Ruwart On The Ideological Danger To The LP

May 31, 2008, 15m30s into Mary Ruwart's appearance on the Steve Kubby show:

Mary Ruwart: I would like to talk a little bit about the danger to our party, Steve, because you know there's going to be a temptation here, I'm afraid, and the temptation is that if someone comes with a lot of past history, if they're a well-known name, the tendency is going to be perhaps consider that it would be better to embrace someone like that who really may not be yet fully attuned to the Libertarian philosophy instead of a candidate that really can explain to the American people what we truly are all about. And the reason this is important is not just for our presidential candidate, but after the election our presidential candidate is the de facto leader of the party. And so if we have someone who really doesn't have the full picture yet, who is in a leadership position in the Party, I think that could take us down the wrong road.  And that's something that I think all the delegates need to consider when they look at the candidates.  Because we're not just talking about who is the best spokesperson for liberty and who can attract the most media attention, we're also talking about who is going to take the Party in the direction we want to go.

Steve Kubby: Well that's very well said. It's a good point.  In addition to that, it's very important for people to understand that Libertarians do not triangulate their positions off of polls or off of what the other parties are doing or saying. We have very clear principles, and once you master those basic principles it's fairly easy to determine what the Libertarian position is going to be on any given issue. But it takes a while to get those principles down and to understand "oh, well that also implies such-and-such".  A lot of times the connections are tenuous.