not pay for healthcare? The only way that is possible is if a citizen purchases no goods or services other than the necessities of life. What kind of a solution is that for our economy?

I think Mike Gravel comes more from the classical liberal part of the D Party. That part believes in things like free speech, being secure in your person and papers, and other individual rights. This has not been a significant faction in the D Party for quite some time, perhaps slightly longer than there has been no significant libertarian influence in the R Party.

The terms conservative and liberal I find to be limiting, and are only good if you are working within a spectrum of whether government should regulate personal behavior or economic activity more. Having seen a couple of Gravel interviews, I think he makes some great points with some very solid and well thought-out positions, many of which are consistent with maximizing individual liberty. In my opinion, this makes him at least as good a Libertarian as most currently in the LP, and his experience in federal elected office makes him a very good candidate for the LP presidential nomination.

I think the problem is that most current LP members come from the conservative right, and identify more with the economic positions espoused (but not implemented) by the R Party.  Because the D Party hasn't espoused the ideas of personal liberty in a long time (at least they are honest about it), most LP members automatically associate someone from the D Party with the "socialist" economic ideas. I think the R Party represents national socialism, while the D party represents democratic socialism, but that is neither here nor there as neither are true socialist parties.

While I'm not particularly thrilled with the idea of creating a "federal reserve system for healthcare", at least he is not requiring employer coverage and uses a modification of the fairtax to address funding. His healthcare plan is either not well thought out or I am not understanding his proposal very well, probably the latter.

I think the NI4D proposal to give people a direct role in legislative initiatives is interesting for two reasons. First, I think it has the capability of creating a cacophony in the legislative process at the national level that will render it useless for increasing government authority, which is a good thing. I also think the idea is generally in the right direction, although I would go about it differently. I think it would be better to pull decision making authority away from the federal government to the states, from the states to local government, and ultimately place responsibility on the individual to self-govern.

I think if Mike Gravel wins a slot on the LP presidential ticket, it will not be by dumb luck. It will be because he is able to articulate a plan and a vision to reverse the trend toward more government authority and control. I'm not saying that will happen, as it seems a lot of delegates will need some convincing. It would be interesting to have a presidential ticket with both a former R elected federal official and a former D elected federal official, however.

Mik Robertson

Libertarians might find them amazing for different reasons.

I'm not a fan of the flat tax or an ecotax.  It gives permission to pollute as long as you can afford the fees.


I don't like universal healthcare, and I'd rather see roads privatized wherever possible.


Socialism always runs in the red.  That is why we oppose it.

I hope that helps.

David Jahn