America's irrelevant third party. (Scan).(Libertarian Party)

The only apparent purpose of the Libertarian Party is to distract and confuse the determined combatants in our most critical national struggles.

Consider the Libertarian role in the most recent midterm elections. South Dakota represented ground zero in the struggle for control of the Senate, and Republican John Thune and incumbent Democrat Tim Johnson fought to a virtual tie--only 524 votes (less than 0.2 percent) divided them. Meanwhile, 3,071 votes went to Libertarian Kurt Evans, a 32-year-old school teacher who listed as one of his prime preparations for the Senate that his father is a known Western musician.

Not all the purists and oddballs who vote Libertarian are conservative, but polls show that most of them do prefer Republicans over Democrats. Imagine if only one third of Kurt Evans' voters had thought seriously enough about the importance of the election to cast their votes for Republican Thune. The shift of those thousand votes to a real candidate could have altered U.S. political history, and the subtraction of those votes from Evans' total would in no way have altered the dubious message of his campaign.

South Dakota wasn't the only state where the self-indulgent madness of Libertarian jokesters interfered with the serious business of politics. In the Alabama governor's race, another virtual tie between Republicans and Democrats, the Libertarian nominee drew 23,242 lost souls (2 percent) to his campaign--more than seven times the margin between the two real candidates. In Oregon's contest for governor, the gap between the Democrat and Republican came to 33,437 votes while the Libertarian jester, Thomas Cox, drew 56,141 votes (4.6 percent). Mr. Cox listed among his spotty qualifications for the governorship his "five years on the Math Team in grades 8-12."

This would be amusing were it not so irresponsible. Libertarians win no races of any significance anywhere in the United States. The Pathetic Party's press release acknowledged that it "emerged from Election 2002 with decidedly mixed results," yet still boasted that "Bob Dempsey was re-elected as San Miguel County coroner" (in Colorado) and "in California, Eric Lund was elected to the Cordova Recreation and Park Board."

Despite such glittering triumphs, the party's national standing continues its relentless decline. The Libertarians reached their feeble high water mark more than 20 years ago, when Ed Clark won 1.06 percent of the vote in his race for the ...