Libertarian Party Suit Could Mean A 3-Party Debate

v4mpyr writes "The lawsuit initiated by the Arizona Libertarian Party against the ASU and CPD has been successfully scheduled for a hearing. If the CPD cannot present a decent case for excluding Michael Badnarik from a private debate funded by public sources, they will have to exercise one two options: Let Michael Badnarik debate this Wednesday or reschedule and relocate the debate. Either way it will be a major win for the third parties. The official press release can be found here."

Comments

Re:I know one reason to exclude him.

[crimethinker]

I hope you're trolling; then you're just mean instead of dangerously stupid.

Badnarik is on the ballot in AZ, along with Bush and Kerry. The debate is in AZ, with AZ taxpayer money. Logically, then, it seems like he should be in the debate. But then again, I want Badnarik to embarass the hell out of Bush and Kerry. I'd feel the same way if it was Ralph Nader or any of the other third-party candidates. I want any third-party candidate in there to show the public how nearly indistinguishable the two major parties are these days.

-paul

Yay!

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Just because Libertarians can be really annoying at parties doesn't mean that they shouldn't have a voice in political debates. Count this Democrat as very pleased that the Libertarians may be included in the debates. This is tremendous victory for them, AND for our country as a whole. Inclusiveness is a goal that we have been moving towards for 228 years, in all aspects of our society. This can only be a good thing.

Now, all I have to do is figure out a way from keeping them from bringing up Ayn Rand at my next party as they hang out at the punch bowl...

Re:Bad Idea

[ComputerSlicer23]

I'm going to have to disagree there. First, he is actually on the ballot on the state in question. That is why the greens shouldn't be nor the communists (by the way, they are the socialist party, I've never heard of a communist party actually existing in the US). Feel free to correct me on that one. My friend was the president recently, and treasury before that, of the socialist party (he's a nut case, I don't believe any of his politics by the way).

Second, I would suggest that getting the third party candidate on the debate is probably silly. However, I would suggest that the other alternative, of not using government/tax payer money is a grand idea. It's just silly that the Democrats and Republicans can run debate and then use public money to finance the damn thing. It's silly. They can easily put up the money themselves.

I know I'd be unhappy on a tax payer in that state. Finally, getting a third party candidate wouldn't be a bad idea, if only because it could introduce a lot of the public to a third party candidate for the first time in a long while. Other then Ross Perot, I don't believe there has been a legitimate candidate in my life time. I'd love to see them get a chance to be on prime time. They have a lot of good ideas, and can challenge the existing candidates from another point of view. If only to see how the major candidates respond to them.

Kirby

The third parties are being censored!

[isotope23]

I tried to submit this but /. rejected it

At least FOX is censoring its guests. They cannot mention Badnarik on the air.

I emailed one person in question directly here is his reply:

I am the Muslim Outreach Coordinator for the campaign of the Libertarian U.S. presidential candidate Michael Badnarik. On August 20, a staffer for the O'Reilly Factor television show pre-interviewed me for an appearance to give an opposing point of view to O'Reilly's guest Muhammad Ali Hasan, founder of "Muslims for Bush." On the way to the studio to tape the program on August 26, however, I received a call from O'Reilly's staffer informing me that although I would be identified as a Muslim supporter of Badnarik, I must not mention the Libertarian Party or Badnarik's name on the air. I assured the staffer that I would not turn the segment into a Badnarik campaign ad, but objected that preventing me from mentioning Badnarik's name even once would muzzle my main point that one need not support Kerry to oppose Bush. The staffer insisted that I make the point without mentioning either Badnarik's name or that of the Libertarian Party. When I declined to accept these terms, the staffer had the driver they hired take me home.

Another local Muslim with no connection to the Badnarik campaign, Khalid Turaani, was hurried to the studio to take my place. On the air, O'Reilly sought to rebut Turanni's criticism of Bush with criticism of Kerry. Turaani spontaneously replied that, as a conservative, he would never vote for Kerry and intended to vote for the Libertarian candidate Michael Badnarik. Watching this turn of events at home, I was reminded of a verse in the Qur'an: "They plotted their plans and God made His plans, and God is the best of planners."

Yours truly, I. Dean Ahmad, Ph.D. Bethesda, MD

below is the link where i first found the story.

http://www.registerguard.com/news/2004/09/26/ed.co l.nathan.0926.html

Re:Double-standard

[psykocrime]

I guess the Libertarian party only believes in hands-off government when it works to their advantage.

This is the Libertarian Party we're talking about, not the Anarchist Party. Libertarians aren't necessarily about having NO government, just the least government necessary.

Anwyay, as it is we have a system, laws, taxes, etc. in place... and while Libertarians would seek to make some fairly progressive changes in some of those areas, we have to work within the system in order to change it. It's not hypocritical, it's pragmatic.

Re:I seriously doubt the courts will allow this

[psykocrime]

The Constitutions of most states clearly establish a two party system.

Interesting... I've never heard of such a thing. Would you mind posting a few snippets of the relevant sections of a few such State Constitutions, for our elucidation? And maybe a list of a handful of States that have such clauses in their Constitutions?

Not a troll, I'm seriously interested to see this info, as it's news to me.

For a moment

[mcc]

let's look past the question of whether Badnarik should be allowed into the final debate. Let's ask ourselves what would happen if he were.

The final debate was, by the original agreement, to be on the subject of domestic and economic policy. This is so far a subject which has gone mostly uncovered in the debates. Only the first debate was meant to be explicitly on foreign policy, but both the vice presidential and townhall debates were dominated by discussion of foreign policy, and more specifically discussion of Iraq. Both of these debates began with discussion of Iraq, and all the most firey and attention-grabbing portions were during the Iraq portions. The domestic halves of these two debates were a bit more cursory and did not delve into the details of economic policy.

Meanwhile, economic policy is where the Kerry campaign's true strength is. It is easier to make the Bush campaign look bad over Iraq, but it is not in any way easy to make the Kerry campaign look good over Iraq. Economic policy, however, is an area where the Kerry campaign has a chance to make itself look actually good. Kerry can point to distinct policy differences and make a legitimate argument that these differences would result in real improvement. He just needs to grab the public's attention somehow. Since the last few weeks have been utterly dominated by discussion of Iraq both inside and outside Kerry's campaign, however, there has not been a chance for this to happen.

Kerry has a chance to swing the national debate over to domestic and economic policy at least for a little while in this debate. Since Kerry did not begin to heavily harp on Iraq until shortly before the foreign policy debate, it is likely Kerry will take this opportunity. The debate also offers Kerry a chance to convince the country to briefly sit down and listen to his economic views. Meanwhile, the domestic policy debate offers no positive opportunities to the Bush campaign. The best Bush can hope for is to ramble about marriage and small business owners enough that he can distract viewers from what Kerry is saying; he has no points of his own to score. The question is not whether Bush or Kerry will benefit from wednesday's debate. The question is how much of Kerry's benefit from Wednesday's debate Bush will be able to blunt.

If Badnarik gets his order granted, this becomes moot. The final debate will suddenly have an unplanned random factor plunged into it enough to totally disrupt the debate. Not only would Badnarik's mere presence in the debate be a distraction from the two candidates there, but his input and any obligation on the part of the major-party candidates to respond to it would effectively prevent discussion on the subject of which of the two major-party candidates would offer a better economic policy. Kerry could still attempt to outline his economic policy. Viewers would not pick up on it. It would be lost in the chaos.

My conclusion: Allowing Badnarik into the debate would be a serious impairment to the Kerry campaign, and have little to no effect on the Bush campaign. The Kerry campaign would lose its one given opportunity to outline to the nation a major plank of its platform. The Bush campaign would neatly get to opt-out of a potentially embarrassing debate. This would be a disastrous result for Kerry's chances of winning and an extremely positive result for Bush's.