Indianapolis ? The way many Libertarians see it, they have come a long way since their party’s humble beginnings in a Colorado living room in 1971.

The disenchantment of a few over the Vietnam War and President Nixon’s wage and price controls has grown into what they say is the nation’s best-organized and most successful third party.

“Other parties come and go,” said David Nolan, considered the party’s founding father. “The reason we have staying power is that we are consistent.”

The Libertarian Party claims about 25,000 dues-paying members, according to press secretary George Getz. About 800 of them were in Indianapolis during the weekend for the Libertarian National Convention, touting their candidates and their principles of individual liberty, smaller government and free trade.

It was also a showcase for their small political victories in large part because those are the only ones they can celebrate.

Libertarians hold nearly 500 elected or appointed offices nationwide, but most are at the local level: city or town councils, park boards and school boards, airport districts and justices of the peace. There are no Libertarian state legislators, and nobody has ever been elected to Congress on the ticket.

In 2000, repeat presidential candidate Harry Browne got only 0.04 percent of the vote. Twenty years earlier, according to the convention guide, Ed Clark “waged the most successful national Libertarian campaign in party history” by getting about 1 percent of the presidential vote.

“They spread their resources so thin by running a large number of candidates to give the appearance of being bigger than they are, and then with no resources they get crushed and that reinforces the loser image,” said Paul Hager, who quit the party and became a Republican after losing his bid to be nominated for Indiana secretary of state.

Some at the convention, including the party’s first presidential candidate, John Hospers, did not disagree.

“It’s just a small aggregation of people in a lot of different places at the same time, but it doesn’t amount to one huge thing in any one place,” said Hospers, who got about 3,900 votes in the 1972 presidential election.