Even in libertarian circles, a lot of people view the Libertarian Party as being filled with candidates who don tin foil hats. Take a look at this WSFA Channel 12 Montgomery interview (currently the top link – 20 min) of Alabama Libertarian Party gubernatorial candidate Loretta Nall and Democratic hopeful Joe Copeland.
Copeland (D) on education:
I would, uh, I would try’in stop the uh… the… …the (long pauses, not a stutter) efforts to consolidate schools and close small community schools and consolidate ‘em into big wirehouses, educational wirehouses, because I believe you lose parental and teacher involvement when you do that.
More Copeland on education:
I think we need a comprehensive reproductive, reproductive, uh, uh program course in ars in our schools where each student that comes out of that school has a knowledge of how their plumbin’ works and how to control their fertility.
Copeland on racial issues health care reform:
Now we do a good job of providing contraception for those uh who receive Medicaid, they they receive everythang from vigh-sectomies, tubal ligation and ah birth control pills free. Morning after pills. We just need to extend that to the entire state to where everyone can control their fertility.
Nall (L) on education:
The very first things I would do would be to opt out of No Child Left Behind and refuse to uh enforce any other unfunded federal mandates. The federal government only gives us six percent of our education budget. They have no business telling us how to teach our kids and what to teach our kids. They’ve never met our kids. And I know, (clears throat) excuse me, we’ve lost a large number of really good teachers because of some obscure Washington, DC number that they didn’t meet, and, uh, I think that we need to decide who are good teachers and who are not, not the Bush administration or anybody else.
More Nall on education:
I also believe that, um, religion and government should be kept seperate and I don’t see any of the other candidates drawing the line. Religion is a private family matter and it shouldn’t be inserted into everybody’s politics.
Nall on prison reform:
If we invest in education instead of incarceration we can only move forward.
Note that in most of her media appearances, the media brings up the drug policy reform issues, not the candidate. In this recent television footage, the anchor keeps bringing up the issue, while the callers are asking other questions which are important in their daily lives. While the media keeps trying to tie Loretta Nall to candidates out on the lunatic fringe, it’s important to note that the racist, Holocaust denying, and eugenics promoting candidates for Governor and Attorney General are members of mainstream parties and not Libertarians.
Copeland is not an isolated case in the Alabama Democratic Party. His key competitiors in the primary are Lt. Governor Lucy Baxley, who is under fire for not running on any issues, and former Governor Don Siegelman, who is currently in court for allegations of trading $500,000 of Richard Scrushy’s money for an appointment to a state hospital regulatory board and other allegations of fraud and graft.
The important question I’d like to ask is why Nall requires 43,000 signatures to get on the ballot when buffoons like Joe Copeland, Roy Moore and Larry Darby don’t.
sucker, ʟʟᴄ
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