Libertarians Boo Trump

Our 2020 book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good.  Neither is the condition of the conservative and libertarian movements.

Brittany Gibson and Peder Schaefer at Politico:

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/25/panderer-libertarians-jeer-trump-at-their-convention-00160023 

If Donald Trump came to the Libertarian National Convention to make peace on Saturday, it could hardly have gone worse.

Within minutes of beginning speaking — and after enduring sustained jeering and boos — the former president turned on the third party, mocking its poor electoral record in presidential elections even as he appealed to them for their endorsement.

“What’s the purpose of the Libertarian Party of getting 3 percent?” Trump asked the crowd, which proceeded to pelt him with jeers. “You should nominate Trump for president only if you want to win.”

The libertarians in attendance didn’t want to hear it, as hecklers chucked insults at Trump all night. “Liar,” they called him. “Panderer,” they shouted. “You crushed our rights,” they belted.

The raucous reception laid bare the difficulties confronting Trump in his effort to expand his base and cut off a third-party threat, not only from Libertarians, but also from independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Despite the Libertarian Party’s relatively small following, its 2020 candidate, Jo Jorgensen, drew more votes in some close states than the margin separating Trump and now-President Joe Biden.

“If we unite, we are unstoppable,” Trump told a crowd split between Libertarians and Trump supporters. “You have to combine with us.”

In response, the Washington Hilton ballroom erupted in boos. Trump was met with a chant to “debate” Libertarian candidates, and every time Trump fans in the room tried to start a “We want Trump” chant, libertarians yelled “End the Fed,” referring to the Federal Reserve.

“If he thinks he is going to win our nomination, he’s more delusional than I thought,” said Chase Oliver, one of the presidential candidates for the Libertarian Party, at a press conference after Trump spoke.

Left and Right

In Defying the Odds, we talk about the ideological, social and economic divides that enabled Trump to enter the White House. In Divided We Stand, we discuss how these divides played out in 2020.  

David Leonhardt at NYT: David Leonhardt at NYT:

Americans lean left on economic policy. Polls show that they support restrictions on trade, higher taxes on the wealthy and a strong safety net. Most Americans are not socialists, but they do favor policies to hold down the cost of living and create good-paying jobs. These views help explain why ballot initiatives to raise the minimum wage and expand Medicaid have passed even in red states. They also explain why some parts of Biden’s agenda that Republicans uniformly opposed, such as a law reducing medical costs, are extremely popular. “This is where the center of gravity in the country is,” Steve Ricchetti, a top White House official, told me.

The story is different on social and cultural issues. Americans lean right on many of those issues, polls show (albeit not as far right as the Republican Party has moved on abortion).

The clearest example in the Biden era is immigration. A core tenet of neoliberalism, once supported by both parties, is high immigration. Along with the freer movement of goods and capital, neoliberalism calls for the freer movement of people.

Most voters, especially working-class voters, feel differently. The soaring level of immigration during Biden’s presidency, much of it illegal, has become a political liability, and it nearly led to another piece of neopopulist legislation this year. Senate Democrats and Republicans put together a plan to strengthen border security. It was the mirror image of Republicans’ agreeing to support the semiconductor and infrastructure bills: This time, some Democrats abandoned a policy stance that was out of step with public opinion.

[NOTE THE UNDERPOPULATION OF THE LIBERTARIAN QUADRANT, LOWER RIGHT]

 

 

The Decline of the Non-Trumpist Right

Our 2020 book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good.  Neither is the condition of the conservative and libertarian movements.

 Luke Mullins at Politico:

FreedomWorks, the once-swaggering conservative organization that helped turn tea party protesters into a national political force, is shutting down, according to its president, a casualty of the ideological split in a Republican Party dominated by former President Donald Trump.

“We’re dissolved,” said the group’s president, Adam Brandon. “It’s effective immediately.”

FreedomWorks’ board of directors voted unanimously on Tuesday to dissolve the organization, Brandon said. Wednesday will be the last workday for the group’s roughly 25 employees, though staffers will continue to receive paychecks and health care benefits for the next few months.

The development brings to a close a period of turmoil for the organization. FreedomWorks laid off 40 percent of its staff in March of 2023, and as a result of a drop in fundraising, its total revenue has declined by roughly half, to about $8 million, since 2022, Brandon said.

In an exclusive interview with POLITICO Magazine, Brandon said the decision to shut down was driven by the ideological upheaval of the Trump era.

After Trump took control of the conservative movement, Brandon said, a “huge gap” opened up between the libertarian principles of FreedomWorks leadership and the MAGA-style populism of its members. FreedomWorks leaders, for example, still believed in free trade, small government and a robust merit-based immigration system. Increasingly, however, those positions clashed with a Trump-aligned membership who called for tariffs on imported goods and a wall to keep immigrants out but were willing, in Brandon’s view, to remain silent as Trump’s administration added $8 trillion to the national debt.

“A lot of our base aged, and so the new activists that have come in [with] Trump, they tend to be much more populist,” Brandon said. “So you look at the base and that just kind of shifted.”

Meryl Kornfield at WP:

Some Libertarian Party leaders are fuming over the party’s decision to have former president Donald Trump headline their national convention this month, with national committee members calling on the party to rescind the invitation.

The choice to have the presumptive nominee from another party speak at the Libertarian Party’s nominating convention has inflamed growing schisms within the minor party. State and local factions, presidential candidates and critics of the right-wing caucus that controls the party are registering their anger with Trump’s planned appearance. Over the weekend, the party’s leadership debated disinviting Trump from the Washington convention after the treasurer motioned to reverse course, with dissenters arguing there should be a vote over allowing Trump to attend “when over half of the membership is up in arms,” according to emails The Washington Post reviewed.

 

So the Heritage Foundation has gone full quack. No surprise.

Ivermectin doesn’t work against #COVID19. Neither does hydroxychloroquine. https://t.co/vdXqsiuR4y

— David Gorski, MD, PhD (@gorskon) May 8, 2024

RFK Jr. Ballot Access and Veep Money

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. The 2024 race has begun.

 Voters are not happy about having to choose between Trump and Biden.  Nevertheless, it is dawning on people that third parties face daunting barriers in American politics.

Peder Schaefer at Politico:

In the past week the Democratic Party and other outside groups have put together a team to oppose third-party and independent candidates, a sign that Democrats are ready to fight back against candidacies they perceive as spoiler threats, like Kennedy.

The effort is staffed by longtime operatives like communications consultant Lis Smith, who helped guide Pete Buttigieg’s 2020 presidential campaign, and Dana Remus, who until recently served as Biden’s White House counsel, underscoring the seriousness of the concern.

The Democratic National Committee calls Kennedy a “stalking horse” who will increase Trump’s chances of winning in November. They point to significant contributions from Timothy Mellon, a Trump mega donor, to American Values 2024, and to lingering concerns that in 2016 third-party candidates may have tipped the presidency to Trump.

While Democratic attention was initially directed toward the wide array of third-party contenders, such as independent Cornel West and the No Labels coalition, Kennedy has become the focus of more energy as of late.

Geoffrey Skelley at ABC:

At this still-early juncture, just one minor candidate or party has qualified in enough states to theoretically win the presidency with 270 of the Electoral College's 538 electoral votes (note our publication's name). So far, the Libertarian Party looks likely to appear on at least 37 state ballots worth 381 electoral votes, having made the ballot in 36 states, according to Ballot Access News, and submitted petition signatures in Ohio. (Because many states won't confirm qualification until later this year, we're including cases in which a party or candidate has submitted qualification signatures or claims to have enough backing to qualify, as long as such claims can't be contradicted by available data. In a few cases, qualification might not actually happen.)

The Libertarians are in this position because they're arguably the most well-supported minor party nationally, with about three times as many registered voters as the next-closest third party, the Green Party. For their part, the Greens look to have access in about 21 states, having recently submitted signatures in South Dakota. No Labels, the bipartisan group behind this cycle's most-ballyhooed third-party bid, seems on course to overtake the Greens: Overall, the organization claims to have qualified in 18 states, while Ballot Access News noted that the group had completed its registration or signature drives to qualify as a party in at least four other states — this despite No Labels's insistence that it's not a party. Meanwhile, the conservative Constitution Party has also made 12 state ballots and looks to have met the signature requirement for a 13th in North Carolina.

Beyond these party or quasi-party organizations, Kennedy's campaign has officially made the ballot in one state — Utah — and claims to have qualified in three others, while an allied super PAC claims to have sufficient signatures for Kennedy to make the ballot in four more. For his part, West claims to have made the ballot in four states so far.

Ballot access efforts take money.  RFK Jr. picked a running mate who has money: Nicole Shanahan.  Teddy Schleifer reports at Puck:

Shanahan, by all accounts a true believer in Kennedy’s third-party cause, discovered the candidate in a now familiar, almost stereotypical way. According to associates, her evolution away from the political mainstream began while researching her daughter’s autism diagnosis. Shanahan was consumed, she has said, spending more than half of her time investigating the condition and talking to scientists. (Connections between vaccines and autism have been repeatedly debunked.) In the end, her curiosity led her to Kennedy, an environmental lawyer now better known as one of the nation’s leading anti-vaccine advocates.

There was also her divorce, finalized last year, which gave her a checkbook without interference from Bayshore. In mid-2022, she started a new family office, Planeta Management, which gave the $4 million check to the super PAC. And presumably that’s just a taste of the capital Shanahan has at her disposal. The terms of her divorce settlement with Brin haven’t been made public, but as I’ve reported, some R.F.K. allies had been told cryptically in recent weeks that they wouldn’t have to worry about money anymore—intimating the arrival of some serious cash. Presidential and vice presidential candidates aren’t limited in their self-funding.

Still, there’s the question that everyone is asking: How much capital does she really have to commit to their joint bid? My sense, for what it’s worth, is that I’d be surprised if she put in $50 million—but wouldn’t be surprised by $15 million. Perhaps that’s why a Kennedy campaign aide called me late Monday night to ask if her divorce settlement was a public document.

The money, of course, also accelerated her entry into Kennedy’s inner circle. Shanahan did not know Kennedy well before she made her first donation in mid-2023, I’m told by a source familiar with the relationship. But over the course of that year, Shanahan—enticed by R.F.K.’s appearances on various podcasts—began making connections with Kennedyworld, which was elated to welcome a hyper-connected Silicon Valley impresario.

 

Third Party Update

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. The 2024 race has begun.

 Voters are not happy about having to choose between Trump and Biden.  Nevertheless, it is dawning on people that third parties face daunting barriers in American politics.

 Peter Hamby at Puck writes on the CA Libertarian convention and the prospect that RFK Jr. could win the party's presidential nod:

That prospect crashed into reality the following day, when convention organizers ran a presidential straw poll. Out of 95 votes cast, [Lars] Mapstead won. [Michael] Rectenwald came in second. Kennedy came in dead last in the straw poll, earning only a single vote.

...

Of course, Kennedy was merely testing the waters in Costa Mesa. He isn’t officially seeking the Libertarian nod. But given the resistance to his candidacy from the convention-goers, his path to get on ballots everywhere has essentially reset to where it was before the weekend. Kennedy’s team is confronting a patchwork of ballot-access laws that are different in every state.

Some states require tens of thousands of validated signatures, which is a heavy lift for even the most well-funded candidates from the two major parties. Kennedy, at least, has money to count on. Thanks to his family name, Los Angeles connections, and small-dollar online support, Kennedy is raising a respectable amount of money for a gadfly candidate. He ended the fourth fundraising quarter last year with $5.4 million in the bank. But the Kennedy campaign continues to burn through cash, spending heavily to collect ballot access signatures. A super PAC backing his campaign is also working to secure ballot access for Kennedy, but that effort is likewise facing a legal challenge from the Democratic National Committee over claims of improper coordination.

Tara Palmieri at Puck:

So it’s finally put up or shut up time for No Labels—the disorganized dark money group that counts Nelson Peltz, Steve Schwarzman, and Harlan Crow as donors—to execute its quixotic plan to assemble a unity-ticket to challenge the increasingly inevitable disappointment of a Trump–Biden rematch. Over the last two years, the third-party group has raised tens of millions on the assumption that No Labels and its opportunistic C.E.O., Nancy Jacobson, could recruit a viable candidate—Larry Hogan, say, with Joe Manchin as V.P. Sure, No Labels has been able to get their name on the ballot in 16 states. Unfortunately, they just haven’t been able to find that dream ticket, which will prevent them from ballot access in many others.

So on March 8, just three days after Nikki Haley is set to be demoralized in 16 states on Super Tuesday, No Labels is handing over the power to their 800 delegates to make a choice about whether to move forward, and with whom. Their ideal candidate, of course, has been Haley, herself.

In fact, No Labels emissaries have been trying to persuade Haley through back channels, but she’s emphatically resisted. Joe Lieberman, who sits on the board, has told donors that the organization has three strong options, including a Republican governor, but he won’t share names. So far, No Labels has also flirted with total non-starters like Chris Christie and Hogan and Manchin, until they got turned down. (Hogan is now running for Senate in Maryland.) It’s hard to see anyone leaving their party to run as a spoiler, and No Labels had made it clear they need a Republican on the top of the ticket so as not to hand the election to Trump.

 

Libertarian Downfall

 In Defying the Odds, we talk about the social and economic divides that enabled Trump to enter the White House. In Divided We Stand, we discuss how these divides played out in 2020.

Kelly Weill at The Daily Beast:

Across the country, aspiring Libertarian activists and entire state-level Libertarian parties are voluntarily quitting. On the same day in August, New Mexico’s Libertarian Party filed to disaffiliate from the national Libertarian Party (LP), and the Libertarian Party of Virginia filed to dissolve. Fed-up Libertarians have formed splinter groups in Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. And in Evans’ state of Idaho, a contentious set of legal battles have drawn an iron curtain through the local Libertarian party, leaving Evans and other longtime associates on the outs.

At the center of the shakeup is a brash political action committee: the Mises Caucus. In the few years since its 2017 founding, this socially conservative group has swept state and national Libertarian organizations, officially taking control of the LP at the party’s convention this May. Mises Caucus supporters say the group is rebooting America’s third-largest political party. Critics say the caucus promotes bigotry, helps Republicans, and is driving everyone but Mises acolytes out of the organization.

Andy Craig:

Aside from [Gary] Johnson’s candidacy, the party had mostly drawn attention for antics ranging from the mildly amusing to utterly cringe-inducing, such as running an Elvis Presley impersonator as a perennial candidate, nominating someone who accidentally turned his skin blue by drinking colloidal silver, entertaining the presidential aspirations of the mentally unstable alleged murderer John McAfee, and treating C-SPAN viewers to a man stripping nearly naked on the national convention stage. But now, as Ken White, a criminal defense lawyer and respected commentator known by his online moniker Popehat, aptly observed on Twitter, “bigoted shitposters” have now wrested control from these “mostly harmless cranks.”

Under the direction of the so-called Mises Caucus, the LP has become home to those who don’t have qualms about declaring Holocaust-denying racists “fellow travelers” and who don’t think that bigots are necessarily disqualified from the party. They even went out of their way to delete from the party’s platform its nearly 50-year-old language stating: “We condemn bigotry as irrational and repugnant.” The caucus is also reversing the party’s longstanding commitment to open immigration policies in favor of border enforcement. The new chair, Angela McArdle, proclaims that the party will now be dedicated to fighting “wokeism.” People with pronouns in their Twitter bios aren’t welcome anymore, but, evidently, white nationalists and Holocaust deniers are.

In May, Brian Doherty wrote at Reason:

The caucus's official platform is plumb-line libertarian, but its foes say that too many Mises Caucus members and fans downplay libertarian positions that might offend the right, are intentionally obnoxious and bullying, and are often racist. For example, the New Hampshire L.P., a powerful vector of Mises Caucus messaging, tweeted on Martin Luther King Day that "America isn't in debt to black people. If anything it's the other way around." (The tweet was later deleted.)

The sense the caucus is soft on or actively encourages racism attracted the attention of the Southern Poverty Law Center just before the convention began, which aired the concerns in a story reported with cooperation from many Libertarian Party members upset with the Mises Caucus.

Both Heise and Mises Caucus stalwart Joshua Smith, who won the vice-chair election Saturday, denied the charges of racism. Heise* said in a phone interview prior to the convention that the basic vibe they are seeking is online youths into edgy comedic podcasts, a new counterculture for whom the old L.P. holds little appeal. Heise believes that the current rumored frontrunner for a Mises Caucus–approved presidential nominee in 2024, comedian and podcaster Dave Smith, is so well-connected to the Joe Rogan world that legacy respectable mainstream media will be meaningless for party messaging moving forward.

 

Libertarians

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the 2016 campaign. The 2019 update includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms. The 2020 race, the subject of our next book, is well under  way.  

Jim Galloway at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Over the weekend, U.S. Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan decided that he wouldn’t make a run for president under the Libertarian Party banner after all.

Last July, Amash abandoned the Republican party over its uncritical support for Donald Trump, later joining with Democrats and casting a vote to impeach the president. He proclaimed himself a Libertarian in April, even as he announced the formation of a committee to explore his presidential possibilities.

But on Saturday, via Twitter, Amash decided against a third-party run. “Polarization is near an all-time high. Electoral success requires an audience willing to consider alternatives,” he wrote.

Amash was the party’s best bet to make a loud noise in November. There is still a reason to keep an eye on Libertarians as they pick their presidential nominee this weekend. But many will consider the “how” to be more important than the “who.”

The pandemic has forced the Libertarian nominating convention into cyberspace — something that Republicans and Democrats alike might find themselves mimicking if the coronavirus doesn’t abate by mid-August. That’s when Democrats are scheduled to gather in Milwaukee, followed by Republicans in Charlotte.

Third-Party Spoilers

 In Defying the Odds, we discuss congressional elections as well as the presidential race.

Daniel Marans at HuffPost:

Until Tuesday night, Drew Gray Miller, the Libertarian candidate for Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District, was treated like an afterthought by Democrats, Republicans and most news outlets.

...
Then the election results came in. Miller had received 0.6 percent of the vote ― accounting for far more than the 0.2 percentage point lead Democrat Conor Lamb ended up holding over Republican Rick Saccone at the end of the night. (Lamb has declared victory, but Saccone is challenging the results.)

Suddenly Miller was the man of the hour, as pundits discovered that Miller’s candidacy might have cost Saccone the race.

When CNN finally flashed Miller’s photo on screen, his 20-person election watch party at Fat Head’s Saloon erupted in cheers. They high-fived one another and took selfies in front of the TV as the party took a rowdier turn. 

At the Independent Record in Helena, Holly K. Michaels reports:

As the clock was running out for candidates to get their name on the ballot for what’s expected to be a hotly contested U.S. Senate race, Tim Adams — a man previously paid by the state Republican Party and who donated to Republican candidates as recently as 2016 — filed to run as a member of the Green Party.

The Green Party was only approved to appear on Montana ballots Monday morning, just hours before the 5 p.m. filing deadline. Six people filed under the party's banner for state legislative and federal races, including Adams, the former Republican operative.

But some question whether Adams, who is running for the U.S. Senate, is really a Green Party member or got into the race to siphon votes away from Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat seeking re-election to a third term.

“Tim Adams is no Green Party candidate,” David Parker, an associate professor of political science at Montana State University, said Tuesday. “He has a long history of conservative activism. It’s curious that he has announced a candidacy and it’s curious that it happened on the last day.”

In 2012, an outside group, Montana Hunters and Anglers, backed Libertarian Senate candidate Dan Cox, apparently with the intent of siphoning votes from Republican Denny Rehberg. The trick worked: Cox's vote exceeded Tester's margin.

It is not all fun and games.  In 2016, the Russians helped Green Party candidate Jill Stein in hopes f bringing down Clinton.  Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti at NYT:

The scope of the operation was sweeping. The Russians assumed their fake identities to communicate with campaign volunteers for Mr. Trump and grass-roots groups supporting his candidacy. They bought pro-Trump and anti-Clinton political advertisements on Facebook and other social media. They used an Instagram account to try to suppress turnout of minority voters and campaign for Ms. Stein, the Green Party candidate.

...
Weeks before the election, the Russians ratcheted up social media activity aimed at dampening support for Mrs. Clinton.

In mid-October, Woke Blacks, an Instagram account run by the Internet Research Agency, carried the message “hatred for Trump is misleading the people and forcing Blacks to vote Killary. We cannot resort to the lesser of two devils. Then we’d surely be better off without voting AT ALL.”

Then, just days before Americans went to the polls, another Instagram account controlled by the Russians — called Blacktivist — urged its followers to “choose peace” and vote for Ms. Stein, who was expected to siphon support from Mrs. Clinton’s campaign.

“Trust me,” the message read, “it’s not a wasted vote.”

Richmond Times-Dispatch Endorses Gary Johnson

The Richmond Times-Dispatch gives Gary Johnson his first significant media endorsement:

In this autumn of our electoral discontent, hope springs, as it so often does in the American republic, from unexpected precincts. Much of the country is distressed by the presidential candidates offered by the two conventional political parties. And for good reason. Neither Donald Trump nor Hillary Clinton meets the fundamental moral and professional standards we have every right to expect of an American president. Fortunately, there is a reasonable — and formidable — alternative.

Gary Johnson is a former, two-term governor of New Mexico and a man who built from scratch a construction company that eventually employed more than 1,000 people before he sold it in 1999. He possesses substantial executive experience in both the private and the public sectors.

RELATED: Endorsement breaks with precedent

RELATED: The candidates and the creed

RELATED: Times-Dispatch endorsements since 1980

More important, he’s a man of good integrity, apparently normal ego and sound ideas. Sadly, in the 2016 presidential contest, those essential qualities make him an anomaly — though they are the foundations for solid leadership and trustworthy character. (At 63, he is also the youngest candidate by more than half a decade — and is polling well among truly young voters.)

As the nominee of the Libertarian Party, Johnson is expected to be on the ballot in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. He is, in every respect, a legitimate and reasonable contender for the presidency — but only if the voters give him a fair hearing. And that can happen only if he is allowed to participate in the presidential debates that begin on Sept. 26 at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y. If the Commission on Presidential Debates wants to perform a real service to its country, it will invite Gary Johnson onto the big stage.

Gary Johnson Ads

Ads by and for Gary Johnson are pretty good:

Trump v. the Rule of Law

 At The New York Times, Adam Liptak writes that Trump's attacks on Judge Curiel have prompted conservative and libertarians scholars to worry about the 

Mr. Trump accused the judge of bias, falsely said he was Mexican and seemed to issue a threat.

“They ought to look into Judge Curiel, because what Judge Curiel is doing is a total disgrace,” Mr. Trump said. “O.K.? But we will come back in November. Wouldn’t that be wild if I am president and come back and do a civil case?”

David Post, a retired law professor who now writes for the Volokh Conspiracy, a conservative-leaning law blog, said those comments had crossed a line.

“This is how authoritarianism starts, with a president who does not respect the judiciary,” Mr. Post said. “You can criticize the judicial system, you can criticize individual cases, you can criticize individual judges. But the president has to be clear that the law is the law and that he enforces the law. That is his constitutional obligation.”

“If he is signaling that that is not his position, that’s a very serious constitutional problem,” Mr. Post said.

Beyond the attack on judicial independence is a broader question of Mr. Trump’s commitment to the separation of powers and to the principles of federalism enshrined in the Constitution. Randy E. Barnett, a law professor at Georgetown and an architect of the first major challenge to President Obama’s health care law, said he had grave doubts on both fronts.

“You would like a president with some idea about constitutional limits on presidential powers, on congressional powers, on federal powers,” Professor Barnett said, “and I doubt he has any awareness of such limits.”

At The Washington Post, Callum Borchers reports that CNN's Jake Tapper asked Trump about his repeated attacks.

Actually, Tapper didn't quite get to form a question. Trump interjected to talk about Clinton's emails. So Tapper tried to steer the conversation back to whether Trump's complaint about U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel was racist. Trump deflected again. Tapper tried again. And again.

In all, Tapper made an astounding 23 follow-up attempts. This moment right here — with this look on Tapper's face — perfectly encapsulates the exchange.

Tapper's relentlessness ultimately paid off. He finally got a straight answer out of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

TAPPER: If you are saying he cannot do his job because of his race, is that not the definition of racism?
TRUMP: No, I don't think so at all.

Tapper presumably had other subjects he would have liked to get to. Trump likely figured as much and assumed he could stall long enough for his interviewer to move on. That's usually how it goes.

But Tapper refused to drop the subject until Trump offered a yes-or-no answer. It was clearly an exhausting effort. But it showed that even Donald J. Trump can be worn down by a journalist who never gives up.

Johnson-Weld

Cyra Master reports at The Hill:

Cato Institute Co-Founder Ed Crane told Politico Sunday he’ll revive the PurplePAC to support the Libertarian Party’s presidential ticket.

The announcement from the former president of the libertarian-leaning think tank came on the same day the Libertarian Party nominated its ticket for the 2016 election — with former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson at the top and former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld as his running mate.

Rob Garver reports at The Fiscal Times:

For months, Republicans personally opposed to Trump have been actively, and sometimes very publicly, seeking a plausible alternative to the New York billionaire. So far, no plausible third-party candidate has emerged, and that’s great news for Johnson and Weld, who could well emerge as a safe harbor for small-government conservatives who can’t bring themselves to vote for Trump.

That’s not to say the conversion will be easy. The Libertarian convention had plenty of the moments of absurdity that, over the years, have relegated the party to the fringe in the past. Johnson, at one point, was booed for suggesting that the government has an interest in licensing people to drive motor vehicles. At one point, there was actually a discussion of whether or not blind people ought to be barred from driving. Late on Sunday, a candidate for party chairman demonstrated his commitment to transparency by performing a strip-tease on stage.

In the end, though, the party nominated what is probably its most qualified ticket ever, at least in terms of real experience in government. And for the #NeverTrump element of the Republican Party, that might be just enough to justify voting for them.

And for Trump, whose path to the White House, while real, is very narrow, that’s bad news.

Gary Johnson

Libertarian Gary Johnson won't be our next president.  He won't even carry any states.  But if Trump is the GOP nominee, he will probably win enough #NeverTrump conservative votes to register as more than an asterisk.

Rand Paul, Libertarians, and Republicans

Libertarians have a highly consistent political philosophy, favoring less active government across the board:  in economics, social policy, and international affairs.

Carl Cannon writes of last night's GOP debate:

Kentucky’s junior senator pounced on Trump’s answer on party unity, but he later tangled heatedly with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie over civil liberties. “I’m a different kind of Republican,” Paul said near the end of the two-hour debate. He may be understating the problem. Paul is actually a Libertarian, and a principled one, be he’s stuck in a binary political system. He did get off one of the best lines of the night, though, while turning a gay marriage question into a question about religious freedom and the Second Amendment: “I don’t want my religion, or my guns, registered in Washington.”

Paul's basic problem is simple:  he is a libertarian in a party that does not have a significant libertarian wing. His father, Ron Paul, ran twice for president but never won a single primary.  In 2014, Pew reported that only about 12 percent of Republicans identified as libertarians, and many of them did not have consistently libertarian issue positions:

Libertarianism is associated with limited government involvement in the social sphere. In this regard, self-described libertarians are somewhat more supportive of legalizing marijuana than the public overall (65% vs. 54%).

But there are only slight differences between libertarians and the public in views of the acceptability of homosexuality. And they are about as likely as others to favor allowing the police “to stop and search anyone who fits the general description of a crime suspect” (42% of libertarians, 41% of the public).

Similarly, self-described libertarians do not differ a great deal from the public in opinions about foreign policy. Libertarianism is generally associated with a less activist foreign policy, yet a greater share of self-described libertarians (43%) than the public (35%) think “it is best for the future of our country to be active in world affairs.”
...

An alternative way to identify libertarians is the process used to create the Pew Research Center’s political typology, released in June (for more on how the political typology was created, read our explainer in Fact Tank). That study used a statistical technique called “cluster analysis” to sort people into homogeneous groups, based on their responses to 23 questions about a variety of social and political values.

None of the seven groups identified by the 2014 political typology closely resembled libertarians, and, in fact, self-described libertarians can be found in all seven. Their largest representation is among the group we call Business Conservatives; 27% of this group says the term libertarian describes them well. Business Conservatives generally support limited government, have positive views of business and the U.S. economic system, and are more moderate than other conservative groups on the issue of homosexuality. However, they are also supportive of an activist foreign policy and do not have a libertarian profile on issues of civil liberties.

(A slightly different version of this post is at the Besssette-Pitney textbook blog.)

The State of the GOP Field

Jonathan Martin writes at The New York Times:

Unlike many Republican nominating contests, this campaign is beginning with no dominant front-runner. Former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida appeals to some establishment-aligned Republicans, particularly donors, but party hard-liners are resistant. Center-right Republicans are skeptical that another Bush can be elected president, and want to see how rank-and-file primary voters receive him. And with Mr. Romney now considering a third bid, some of the movement toward Mr. Bush will taper off, at least momentarily.

“Romney putting his foot in the door slows down that process,” said Ryan Call, the Colorado Republican chairman. “It creates an opening and opportunity for other candidates to get some oxygen.”

One of those hopefuls is Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, who used a speech here to call for Republicans to embrace “a new, fresh approach.” The remarks were explicitly aimed at Mrs. Clinton, but there was little doubt that Mr. Walker also was trying to set himself apart from Mr. Bush and Mr. Romney.

Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey has also begun making the case privately to Republican leaders that nominating Mr. Bush or Mr. Romney would rob the party of a chance to portray Mrs. Clinton as a relic, according to one party official who recently met with Mr. Christie.

In addition to the establishment-oriented Republicans, even more hopefuls are vying for the support of ideologically driven activists. As with the center-right group, there are both familiar and fresher faces. Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas all have experience running for president and are lining up again. Then there are such newer prospects as Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and the neurosurgeon Ben Carson.

At Five Thirty Eight, Nate Silver pictures the field as a five-ring circus (below) I would quibble on two points.

• First, I don't think that the "moderate" and "establishment" factions are really different. They're basically the same thing.
• Second, the graph suggests that the factions are all the same size.  They are not.  As a previous post noted, the moderate-establishment wing is by far the largest.  And it is not clear that there even is a distinct libertarian wing, at least among people who vote in Republican primaries.  (Ron Paul never won one.)

 

Libertarian Moment? Maybe Not.

Pew reports:

About one-in-ten Americans (11%) describe themselves as libertarian and know what the term means. Respondents were asked whether the term “libertarian” describes them well and — in a separate multiple-choice question — asked for the definition of “someone whose political views emphasize individual freedom by limiting the role of government”; 57% correctly answered the multiple-choice question, choosing “libertarian” from a list that included “progressive,” “authoritarian,” “Unitarian” and “communist.” On the self-description question 14% said they were libertarian. For the purpose of this analysis we focus on the 11% who both say they are libertarian and know the definition of the term.

These findings come from the Pew Research Center’s political typology and polarization survey conducted earlier this year, as well as a recent survey of a subset of those respondents via the Pew Research Center’s new American Trends Panel, conducted April 29-May 27 among 3,243 adults.

Self-described libertarians tend to be modestly more supportive of some libertarian positions, but few of them hold consistent libertarian opinions on the role of government, foreign policy and social issues.

Ceaser on Paul

At The Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner, Richard Sincere interviews After Hope and Change lead author James Ceaser:

Ceaser said the 2016 candidate will not be someone who “will be very surprising,” but rather will be someone like Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, or Florida Senator Marco Rubio.

The nominee, he predicted, will be “someone who has some elements of respect for libertarians but is not himself libertarian.”

What about Rand Paul?

If Kentucky Senator Rand Paul is a candidate, he added, “he'll do quite well.”

Expressing some admiration for Paul's political skills, Ceaser offered that “it's one of the more amazing stories of American politics: This young senator from Kentucky, whose father was regarded in many ways as an extremist, [yet] Rand Paul has been able to take this movement and make it into something a lot larger in a very short period of time and acquire status as a significant player in the Republican party.”

Rand Paul, he concluded, is a “potential very strong candidate, even though I don't think he'll be over the top in 2016.”

The Anti-Wasta Party

In Startup Rising, Chris Schroeder writes of the Arabic word wasta, which refers to cronyism and insider connections.  Some Republicans have called for a libertarian populism, which would oppose the American version of wasta.  Another term for this approach is "outsiderism"   At US News, Stephanie Slade writes:

At both ends of the political spectrum, Americans are hungry for an antidote to cronyism. Frustration with that aspect of the status quo is what powered both the tea party and the Occupy movements. In between, people may not quite be sure what's wrong with the current system, but they know something isn't right.

Therein lies the opportunity for Republicans. As the Examiner's [Tim] Carney put it, "It's time for free-market populism and a Republican Party that fights against all forms of political privilege – a party that champions all who want to work and take risks in order to improve their lives and raise a family."

There is ample evidence that this could be a winning strategy. As workers have struggled to bounce back from the recession, banks and corporations have been raking in the profits, and that hasn't gone unnoticed. A report by the College Republican National Committee earlier this summer found the conservative narrative that young people most agreed with was, "We need leaders who aren't afraid to fight existing interests like big companies and big unions in order to reform outdated and unsustainable programs." Americans, especially young Americans, have become deeply suspicious of large institutions. More worrisome for Republicans, they have come to associate the GOP with the very institutions they mistrust.

The College Republicans asked a focus group of aspiring entrepreneurs why they voted for President Obama even though they see Republicans as the party that favors business. "The Republican Party would make it really easy to start a business and have a successful business if you already have that capital in your bank account … but we're all sitting on our own various debts and our student loans, and the Republican Party isn't helping us with any of that," one respondent explained.

Republicans and Spending

At The Daily Beast, Lloyd Green writes that if the Rand Paul faction cannot reach an entente with Chris Christie and Republican moderates,  "the 2016 Republican presidential nomination will be little more than a soap box to channel the ghosts of 1964 Republican nominee Sen. Barry Goldwater and the Confederacy’s long dead president, Jefferson Davis."

Much as libertarian purists may wish to believe—that welfare and Social Security are the same, they are not. One is viewed by voters a benefit earned after a lifetime of labor, while the other is a matter of the taxpayers’ grace. The bottom line is that the GOP can no longer afford scorn all spending, or to treat checks issued by Treasury alike.

To that end, the GOP must make common cause with more than just the wealthy or the worshipful, and if it is unable to tell friend and foe apart, it will be consigned to the role of the not-so-loyal opposition for a long time. AARP doesn’t have to be an enemy. If Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan could talk to the Teamsters, then the Republicans can surely speak to seniors.

Take disaster relief: as the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza and Sean Sullivan describe it, “the American public wants money spent on disasters—cost be damned.” Parsing the numbers, Cillizza and Sullivan report, “fifty-nine percent of all respondents say federal emergency aid need not be offset by cuts in other parts of the budget, “ a number that includes a majority (52 percent) of self-identified Republicans.” To be sure, Christie is not alone. Other Republicans “get it,” too.

Christie v. Paul

Politico reports:

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is ripping libertarians — including Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) — for challenging government surveillance programs and failing to understand the dangers of terrorism.

“This strain of libertarianism that’s going through parties right now and making big headlines I think is a very dangerous thought,” the New Jersey GOP governor said on Thursday at a Republican governors forum in Aspen, Colo. “You can name any number of people and (Paul is) one of them.”

Christie, a potential 2016 candidate who appeared on the panel with Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, said lawmakers who are questioning government surveillance programs should hear from the families affected by the Sept. 11 attacks.

“These esoteric, intellectual debates — I want them to come to New Jersey and sit across from the widows and the orphans and have that conversation. And they won’t, because that’s a much tougher conversation to have,” Christie said.

What is Christie up to?  Some possibilities:

1. He's sincerely articulating his policy views.
2. He sees Rand Paul as a threat to the GOP.
3. He thinks that he could beat Rand Paul in a head-to-head contest for the GOP nomination. With his penchant for making gaffes and hiring neo-Confederate wackos, Paul is more self-destructive than other potential GOP contenders. Christie may be trying to build Paul up now so that he can take him down later.

I vote for number 3.