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Trump’s Showdown At The Libertarian Convention
When cable news channels announced the results of the 2016 election, for the most part, they displayed the vote totals for the two major party candidates side-by-side: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. They simply left out the Libertarian Party ticket, which was led by Gary Johnson. It was as if Gary Johnson didn’t exist.
In a normal election year, that wouldn’t be a very notable omission. Outside of Ross Perot’s run in 1992, third-party candidates don’t exactly put up very big numbers on Election Night, so they’re not worth talking about. That’s been especially true for Libertarian Party candidates, who are mostly known for taking off their shirts at conventions and debating the merits of driver’s licenses.
But in 2016, it was a very different story. Libertarians had their best-ever showing in a presidential race, racking up nearly four-and-a-half million votes. In eleven states, the Libertarian Party vote total exceeded the margin of victory — meaning, you can make a case that Libertarians affected the outcome of the 2016 presidential election by siphoning votes from Hillary Clinton. You don’t hear that discussed very often — it’s a lot easier for Democrats to blame Russia. But it’s true.
Eight years later, once again, there are signs that libertarians might have a relatively strong showing in the upcoming election. Polls show that most Americans are ambivalent about this presidential race — in part because both candidates have already served as president, so there’s not as much enthusiasm as there normally is. That gives an opening to third-party candidates to attract new support.
Both the Trump campaign and the Biden campaign understand this dynamic very well. They’re looking at the same poll numbers. But only Trump has decided to appeal to these Libertarian voters directly. On Saturday night, Trump spoke at the Libertarian Party’s national nominating convention in the nation’s capital — becoming the first former president to ever do so.
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The speech marked another moment of stark contrast between Trump and Joe Biden, who would never walk into a venue where he knew that a large portion of the audience would oppose him. We’re at the point where Joe Biden isn’t even allowed to give press conferences anymore, much less deliver speeches before a hostile crowd. But Trump had no problem facing his detractors at the convention, who (as predicted) heckled him at various points during his address.
That was the side of the story the media ran with. There were dozens of headlines about how Trump was booed and jeered at the convention. But there were quite a few Trump supporters in attendance as well, and there were several moments where the Libertarians in attendance were clearly on Trump’s side.
That makes sense, because Trump didn’t deliver his typical stump speech. Instead, he tailored his remarks for a libertarian audience — hitting topics like lower taxes, cryptocurrency, reducing the size of the federal government, keeping America out of foreign wars, and so on. Trump even promised to commute the sentence of libertarian hero Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the defunct dark web marketplace “Silk Road.” Ulbricht is serving a life sentence for facilitating the sale of narcotics, but Trump said he’d let him out of prison on day one of his second term. Trump made a host of other promises, as well, including a vow to appoint libertarians to his Cabinet. Watch:
As you could hear during some of those clips, the crowd reaction was mixed at some points and very positive at other points. It was a lot more interesting than the traditional stump speech, and the response was unpredictable at points.
But for their part, the media pretended it was an unmitigated disaster. NBC News ran this headline: “Trial taking its toll: Trump booed and heckled at Libertarian National Convention. “The Washington Post reported, “Trump loudly heckled at Libertarian National Convention.” Politico reported that Trump had been “jeered,” and CNN said he was “loudly booed.” And on and on.
As you just saw from the clips I played, this is obviously a total misrepresentation of what happened. The media desperately does not want the Trump campaign bringing in new voters from the Libertarian side, so they’re lying. The so-called “defenders of democracy” want to shame a presidential candidate for reaching out to people who disagree with him.
But the truth is that, even when there was booing during Trump’s speech, it didn’t always relate to what Trump was saying. There was, as others have pointed out, the equivalent of a “Jerry Springer” episode occurring in the crowd at one point as Trump spoke. Apparently a Libertarian delegate by the name of “Starchild” was holding up a sign calling Trump a dictator. And then security dragged him away for some reason, and Starchild’s associates weren’t pleased by this development. Watch:
“These fascists don’t get to kick out Starchild! Free Starchild!” Presumably that’s Starchild’s father, Star, but it’s hard to say. Meanwhile Starchild’s wig falls off as he’s dragged away, while a very confused Secret Service agent looks on.
Is this what Ludwig Von Mises had in mind back in the day? Probably not. But it’s the state of the Libertarian Party in America right now. And if nothing else, it’s entertaining.
During his speech, Trump apparently recognized that, and he had some fun at the party’s expense. Watch:
Again, this is something Joe Biden wouldn’t have the balls (or the brainpower) to do. It certainly wasn’t written in the teleprompter to taunt libertarians to their faces, at their own convention, about the fact that pretty much no one votes for them. That’s not the kind of outreach that any campaign advisor would have come up with. But it was both honest and hilarious, which is why it works.
Libertarians (except for Starchild, maybe) are under no illusions that they’re going to win the White House. What Trump is doing is something the Left normally excels at, which is transactional politics. He’s basically saying, “Vote for me, even though you don’t like me, and I’ll give you more than the other party will.” We can assume Trump isn’t passionate about Ross Ulbricht, for example. But he knows the crowd is, so he says he’ll get him out of prison.
In that context, it makes sense for Trump to embrace the adversarial relationship he has with the crowd. Trump knew going into the convention that he wasn’t going to win the Libertarian Party’s nomination. Instead, his plan was simply to present a viable alternative to the Libertarian Party’s eventual nominee.
And in that respect, Trump’s speech succeeded more than he probably even thought possible. It now appears very likely that Trump will indeed win a very large share of the Libertarian Party vote. That’s because on Sunday — after Trump was determined to be ineligible for their party’s nomination — Libertarians nominated an HR representative named Chase Oliver to be their presidential nominee.
Already, right away, this is a win for Trump, because no one in their right mind would ever want an HR representative in the White House. It’s probably the least sympathetic and appealing profession for a politician that you can imagine. But it gets even worse once you start looking at what Chase Oliver believes. For example, earlier this year, Oliver shot a video at the southern border. Watch:
According to Oliver, the United States has no right to enforce its borders against anyone. We have to be open to illegal migrants as well as hostile invading armies, presumably, because otherwise we’re basically erecting another Berlin Wall. Never mind that the Berlin Wall was intended to lock people inside and prevent them from escaping, while the southern border wall is intended to keep foreigners from entering the country. That’s not important to Chase Oliver. The point, in his mind, is that walls are always bad. Except, presumably, the walls that form his own home, and keep intruders out.
In that video, Oliver also lies and claims that illegals don’t use more welfare benefits than American citizens, which is just completely made up. As the Center for Immigration Studies has found, “In 2018, 49 percent of households headed by all immigrants — naturalized citizens, legal residents, and illegal immigrants — used at least one major welfare program, compared to 32 percent of households headed by the native-born.”
So this guy doesn’t understand the impact of open borders on the economy, but he wants open borders anyway. This is one of the least-popular positions a politician can have right now, but the Libertarian Party just picked a candidate who firmly believes in unrestricted illegal migration.
As it happens, Chase is also a big supporter of pretty much every other Left-wing agenda item. He doesn’t want the government to prevent adults from getting naked in front of kids, for instance. Watch:
Oliver goes on to say that he doesn’t prefer to see nudity at Pride parades, where children are attending — but only because it’s not “helpful” to the message of the parade, in his view. He doesn’t think it should be prohibited.
Then the interviewer asks a few follow-up questions about drag shows for children. And once again, Oliver pretends that there’s nothing sexual about these shows. We’ve all seen the footage of these shows, and what kids are forced to watch. But apparently Chase Oliver hasn’t. Watch:
As the joke goes, the Libertarians wanted Ron Paul but they got RuPaul instead.
But it’s actually disturbing to listen to his reasoning. He compares the Wiggles — the kids’ music group — to grown men with a fetish for wearing women’s clothing. And he says he has no problem leaving children alone with these grown men. Parents, he says, always know best — and if parents want to leave their children with these people, then who are we to disagree? His only defense is that these drag performers are engaging in “performance art.” Therefore, we have to accept it.
Once again, it just so happens that Chase’s position comports perfectly with mainstream Democratic Party orthodoxy. And there’s plenty more where that came from. Chase Oliver has also voiced his support for banning Donald Trump from social media, as well as for vaccine mandates (as long as they’re implemented by private companies and not the government). He also supports legislation that would overrule the Supreme Court on abortion.
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So to recap: The Libertarians nominated a Leftist, essentially. They’ve picked a Pride-flag waving progressive who supports open borders, has no problem with nudity at Pride parades, loves seeing kids alone at drag queen story hours, supports vaccine mandates for millions of Americans, and also supports abortion on the grounds of “bodily autonomy.” This is pretty much the DNC’s platform, word for word.
It’s yet more evidence that libertarians are just pot-scented Democrats. They fundamentally agree with Democrats on most things because libertarians and leftists both subscribe to a consent-based morality where anything is okay as long as the people involved choose to do it. And they both make exceptions even to that flimsy moral framework when it comes to children — who are often exposed to drag queens and public nudity without their consent, especially in cities controlled by Democrats. Chase Oliver wouldn’t be remotely out of place as a Democrat on San Francisco’s city council.
Then again, Republicans are also just Democrats driving the speed limit, to use Michael Malice’s phrase. Both parties agree on major issues like funding foreign wars, and they both tolerate open borders. What this means is that there really is no true political alternative to Leftism, at least not right now. Even the “third party” doesn’t really provide it, as Chase Oliver demonstrates.
During his appearance on Saturday night at the Libertarian’s convention, to the dismay of Starchild, Donald Trump didn’t promise his audience everything they wanted. But Trump did demonstrate that he’s willing to break with the Republican Party establishment to win over voters who have been ignored for decades. He made it clear that he’s willing to make promises that Mitch McConnell won’t be happy about, in order to secure more votes and political power. Is that a tactic we normally see from the Right? Absolutely not. But ultimately, especially in this election year, it’s what building a viable alternative to Leftism will require.
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