I invite critics of Root to post a link to a video of a stump speech by any of the other 2008 LP contenders that was better than what Root regularly delivered, e.g. at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4606870192930638051
I’m not holding my breath.
Video searches readily yield campaign videos by Mary Ruwart, Steve Kubby, Michael Jingozian, Mike Gravel, George Phillies, Christine Smith, and others. I guess Tom Blanton not giving us a link to any of them means he concedes that Root’s stump speech is better.
My criteria for a “better” stump speech include both substance of content and content of substance (in case you think those are somehow different). Root consistently nails what should be our primary theme: we’re the only choice that’s not Left and not Right.
Again: show me a speech from any other LP candidate that does a better job of advocating for the Libertarian alternative.
If you could, you’d have hit me with the YouTube urls by now. You can’t, and so you won’t even try.
It’s interesting that the grownup radicals — Nolan, Kubby, Knapp, Moulton, etc. — can admit that Root presents the Libertarian case well. By contrast, the haters have psyches so brittle that there can be nothing redeeming about the Bad Guys. The haters just know that the Bad Guys are phony/evil, and this knowledge excuses the haters from having to think about why a well-intentioned reasonable libertarian might disagree with them on some aspect of strategy or ideology. Hating is just so much easier than thinking. Thinking is not cool, but the harder you hate, the cooler you are.
Insanity is citing the same Einstein quote over and over and hoping it will someday finally win an argument. Root's vice-presidential campaign probably earned more media for the LP than did all previous LP veeps combined. I can only hope we have as good a VP nominee in 2012.
You need to adjust the font in your browser, because my word "better" is apparently showing up on your screen as "great". I can only think of one LP presidential contender who didn't regularly make me wince with a twinge of embarrassment during his or her public speaking, and that was Ed Clark. Clark was the only "great" speaker I've heard among our presidential contenders, and that leaves a wide range of speaking ability among the rest. I contend that Root is at the high end of that range, and I'm still waiting for you or anyone else to show us a video of LP presidential contender's speech better than what Root regularly gave us.
Moulton is indeed a grownup and not an Angrytarian, so his radical credentials will be questioned by anyone who measures radicalness by the intensity with which one hates. However, he is still a hardcore Austrian anarchist, for those still seized by the quaint idea that radicalness has something to do with principles.
I'm in the market for concrete pre-nomination promises made by Barr or Root about the success of their campaign. If you think you've got one, please provide a citation.
If you don't like who you think Root is recruiting into the LP, then maybe you can try to get Root or Phillies or whoever on shows with a non-Republican audience. To the extent that LP "strategy" even affects the other parties, it seems to me that the time to destroy the GOP is when it is weakest and imploding. However, feel free to try to wean leftists away from their new messiah right when people are selling his beatific visage on dinner plates. Good luck with that.
