Bingo! Anti-reason.

Rand objected to Libertarian attempts to attach her name to their movement, to their anti-reason positions, and, I think, to their obvious political ineffectiveness.

I contrasted the effective politicians of the 1970 era with L's. The statist Tip O'Neil said "all politics is local" and was effective. The supposedly non-statist L's had no interest in talking with anyone who didn't already agree with them on the political point-of-the-moment.

I will tell you that there are a lot of great candidates who represent the Libertarian party, but like the old saying that "a squeaky wheel gets the grease", the odd ducks are the only ones who really get any exposure and attention. Check out a friend of mine, Jack Seaman, www.jackfornd.com He is the real deal, and the party could do a lot worse than recognize his potential.

The libertarian party is the product of the ant-reason intellectual leaders of libertarianism. These include the anti-reason voices of Austrian Economics and the non-economic intellectuals who hold David Hume in high esteem and a lodestone of libertarian philosophical thought.

You were confused as was I that libertarianism was about the ideals that created the Declaration of Independence and the US generally. It is not.

Check into what author L Neil Smith has to say about Libertarians and the party.

CC, your comment is the best ever regarding polished politicians. It explains why so many candidates appeal to the (uninformed) masses. Although a liberty lover may not appear to be smooth and polished, that matters little if he/she is an effective defender of liberty and freedom.

If I had heard the same inane questions over and over again from a moron with a microphone twisting my words for her own agenda, I'd have done worse than Johnson did. A LOT worse. The moron wouldn't have been able to be on camera again for a month.

Yeah. There are a lot of kooks...

I saw Gary fly off the hook a few times at interviewers. If I were one of them I would have just told him to chill out and watch his tone. But, I didn't see any of them do that. He really got wound up at times about stuff that didn't make sense to me - like his answer, "They came here because THEY DIDN'T HAVE JOBS!..." Uh...um...ok...

Let's take a look at a candidate for President of the United States of America who down deep does not really want to win.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXhR4...

The Democratic Party is totally full of kooks, extremists, and sociopaths. The Republican Party is half full of kooks, extremists, and sociopaths. By comparison the Libertarian Party people are sane and ethical.
Of course the media propaganda concludes the opposite of reality.

I think you are right that Libertarians tend to have more people who are kooks or extremists.

I'm not convinced Gov Gary Johnson is one of them. He went around the country for months giving speeches and interviews. If you compile a few minutes of missteps into one video, he appears crazy. Hardcore politicians are very careful never to say or do anything that could be turned into candidate-is-crazy video. They have a handful of canned answers memorized that they can give if their mind goes blank. I always remember President G W Bush doing it when he blanked on a question about the flu vaccine shortage, which was a big concern at the time. Bush launched into is canned speech about medical liability, even though it had nothing to do with the vaccine shortage. It worked, though, because at least it was related to medicine.

Gary Johnson on several occasions failed to do that. Sometimes when he got angry at questions that assumed statism or when he kept being confronted with the same wrong figures. I sympathized with him, but if he were a hardcore politician he would have handled it much more smoothly.