Also, I'd like to know if Invictus has eaten one of his shoes yet, like he said he would if Gary Johnson got more votes than is typical for a Libertarian presidential candidate.

Yeah, I gobbled it up. Under him the vote skyrocketed to .98% of the vote in comparison to the historical average of .39%.

Tolstoy, you're hopeless and reject any information out of hand that doesn't reinforce your blind devotion to Ron Paul. The one study said Romney's coverage turned more positive after the Michigan primary. The study saying coverage was mostly negative was taken from January, well before the Michigan primary.

"Ron Paul was consistently portrayed as crazy, kooky, America-hating, and all kind of other negatives"

And you get this from what, your gut feeling? Who needs journalistic studies from reputable organizations when Tolstoy can just shout about conspiracies from the rooftops.

Only a Ron Paul cultist would celebrate winning 118 delegates out of 2286 and winning 1 million votes out of 120 million.

"And you get this from what, your gut feeling?"

This will spell it out for you better than I can:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-august-15-2011/indecision-2012---corn-polled-edition---ron-paul---the-top-tier

Even if the media did savage Ron Paul, that doesn't change the fact that he got very, very few votes in the primary elections. Conventions and caucuses don't mean too much when you can't win a real election.

A big part of politics is knowing when you're beat. Ron Paul got beat. I like him, and may have voted for him in 2012 like I did in 2008 if Santorum hadn't had a real shot at winning Illinois. But that doesn't change the reality that not enough people liked him. Just like not enough people liked Romney in the general election. It's no good pretending that your loss was due to some conspiracy of meanies. All that will do is mean you won't adapt and won't have a shot at the next one.

The future for libertarians in the Republican Party is bright, but if they just whine about slights real and imagined rather than focus everything on winning a proper election at the polls then they will continue to be sidelined. You gotta get in in order to change anything.

How the fuck Libertarians ever thought being in a coalition with a fuckton of evangelical Christians was a workable idea is beyond me.

Wow, your source is the Daily Show. That sure beats a systematic analysis of positive & negative mentions about candidates by the Pew Research Center. Jon Stewart's fawning and glowing praise of Ron Paul should be yet more evidence of Ron Paul's exceedingly positive coverage by the media. When even Stewart won't ridicule you and you're a Republican with kooky fringe beliefs, you know the media is in the tank for you.

"You gotta get in in order to change anything."

They don't want to change anything. They're like too many people I know on the left. They're professional oppositionists who like complaining from the sidelines and pretending everybody is out to get them. They wouldn't know what to do if they were actually relevant. They'd be more confused than the Lib Dems in the UK.

"How the fuck Libertarians ever thought being in a coalition with a fuckton of evangelical Christians was a workable idea is beyond me."

There is no daylight between "libertarians" and evangelical Christians and there hasn't been ever since the Murray Rothbards & Lew Rockwells of the world attached the wagon of libertarianism to the social conservative movement in the 1980s. I mean look at the list of people in the so-called Republican Liberty Caucus who Tolstoy just bragged about getting elected. They're Christian fundamentalists of the first order.

There's more than daylight. There are weeks between them. A libertarian generally supports gay marriage, drug legalization, and is pro-choice. On social issues they really couldn't be further from evangelicals. You're talking out of your ass here, which is a shame since you were making a lot of sense in this thread.

"I talked a Ron Paul supporter (who knocked on my car window at a drive-through because he wanted to tell me he liked my RP bumper sticker) out of voting for Romney just the day before the election."

Wow. You truly have no concept of how to advance any of your beliefs.

On the bright side, I suspect he probably just agreed with you so you would let him back away a little faster.

"They don't want to change anything. They're like too many people I know on the left. They're professional oppositionists who like complaining from the sidelines and pretending everybody is out to get them. They wouldn't know what to do if they were actually relevant."

That may be true for Libertarians, by which I mean supporters of the Libertarian Party. But when I worked in DC LITERALLY every Republican under 30 that I met identified as a libertarian, meaning fiscally conservative but socially liberal or indifferent. Tolstoy types may never have a shot at real influence, but staffers are already going in that ideological direction and eventually elected officials will too. They're just too young to run and Baby Boomer incumbents are hording the seats.

It'll be like when the conservatives kicked out the moderates. It took decades.

In fairness, Invictus, a lot of libertarians are pro life. By no means a majority, but quite a few.

You talking to one. But I was only speaking in generalities.

When have I ever claimed that Ron Paul should've won the Republican nomination, in 2008 or 2012? I've walked my precinct for him and knocked on the doors of Republican voters. I know full well he is a tough sell to a great many Republicans for a great variety of reasons. I believe the libertarian movement still has win many hearts and minds to win before it starts to see electoral results. Ron Paul is part of that effort (a very important part), and has done more to promote libertarianism than anyone in our lifetimes. The fruit of the tree that sprouted under his care in the last 5 years may not come for decades, but God willing - if that tree is kept watered and protected from harm - it will bear fruit which young whippersnappers like yourself can taste in another 30 or 40 or 50 years.

My chief complaint expressed here in this forum - and the complaint of a great many other RP supporters - is that he (and us) have not gotten a fair shake within the system. This does not mean I think Ron Paul could have or should have won the Republican primary in 2012. I think at best, in a fair and rule-compliant process, he would've won six or eight small caucus states and gotten no more than 500 delegates and Romney still would've won the nomination. But this doesn't mean we shouldn't complain about procedural injustice now, since failing to do so would simply make it that much easier to shut out Rand Paul or Christ Christie or whoever it is you're favoring in 2016 with the same tactics - candidates who *do* have a shot at winning the nomination.

If you need to worry about procedure to win a primary you're in a pretty bad place. The complaints and whining by Ron Paul people has even put me off, I can only imagine how it looks to less sympathetic minds. You know, exactly the people who need to be convinced that libertarian minded candidates are worth voting for. Bellyaching solves nothing, coming back and winning does.

"There is no daylight between "libertarians" and evangelical Christians and there hasn't been ever since the Murray Rothbards & Lew Rockwells of the world attached the wagon of libertarianism to the social conservative movement in the 1980s. "

That was a very brief wagon-hitching, was in the '90s (not the '80s), ended more or less immediately on Rothbard's death, and the Rothbard/Rockwell libertarian faction is a fringe of the fringe libertarian movement as a whole (and yes, one which I persist in attaching myself to, which is why "respectable" beltwaytarians like Invictus call me crazy).

"On the bright side, I suspect he probably just agreed with you so you would let him back away a little faster."

Perhaps, but I like to think I made a difference. Not that it matters here in California, where Barry Obama was guaranteed a victory.

"On social issues they really couldn't be further from evangelicals. You're talking out of your ass here, which is a shame since you were making a lot of sense in this thread."

Invictus, look at the examples being held up of libertarians in Congress. What are people like Ted Cruz saying about gay rights? Look at the strategic pact people like Murray Rothbard, Lew Rockwell, and the Von Mises Institute types made back in the late 1980s when they were running around endorsing people like David Duke. They believed that the social conservatives would be useful allies in the movement for 'small government' and 'states rights'.

The main bone of contention between the Paulies and the rest of the GOP isn't about the latter's disdain for gays & women (especially because Paul was on their side on both those issues). It's about the Federal Reserve and foreign policy. Libertarians just aren't as socially liberal as you want them to be. Your variant of libertarianism is even more irrelevant than the paleo-libertarianism of Ron Paul.

"If you need to worry about procedure to win a primary you're in a pretty bad place."

OMG. Are you seriously suggesting that shutting down party conventions when it becomes obvious that Paulistas are going to win is NBD?

"where Barry Obama was guaranteed a victory."

That's your own fault. Prop 187 delivered California into the hands of Democrats for generations to come. Something the Paleo-Libertarians supported.

Example of such a convention, Tolstoy? (State is preferable).

Huh? Prop 187 passed 59-41.

No, it's a scandal. But it's a scandal that matters very little, especially to anyone not intimately involved in state party politics. Which is easily north of 99% of people. If they cancelled the result of a primary election then we could talk.

Putin33 means that it pissed off enough of the Hispanics that the Democrats will always win from now on. He may be right.

Right, and who was opposed to that? The Democratic Party. Who supported it? The Republicans, including your buddies Rothbard & Rockwell. That forever killed any goodwill the GOP had with Latino voters, and California has been solidly Democratic on the national level ever since.

"Example of such a convention, Tolstoy? (State is preferable)."

Nevada, Louisiana, Missouri, Iowa, Maine off the top of my head - all had varying sorts of shenanigans employed when Paulistas showed up in great numbers and were obviously going to sweep the state GOP party offices. Nevada, I believe, is where the lights were literally turned off.

"Putin33 means that it pissed off enough of the Hispanics that the Democrats will always win from now on."

Prop 187 was almost 20 years ago. Most of the people who voted for or against it don't even remember it, and those that do probably remember it was the Mexican flags flown at protest demonstrations and militant reconquista rhetoric from Mexican activists that ticked them off enough to vote in favor of it.

"California has been solidly Democratic on the national level ever since."

Yes, on the national level - completely ignoring Wilson's re-election as governor, Governor Gray-out (D)'s recall, Ah-nold's two terms, and California's solidly conservative (not, alas, libertarian) track record when it comes to ballot initiatives.

Tolstoy, even if the conventions happened exactly as you say (and I have a hard time buying it) that's still such inside baseball that virtually no one will care. Bellyaching over what may have happened at a state party convention is no way to build the conditions for winning a presidential election.

"Bellyaching over what may have happened at a state party convention is no way to build the conditions for winning a presidential election."

If the end result of THE PROCESS is Obamney vs. Rombama, I really don't care who wins the presidential election. If you want a system where the Republican nominee is chosen for you three years ahead of time by God-knows-who and then the primary process is rigged to guarantee his selection, then by all means shut up and sit down. If you believe you should have a say in the process, then you should be pissed off about what has been done to Ron Paul and his supporters even if you think 99% of people don't care (which I think you're probably right about) and we're all crazy.