<blockquote>Democratic strategists have long fretted that Ralph Nader could draw votes from their presidential candidate. But a new survey suggests that President Bush faces a potential threat of his own from a more obscure spoiler: Michael Badnarik.
In the survey, conducted in three Midwest battleground states, some voters who said they would choose Bush over Sen. John F. Kerry in a two-candidate race also said they would pick Badnarik, the Libertarian Party nominee for president, if he were added to the ballot.
The survey was conducted in Minnesota, Iowa and Wisconsin by the University of Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. It will be made public today.
The numbers for Badnarik were small: He drew 1% to 1.5% of the vote in a four-way race with Bush, Democratic candidate Kerry and Nader, an independent. But analysts said the results suggested that the small-government Libertarians could attract enough conservatives disaffected with Bush's leadership to swing a tight race, just as Nader attracted discontented liberals in 2000.
"This shows us that there is a small, but potentially very significant, number of upper-Midwesterners who are interested in voting for the Libertarian Party, and that they appear to be hailing from the wings of the Republican Party," said Lawrence Jacobs, a Humphrey Institute political scientist, who directed the poll.
The survey suggested that the Libertarian had potential to steal support from Bush where it could hurt most: among much-coveted independents.
In Wisconsin, the survey showed that 8% of independents would back Badnarik. That cut Bush's performance among independent voters in the state from about 50% to 43%.
"Those voters, without even knowing the candidate, are so upset with Bush they are willing to say, 'I'm going to vote for a Libertarian,'" Jacobs said.
The telephone survey, conducted June 21 to July 12, had a margin of error of 4 percentage points. It included 589 registered voters in Minnesota, 575 in Wisconsin and 614 in Iowa.
Of those states, Badnarik has secured a place on the ballot only in Wisconsin. But ballot access is so easy in Minnesota and Iowa that the Libertarians are all but certain of success there, Richard Winger, editor of Ballot Access News, said. "Since there have been Libertarians, there has never been a presidential election where the Libertarians were not on the ballot in those two states," he said.
Nader has drawn far more attention than Badnarik, 49, a computer programmer from Austin, Texas. In the Humphrey Institute poll, Nader drew as much as 5% of the vote in a four-way race, and he appeared to draw more support from Kerry than Badnarik took from Bush.
But it is unclear how many state ballots will include Nader. Badnarik is already on the ballot in 30 states, Winger said, and the Libertarian Party says its candidate has made the ballot in all 50 states for the last three elections.
The impact of third-party candidates has received renewed attention since 2000, when Nader ran as the Green Party candidate and won thousands of votes that many analysts thought would have gone to Democrat Al Gore, likely putting Gore in the White House.
Republicans sought to discount a threat from Badnarik, noting that, even in the Humphrey survey, Bush won support from 90% of Republicans.
Vin Weber, a former Republican congressman from Minnesota who is advising the Bush campaign, said the impact of the Libertarians would be so minimal that it fit more in the category of what the weather was like on election day.
"I have not been involved in a single discussion yet where the impact of the Libertarian Party has been raised as a significant risk factor," Weber said. (Peter Wallsten, "Libertarian Badnarik May Cost Bush Support, Poll Finds," <em>Los Angeles Times</em>, <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/whitehouse/la-na-poll21jul21,1,4355572.story?coll=la-news-politics-white_house">July 21, 2004</a>)</blockquote>
The Republicans don't appear to be too upset with Badnarik, leaving him alone, unlike the Democrats who have used everything from lawsuits to slanders to keep Nader off the ballots. Probably the Republicans are counting on Badnarik's obscurity, just as the Democrats do not fear David Cobb on the Green Party ballots and candidates of socialist sects, all of whom are completely unknown to nearly 100% of voters.
Voters who would consider voting for the Libertarian Party candidate must be, for the most part, affluent white men who are socially liberal, fiscally conservative, and very strongly opposed to the occupation of Iraq. They can't be a large group, but they aren't non-existent either.
Badnarik, as a matter of fact, sounds pretty eloquent and clear-sighted on foreign policy, including on the matter of Israel and Palestinians, and I'd think that what he says here compares favorably to what mealymouthed liberals come up with:
<blockquote>Military Policy and the War in Iraq
The War in Iraq is a failure, and the U.S. government should never have waged it. As your president, one of my first tasks will be to begin the orderly process of bringing our troops home as quickly as can safely be accomplished.
More and more Americans are coming to oppose the war, the war hawks and high government officials are beginning to distance themselves from the president, and the U.S. seems more willing than ever to pull out of Iraq.
But this is not enough. We need to learn how this disaster happened, so we can prevent future disasters from happening.
First, allow me to dispel a myth. People in the Middle East do not hate us for our freedom. They do not hate us for our lifestyle. They hate us because we have spent many years attempting to force them to emulate our lifestyle.
The U.S. government has meddled in the affairs of the Middle East far too long, always with horrendous results. It overthrew the democratically elected leader of Iran and replaced him with the Shah. After making Iranians the enemies of Americans, the U.S. government gave weapons, intelligence and money to Iran's mortal adversary, Saddam Hussein. The U.S. government also helped Libyan Col. Qaddafi come to power, propped up the Saudi monarchy and the Egyptian regime, and gave assistance to Osama bin Laden.
Most Americans have forgotten these events. But the people of the Middle East will always remember.
It was because of American troops in Saudi Arabia, lethal sanctions on Iraq, support for states in serious violation of International Law, and siding with Israel in its dispute with the Palestinians to the tune of more than $3 billion per year in taxpayers' funds that terrorist leaders were able to recruit those individuals who caused 3,000 Americans to pay the ultimate price on September 11, 2001.
The proper response would have been to present the evidence as to who committed the heinous act both to Congress and to the people, and have Congress authorize the president to track down the individuals actually responsible, doing everything possible to avoid inflicting harm on innocents.
A Libertarian president would not have sent the military trampling about the world, racking up a death count in the thousands, wasting tax money on destroying and re-building infrastructure, creating more enemies, and doing the kinds of things that led to 9/11 in the first place.
We cannot undo history, unfortunately.
The U.S. government has never succeeded in establishing freedom and democracy in any of its foreign adventures in the last fifty years. Freedom and democracy are blessings any people must establish for themselves.
Here at home, war leads to a decline in civil liberties, higher taxes, and wartime economic measures that blur the line between business and state, allowing politically favored corporations to profit at the expense of taxpayers.
Libertarians understand the importance of adhering to the Constitution, because it is designed to limit the power of the state here and abroad. And we especially understand the danger of war, which expands the power of the government far beyond its constitutional limits.
The founders of this country knew that war should not be initiated at the president's whim, and so the constitutional authority to wage war rests with Congress.
James Madison, father of the Constitution, said, "If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." He also said, "No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. . ."
In short, a libertarian foreign policy is one of national defense, and not international offense. It would protect our country, not police the world. <http://www.badnarik.org/Issues/IraqWar.php></blockquote>
For all I know, 2004 will be the year of the Libertarian Party in the independent/third-party pack -- mainly because of failure of nerve, as well as lack of strategic thinking, on the part of too large a sector of organizers and intellectuals on the left. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>