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At their latest convention, the Libertarian Party was apparently taken over by a group of self styled moderates.
Many hardliners have apparently bolted the party to start up their own new fringe party.
We saw a version of the tensions between these two groups play out at their 2004 nominating convention. When two fairly high profile 'moderate' Libertarians split the vote and allowed convicted gun nut felon Michael Badnarik to come up the middle. Badnarik, of course, completely flamed out in the general election.
I've always thought that the Libertarian Party had a chance to be reasonably successful in U.S politics. There are quite a number of Americans who have libertarian leanings and the party holds a number of municipal and county seats. The party, it seemed to me, had always been held back by the positions of their lunatic fringe and their decision to run a large number of candidates for Congress which completely emphasises quantity over quality with no quality control.
The likely beneficiary, at least in the short term, to this should be the Democrats. Many Libertarian Republicans are completely disatisfied with the Republican Party for their stance on social issues as well as their fiscal irresponsibility. A few relatively high profile or reasonably articulate Libertarian candidates could finally spark that division between the libertarian Republicans from the religious conservatives that we've all been expecting for so long.