Thursday, March 5, 2020

Episode 2 - The Opportunist and the Interrogator: Radical Only When It Suits Me

Jacob Hornblower - A cracked vessel.

In 2020, there are some radical Libertarians who are supportive of the Hornblower campaign.
I am personally glad they've found someone running for POTUS who they are excited about.

They have certainly taken Hornblower's promotion of his steadfast "principles" to heart.  I am worried that, like charlatans of every generation, when Hornblower finally shows them his true colors, these radical, genuine Libertarians will not understand that his grandstanding and posing is a front for a conflicted individual, and that as a result, their disappointment will lead them to abandon being active in the Libertarian Party, or the movement in general.

Maybe this time, Lucy won't pull the football away from Charlie Brown's kick, but I wouldn't bet rent money on it.

Hornblower isn't so much a "radical" or "principled" as he is an *opportunist*.

In his (lawyer-funded) campaign for the U.S. Senate for Virginia (where he couldn't even beat a LaRouchie), he distanced himself from the radical elements of our platform.  In other words, he did the exact same thing -- when it was convenient for him -- that every other "reformer" in the LP has done.

But don't believe me just because I said it.  Hornblower said so himself.

Here's Hornblower himself whining about encountering people who disliked the LP because of our long-held beliefs about the drug war and other things -- but be mindful that most of these "quotes" he most likely made up himself, and that none of these conversations ever actually took place:

There's one big problem with that hypothesis, however. It assumes that the voters already have a positive image of the Libertarian Party and that as long as they don't discover the truth, all will be okay.  My conversations with Virginia voters during the past several weeks of petitioning reflects the exact opposite. Many ordinary people have shared the reasons for their prejudice against the party with me, and most of it adds up to: "You people stand for nothing. You have no values, no morals. Anything goes for you all, especially drug use."

At a gun show in Salem, a man in line yelled, "Marijuana Party coming down the line" and the next 10-15 people refused to sign my petition.

A man in Harrisonburg said to me, "You Libertarians are nothing but Republicans who smoke dope."

A man in front of the Post Office in Culpeper angrily told me, "Your party is a barrel of rotten apples and the longer you stay in it, you're going to rot too."

A woman at a grocery store in Falls Church said to me, "You people are so extreme -- you favor just about anything."
... I have absolutely no doubt that no matter how hard LP members work, no matter how much money you raise, no matter how many rich or famous candidates you recruit, no matter how many new members you secure, it won't do any good until you are able to disintegrate the negative "anything goes" perception that voters have of the Libertarian Party.

Personally I think he made up all of those quotes himself.

Of course, he said that in the context of his so-called "ethics campaign" against other LP members; alleging that the above people -- who (assuming any of them actually existed beyond the confines of Hornblower's skull) had likely never even met a Libertarian before, and had no idea who these supposedly "corrupt" individuals were that he was struggling heroically against -- would only have said those things if they likewise believed all those LP members were corrupt.

Pure fantasy.

But anyway, this was Hornblower backtracking *after* the obligatories, like getting on the ballot and deciding on who his support would be.

Had he won the LPVA endorsement, dog-whistling to bootlickers by whining about the Libertarian position of repealing drug prohibition may well have sent many good Libertarians in Virginia packing.

Previous questions still unanswered:

1)  Was Hornblower's entry to the race prompted by the disappearance of Yahoogroups?
2)  Why does Hornblower, who is supposedly a "consistent" Libertarian, use a state subsidy when it suits him to suck at the government teat?
3)  Why did he allow even one LPVA titleholder help him with his campaign prior to the state convention?

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Written by Marc Montoni <AMCAmbassador@gmail.com>, March 2020.  This work is licensed to individuals except specifically
Jacob G. Hornberger and/or his supporters -- under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International LicenseJacob G. Hornberger or his supporters may use any portion of the above at a cost of $1000 per word plus free use of their most valuable automobile for a year.

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Episode 2 - The Opportunist and the Interrogator: Radical Only When It Suits Me

Jacob Hornblower - A cracked vessel. In 2020, there are some radical Libertarians who are supportive of the Hornblower campaign. I ...