No one should be surprised by my endorsement of Steve Kubby for that nomination (I'm a member of his campaign staff). However, it's worth elaborating upon:
To put it as simply as possible, not only is Kubby the best of the declared candidates for the LP's presidential nomination, he's the only remotely credible candidate on the list.
Kubby's policy positions are better than those of the other candidates
Kubby's not anti-immigration-freedom like George Phillies or Wayne Allyn Root.
Kubby isn't a trade protectionist like Phillies, nor is he pro-war like Root.
While Christine Smith has attempted to play the "libertarian purity" card (and the "consistency" card!), the fact is that her policy positions have changed even in the midstream of her campaign. I'm willing to believe that she's sincere rather than merely pandering, but I prefer a candidate who chose the right ground in the first place and has publicly stood that ground for, verifiably, more than a decade now. Some of Smith's policy positions also smack of dissociation from reality. Kubby is the most libertarian of the candidates in his policy positions. He's also the most consistent and the most practical.
Kubby has real political name recognition
Not huge political name recognition, but real political name recognition. He played a key role in starting America's "compassionate use" (medical marijuana) revolution, which has now spread to 12 states. His show trial for having done so, his exile to Canada, and his return to the US and near-death in detention before being released received significant media coverage. At the very moment I'm writing this, he should be en route home from San Francisco, having shared a press conference stage earlier today with a state senator and several city supervisors to protest the latest round of federal raids on medical marijuana dispensaries in California.
None of the other candidates come close.
Wayne Allyn Root does have some name recognition -- just not political name recognition. Until recently, his name recognition has been due to his business background: He sells football picks to gullible sports gamblers, and he does so using infomercials. When transferred to the political arena, his recognition manifests itself ... well ... sort of like this, from the New York Post:
Shame on the Discovery Channel for selling infomercial time to self-promoting blowhard, Libertarian Party presidential candidate and longtime braggart, liar and sports scamdicapper Wayne Allyn Root ...
Er ... next.
George Phillies has been building political name recognition, of the "novelty human interest" variety, by issuing a constant flood of "news" releases sans any actual, um, news ("Phillies opposes the war!" "Phillies campaign promotes National Mobilization Facilitator to National Facilitization Mobilizer!"). His strategy of "campaign by snarky grandiose pronouncement" pays off for him in the short term -- he even picked up the endorsement of a Missouri newspaper:
Not a "mainstream" candidate, Phillies took a little more research.
Sigh ... if only they'd actually done the research instead of just mentioning it. I'm torn between suspecting that the Rolla Daily News has a fetish for physicists (Rolla is home to the University of Missouri campus most associated with the sciences) and fearing that they just want an LP candidate they can make fun of for a week in June and then easily ignore (they can ignore all of them -- Phillies and Root are the easiest to mock first, though).
Christine Smith's claim to fame is having authored a book on "the spirituality of John Denver." Well ... Kubby's written two books. George Phillies pumps out a couple of books a year. Wayne Root wrote an aptly titled book: Millionaire Republican. None of them are famous authors. I suspect Kubby's books have sold as well as, or better than, any of the others.
Anyway, I've given you the links to the major candidates and a couple of key points ... but there's more to due diligence than letting a campaign operative tell you who to vote for. Check these people out. Hell, check out the minor candidates, too. You can find a reasonably comprehensive list here.
Inform yourself. Voting for Kubby will follow from that pretty much automatically.
[Update: I've never before deleted, or even edited, non-spam comments on this blog. In this particular case I've made an exception. Comments on this post (ANY comments on this post) will be deleted as soon as I notice them. As it happens, the two comments deleted as of this update were from operatives of another campaign. One of them makes an implied claim that I can neither verify nor disprove (for lack of a working soundcard at the moment); I've edited this post so that that claim is not at specific issue. The other is from a guy who got caught in several flagrant public lies awhile back and apparently remains angry over the thrashing he took for them; he accuses me elsewhere of, wouldn't you know it, "slinging mud." Since I'm not giving my endorsed candidate's opponents comment space on this post to slam him, I'm going to be even-handed and delete "I love Kubby too" comments as well - TLK]
[Second update: At least one individual took umbrage at my decision to not accept comments on that post. Since taking umbrage over pretty much everything seems to be that individual's avocation, I'm not especially worried about it. BUT ... now that the point of the post, which was to make an election endorsement, has been accomplished, comments are welcome again. I'll also be posting a new article/thread specifically dedicated to umbrage-taking for your edification, or at least gratification - TLK]
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