Libertarian U.S. Senate candidate David Patterson clocks in at 3 percent in the latest Bluegrass Poll, which may be enough to tilt the potentially decisive — and hotly contested — Kentucky race between Sen. Mitch McConnell (R) and Alison Lundergan Grimes (D), who are 2 points apart.
Patterson is hardly a seasoned politician: He lacks the killer instinct to seamlessly rip into his opponents and he freely admits when he doesn't have an answer to a question. He wants to end the drug war, legalize marijuana and let same-sex couples marry ("love is love," he says); he wants to get rid of Obamacare, the Patriot Act, the NSA's spying program and the income tax.
"My message is freedom," Patterson told TPM in an interview on Thursday, vowing to impose a two-term limit on himself if elected — "and that's if my wife lets me run for a second term. She may not."
"The NSA, Patriot Act — there's a whole lot of very, very heavy legislation that has come down in the name of the war on terror. Many citizens may not see it, but I certainly do. And it very much bothers me that the U.S. government can hold and detain a U.S. citizen indefinitely without trial and without charge," Patterson said. "The majority of both parties are interventionists. They like going into other countries. They both enjoy spending money — our money."
Don't get me wrong, I like some of his positions. But the majority of them are terrible for Kentucky and his rhetoric on those areas are indistinguishable from Mitch:
Asked what he'd do about the roughly half-a-million Kentuckians who would lose insurance coverage if he repeals Obamacare, Patterson said, "Obviously we'd need to put something in place to help those individuals until such time as we can determine how we're going to — once again, I don't have all the answers. But we have to have something set up to assist them."
Like what? Well, "something". Some sort of big government approach I guess, right? Well, who's going to pay for that "something" if you get rid of Kentucky's income tax? And note he's fine with getting rid of income tax, not sales tax. He'd send us down the same road as Sam Brownback in Kansas, only as a US Senator he'd push for that everywhere. You figure there's about what, $2 trillion or so in federal and state revenue from income tax? If that goes away, we'll have to do what, cut $2 trillion in spending yearly? Sure, that'll add up.
Patterson claims that if he siphons votes from either McConnell or Grimes, he'd do so "kind of equally" from both. But the surveys tell a different story. According to the Bluegrass Poll, Patterson's support comes mostly from independents, but he has five times as much support from self-identified Republicans than Democrats, and more support among conservatives than liberals. That suggests that Patterson is likelier, if anything, to take votes from McConnell.
So yeah, he may actually help give Grimes the win. That'll be his lasting legacy, and not his horrendously stupid policies.
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Thank you for this, Zandar. Were I a kind or helpful man I might scamper over to FireDogLake and the Daily Kos for to taunt the simpering ninnies with actual, concrete evidence as to what happens when a third party purity troll attempts to discipline the party of his natural allies and force them at gunpoint to enact his program. I am afraid that instead of reconsidering along the lines of "golly! perhaps my screeching strategy of the past seven years has been wrong" they would simply howl "stupid Republican is stupid again" and miss the larger opportunity.
And as an aside, my Kansas relations hate Brownback with the burning heat of a thousand suns - they being the highly educated urban other with connections to the outside world, unlike the local Khmer Rouge of the plains who have spent the past eighty years going slowly mad on their diet of bugs and bark and lizards and leaves.
You know what scares me? The thought that if the Hispanics make a big enough noise about joining the purity trolls and throwing the election to the Republicans, the Democrats might well make a strategic decision to go after the Stupid White Guy vote in a serious way - God knows they have been threatening for a couple of decades now, which is a major complaint of the purity troll faction in the first place - which is going to entail throwing the scientists under the bus. People kind of understand that we are somehow involved in magicking up plasma teevees and the like, but we ask a lot of embarrassing questions and few would complain if we were rounded up and impaled on spikes at the Interstate mile markers as some kind of warning to the others.
So, yeah, I really hope that sanity prevails here.
Two words: Ralph Nader.
What's the difference between the successes of the far-right wing and Ralph Nader's followers? Primary challenges to incumbents. If the Hispanic activists want to start changing minds, primary challenges to incumbents is the way to go.
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