There's an interesting article on Fox News this weekend that, if you're a Libertarian (with a big or little "L") bears reading and careful consideration.

Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson almost certainly can't win the  presidential election this year. But his supporters claim he could determine who  does.

Johnson, the former New Mexico governor who briefly and unsuccessfully  competed for the Republican presidential nomination before joining the  Libertarians, is polling barely above 5 percent nationwide.

History says that July and August numbers are notoriously unreliable in this regard.  While Libertarian and other third-party candidates often poll around 5% in the summer, by the few weeks prior to the election most of the so-called supporters switch and in the end vote for one of the "big two."  Breaking this mold is something the Libertarian party has tried to do for 40 years, without success.

The answer to the question "why?" is found right at the end of the above article.

Johnson's supporters argue that he's not just a niche candidate. (Carla) Howell noted Johnson's platform goes beyond decriminalizing marijuana and supporting same sex-marriage to include a balanced-budget plan.

Read that paragraph as many times as it takes until the light comes on.

Gary Johnson's platform can't "go beyond" decriminalizing pot and supporting same-sex marriage and win.  It must be founded upon and speak to the core issues facing the nation, which are the national debt, deficit spending generally, the unbridled growth of cost in medical care and education along with financial frauds of all sorts that have stripped the American people of their homes, jobs and wealth. 

Marijuana decriminalization should be an adjunct in a national platform, not form the core of it.  "Gay marriage" is none of the government's damn business; since Gary Johnson supports The Fair Tax he can't even argue that it's a civil right based on tax equality, since he would do away with the IRS and the Income Tax in the first place.  Never mind the pesky little fact that the solution to one statist policy is not more statism; it is the removal of the government boot from people's necks, not adding more boots to more necks!

You can't balance the budget without addressing the medical cost explosion.  Not Medicare and Medicaid, the medical system at its core.  This cost explosion exists due to specific government policies that make "ordinary business practices" out of acts that in other lines of business and personal interaction are felonies.

Likewise, most of the nation's economic mess is due to government protections of practices that, absent those protections, are felonies.  It is a felony to knowingly pollute the land and water while producing your products here in the United States.  It is only through so-called "free trade" agreements (with China and elsewhere) that manufacturers can offshore that production and then pollute "over there" without facing felony indictment.  The United States has every right, under the Constitution, to police such acts using Tariffs -- but it instead effectively grants protection to firms that abuse labor, land, water and air so long as it happens in another country.  Never mind that the Libertarian Party claims to hold as it's "first principle" that the initiation of force is unacceptable.  I don't recall a clause in the oath saying "except when corporations selling products in the US do it in China."

If I intentionally produce documents that are false -- swearing, for example, that I have personal knowledge of the contents when I do not -- in a court case I can be charged with perjury.  In many states such an act is a felony.  Over 100,000 intentionally-false affidavits were filed ("robosigned") in foreclosure cases and withdrawn; the guilty parties paid at worst a fine and were not prosecuted.  Wachovia admitted to laundering hundreds of millions of dollars of drug money for Mexican cartels.  This is a felony; were you or I to launder $100 we'd go to prison.  They got a "deferred prosecution agreement" (in other words, no prosecution.)

You think this is an isolated incident?  Standard Chartered anyone?  Jefferson County Alabama?  It's utterly endemic and it stifles all those who obey the law and would like to start a business, because there is no means to control for the risk that some big institution will commit a crime to put you out of business and there is nothing you can do about it. 

Again, I don't recall an exception in the Libertarian oath saying "except for banksters, who can steal anything that isn't nailed down along with funding shoot-you-ups by drug dealers and it's all ok."

Finally, there's a foreign policy issue we don't want to talk about either -- that's our idiotic lack of a cogent energy policy that is now 40 years old.  This, more than anything else, drives our $750+ billion in annual defense spending.  We can't afford it but we also can't cut it back to a reasonable size (like, for example, half of what we spend today) without an actual energy policy that gets us off the foreign oil teat -- permanently. 

We know how to do it too -- we proved that it works some forty years ago.  You know, back before fancy computers and robotics?  Back when braniacs used slide rules and pocket protectors and CAD/CAM was a pipe dream.

But we don't talk about that either, and unfortunately that is a place where statist intrusion is part and parcel on both sides.  Nuclear energy has a state component that appears to be inescapable, but so does foreign intervention.  Which do you prefer, because you must choose between one or the other!

We as Libertarians have consigned ourselves to the fringe of political debate because of what we choose to place front-and-center in our campaigns.  Any sort of analytical analysis would inescapably lead to the conclusion that when your party spokesperson says that our Presidential Candidate's platform "goes beyond" same-sex marriage and decriminalizing pot she should be instantaneously fired and replaced with someone who can and will make the forceful argument to candidates that these are not leading issues and if the party is going to back and support said candidates they need to align the core of their campaigns with what matters to Americans on the street.