http://www.mnip.org/about-us/what-we-stand-for
They make the party platform easily accessible, this link. First, this excerpt:
The IP rejects the U.S. Supreme Court's ‘Citizens United’ ruling, and we move to amend our U.S. Constitution to firmly establish that money is not speech and that human beings, not corporations or unions, are persons entitled to constitutional rights.
- We support partial public funding of elections to reduce candidate dependence on fundraising, thereby making politicians more independent and responsible to voters.
- The IP supports an amendment to the Minnesota State Constitution stipulating that candidates for public office can only receive financial donations from eligible voters who reside within the jurisdiction of the office they seek.
- We support lowering the minimum age to run for state elective office to 18 years of age.
- We support the establishment of an independent nonpartisan commission to implement legislative redistricting.
- We support same-day voter registration to ensure that all eligible citizens have the ability to vote and to maintain Minnesota’s tradition of high voter turnout.
- The IP supports an amendment to the Minnesota State Constitution to limit the term of office for elected officials for state or national office to no more than 12 consecutive years.
So, favoring open voting, (not ALEC-Kiffmeyer favored restriction of access to the ballot box). And favoring financing reform, while the floodgates of Citizen United are open and exploited by DFL and GOP candidacies.
An interesting pair of Platform Planks, going with the previous excerpt:
Reliable, Affordable and Clean Energy
- We believe it is important to decrease America's dependence on foreign oil and fossil fuels, to protect the environment by promoting the use of the clean energy, and to have access to reliable and affordable energy to support our economy.
- The IP supports renewable energy made in Minnesota as long as the environmental benefits outweigh any negative environmental impact.
Protecting the Environment
- The Independence Party is committed to preserving the quality of our environment for the use and enjoyment of future generations.
- We support strong enforcement of environmental protection laws.
Last, this:
- We support high standards of morality, family values and personal responsibility, but we oppose having the government impose state-sponsored morality or values on people of good conscience with differing views.
- The IP supports, as a legislative priority, the principles of the ‘Impartial Justice Act’, which will empower voters by giving them non-partisan information about the performance of judges through public performance evaluations and allow judges to be chosen based on their qualifications.
- We support the separation of church and state for the benefit of all.
- We believe that all law-abiding citizens are entitled to the full rights and protections of citizenship and that discrimination on the basis of race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or religion are contrary to American values.
- We support the legalization, taxation and regulation of cannabis.
So, "liberty" is a real concept of the IP, and -
Wouldn't it be refreshing to find more DFL or GOP candidates running on such clearly well grounded principles?
The problem is especially acute in today's GOP, where voter restriction, homophobia, and theocratic notions (however couched) of government are most at play and have recently been used as ways to motivate GOTV among those few citizens in the electorate holding restrictive, homophobic, (and worst of all), theocratic worldviews of governmental intrusion into citizen freedoms of other people. Such viewpoints recently have been and still are all too prevalent among GOP caucus attendees who choose party candidates (while such a dominant viewpoint is serving to move the GOP in Minnesota toward permanent minority status to where the big-business corporatist agenda and its proponents have too strongly moved to and influenced DFL thinking and policy).
Note, however, individual candidates define their own candidacies whether they be party endorsed or primary challengers. Ultimately one votes for a person and not a party. Specifically, voters of Minnesota House District 35A have, currently, three major-party candidates running where such voters should inform themselves of where the three; Perovich in the DFL, and Whelan and Boals in the GOP; stand on the issues.
Likewise, candidate viewpoints should be readily available in detail on the web, in coherent and reasoned position statements, rather than giving us bullet-point lists devoid of detail. We should all want that. It is needed to cast informed votes in Minnesota primary and general elections.
______________UPDATE_____________
Not a focus point above, but worth mention, in those quotes: term limits, and cannabis.
And as to theocracy in the GOP being a problem to some in the GOP, there is a recent Taxpayer League chairman's editorial woofing, ending paragraphs, to consider (i.e., where the euphemism "social conservative" is used for what plainly is nothing except a clear theocracy agenda).