I don't know why Reagan gets so much praise. He was the same as all the others. He balloned the size and scope of the leviathan like most all incumbents prior and everyone of them since.RxBandit66 wrote:Bush did a big part in continuing the mess that began during the Lyndon Johnson/Vietnam/Nixon/Watergate debacle. It has been going on ever since. Reagan and Bubba Red Nose had a few good years in there, but other than that, all downhill.
This all is very true although I'm a little skeptical how a libertarian candidate would perform. I just don't have faith that he wouldn't give into the power. I don't care what party the president is from, I just want a principled leader that sees the government as a limited entity and works to reduce it's scope the the essentials. I also think that a president that really wants to reduce the government will not do much without the approval of congress.RxBandit66 wrote:Obama, Bush, McCain, Pelosi, whoever - things are not going to ever change unless people start voting out people from their own party during the primaries. I think the Repubs are starting to do this, to their credit. The problem for them is going to be the fact that many of these new candidates are too far out of the mainstream in terms of their ideology. This country is fiscally conservative and socially liberal, at least to an extent.
I wish like hell we could get a good Liberterian candidate to run and actually have a good shot. But as long as the two parties trade power every four years or so, we'll have nothing left but the illusion of choice. People voted for change, but all they have left is the change in their pockets. Anyone who thinks things would be any different with hillary or McCain in there (still at war, bad economy, high taxes, ridiculous spending) is delusional.
As far as getting a third party guy in, there has been a lot of talk in here about that. I've posted many times about voting reform and how if we adopt a different voting method (Range voting or approval voting) third party candidates would have a much better chance. The plurality vote absolutely divides the vote. It makes it a lesser of two evils vote all the time. This has to start on a small scale, local government/state government and build it's way up to the national level. It's possible but I would take a monumental amount of work. The biggest obstacle is that the two current parties sure as hell don't want any competition.