Columnist Thomas Sowell compares voting for a third-party candidate in this year’s U.S. Senate race to abolitionists voting for someone other than Abraham Lincoln in 1860 and thus allowing slavery to flourish ("Third-party candidates gamble with nation’s future," Star-Advertiser, Oct. 18).

Ann Coulter, another national columnist, said she would personally drown anyone who voted for a Libertarian candidate in these races.

This is the sort of inane hyperbole that passes for political discourse among conservatives.

Libertarians have a different view of things.

Let’s start with the GOP assumption that Barack Obama is the devil and only electing a GOP-controlled Senate will save the future of democracy and the Constitution. The CATO Institute — no friend of the Obama crew — a few years ago came out with a 40- to 50-page paper documenting the abuses of the Constitution by the Bush administration. If Obama is now following the same course, why should anyone believe the Republican Party will follow a different one? Republicans wrote the playbook for Obama. We are now 14 years into the Bush/Obama administration.

Conservatives propose that since the Libertarians want small government and so do the Republicans, we are only splitting the vote and allowing big-spending Democrats into office.

Again, we must judge the GOP by its acts rather than its words.

In the first six years of the Bush administration, it controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. Yet government spending rose at a rate not seen since Lyndon Johnson was in office.

It also got the U.S. involved in what now seems to be an endless stream of wars — wars that have been opposed by Libertarians and many others.

Why should anyone believe that if the GOP was to be given power again, things would be different?

In Hawaii, the Republican Lingle administration was among the first ones on board for the multibillion-dollar train project and acquiesced to an increase in the general excise tax to pay for it.

This year, six Republican candidates jumped into Hawaii legislative races within five days of the filing deadline in which there was already a Libertarian running against a Democrat.

Compare that effort with the number of Democrats who were left unopposed and automatically elected.

If the GOP is so concerned about vote-splitting, why is it working harder to put candidates into races with a Libertarian already running than it is finding opponents for the Democrats?

Republicans add that Libertarian candidates are responsible for them losing close elections.

First, Libertarians tend to support same-sex marriage, legalization of marijuana and women’s rights to abortion. They are not pulling these votes from conservatives.

Second, there is no evidence that the people voting Libertarian would have voted for either a Republican or a Democrat. I would leave my ballot blank in most of those cases.

Third, if the Republicans are losing close elections that included a Libertarian who got 5 percent, they should realize it’s the folks who voted for the Democrat that defeated them, not the Libertarian voters. If the GOP has as compelling a message as it claims to have, then folks who vote Democrat should be the ones they are trying to convince.

There are certainly lots of good people out there who are Republicans, Democrats and other things besides Libertarians. We are happy to work with them when we share a common interest in an issue. Libertarians are working to make a better Hawaii, rather than focusing on how bad the other parties are.

Still, experience shows that both the old parties will turn to government programs, regulations and taxes as the first solution to any problem, whatever they may say during the campaign.