Stays in Vegas? Yeah, right ...

And I always thought this would be
The land of milk and honey
Oh but I come to find out
That it's all hate and money
And there's a canopy of
Greed holding me down
--"Tones of Home" by Blind Melon

OK, maybe not hate, money and greed, but at least a lack of basic good judgment coupled with a bad case of opportunism at the expense of loyalties owed.

Martin mentioned that his company is currently working on the site for BJ Lawson, a Ron Paul Republican running for Congress here. I hollered from the audience, "hey! that's my district!" Martin then said what a great candidate Lawson is and I replied, "yes, I am planning to vote for him in November over Susan Hogarth." This caused widespread and sustained laughter all across the room. More telling is that absolutely *no one* even suggested to me that it was inappropriate for our Political Director to openly state that he would vote for someone else when a Libertarian would be on his ballot in that race.

That's Sean Haugh, national political director of the Libertarian Party, recounting his experiences at last weekend's Libertarian State Leadership Alliance conference in Las Vegas in a message to the North Carolina LP's online discussion list (subscription required to view).

Errrrrr .... what's wrong with this picture, folks?

Imagine, if you will, Coke's marketing director showing up at an industry conference and jumping up when Pepsi is mentioned to yell "yeah, baby! I'll have a Pepsi, not that crap my own company bottles!" How long do you think he'd remain Coke's marketing director?

In the last three months, the Libertarian National Committee has endorsed a Republican presidential candidate "invited" a Republican presidential candidate to seek the LP's presidential nomination, LPHQ has sent out fundraisers in the guise of petitions to that Republican candidate to do so, and now the LP's national political director publicly proclaims his intention to vote Republican rather than Libertarian down-ticket as well.

In an email exchange on this, Mr. Haugh says that he stands by his comments, and doubly so to me, because he, um, "refuses[s] to coddle people who deliberately damage the party." After three days of non-response from LPHQ (executive director Shane Cory was privy to this correspondence), I have to assume that the LP sets a lower coddling threshold for its political director than he sets for everyone else.

Cross-posted at Third Party Watch