“If Republicans fear that Libertarians are going to be spoilers, Republicans need to run more liberty-minded candidates,” said Libertarian Party national Chair Angela McArdle to NBC News in a report on how the GOP’s sweating the pesky right-leaning third party’s candidates on the ticket in tight races. “[Georgia Libertarian Senate candidate] Chase Oliver and [Arizona Libertarian Senate candidate] Marc Victor both performed well in their respective debates. They’ve earned any votes they receive, and Republicans are not entitled to anyone’s vote.”

“I think it’s going to be significant,” Arizona GOP pollster Chuck Coughlin, said of the frustration. “After all the ballots are counted, [candidates] are going to say, ‘That guy had 5% of the vote or 4% of the vote, and if I add that 4%, I win,’ because that’s how close these races are going to be. When all the shouting and hollering is done people are going to look around and go: ‘God, we’ve got to keep that guy out of the race in the future, We’ve got to do something to stop that from happening.'”

Spoiler alert [pun intended]: There’s nothing they can do to stop that from happening. Instead they’ll probably just put more effort into backing Green Party and legal weed candidates wherever possible. And that’s the difference: Of course you’ll never hear a Democrat complain about a Libertarian sucking away a few would-be GOP votes at the margins but if there’s an example of Dems putting the same level of effort into helping right-leaning third party spoilers as Republicans have for left-leaning ones over the last few years we would love to see it.