President-elect Donald Trump made the unorthodox decision to speak at the Libertarian National Convention back in May. No former or future president had appeared at a third-party convention in the past, but in a stroke of what turned out to be political genius, Trump was willing to face a hostile audience and make multiple concessions to libertarians in order to expand his coalition heading into the general election.
Trump pledged to give libertarians a few of their bucket list items in exchange for their votes. The 45th president promised to appoint a libertarian to a Cabinet-level position, call off the regulatory dogs regarding Bitcoin, and free Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the darknet site Silk Road who many believe is unjustly serving a life sentence in federal prison.
The bargain worked. Several prominent libertarians, both within and outside the Libertarian Party, made the unprecedented decision to endorse the former president. Comic Dave Smith, author Tom Woods, radio host Austin Petersen, and Libertarian Party Chairwoman Angela McCardle all threw their weight behind Trump, a decision undoubtedly made easier by the nomination of left-libertarian Chase Oliver by the nation’s third-largest party.
Oliver, best known for forcing a runoff between Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican Hershel Walker in Georgia, is a relic of previous iterations of libertarianism. His support of open borders, transgender surgeries for children, and the Black Lives Matter movement and his less than stellar record on COVID-19 tyranny alienated right-leaning libertarians. With the Left’s all-out embrace of totalitarianism, a transactional relationship with a Republican candidate offering a seat at the table became too good a deal to pass up.
Oliver performed worse than any libertarian candidate for president since 2008, finishing fifth behind Green Party nominee Jill Stein and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who dropped out of the race and urged his supporters to vote for Trump. While former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson set the high water mark for the Libertarian Party in 2016, earning 3.3%, nearly 4.5 million votes, Oliver garnered only 0.4%, just over 600,000 votes. Trump won the so-called blue wall states, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, by an average of 1.1%, meaning the libertarian vote may very well have been the difference between a clean sweep of the swing states and an Electoral College victory by Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump’s first term in office was far from libertarian, from the out-of-control spending to the empowerment of Dr. Anthony Fauci in 2020, but the president-elect appears to be taking his concessions to libertarians seriously. Trump announced Saturday night that former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley, both of whom are hawkish on foreign policy, would not be welcomed back.
The former president’s son and member of his transition team, Donald Trump Jr., has assured libertarian thought leader Dave Smith that he is advising his father against bringing additional neoconservatives into the administration. For national security adviser, the former president has tapped Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL), who has expressed skepticism over financial aid to both Ukraine and NATO and shares Trump’s hawkish views toward China.
In an apparent attempt to change course fiscally from the policies of his first term, Trump has pledged to bring Tesla CEO Elon Musk into the fold to head a yet-to-be-created Department of Government Efficiency, focused on identifying waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal budget. Musk, to his immense credit, reached out to the greatest enemy of government spending this side of Ludwig von Mises, former congressman and presidential candidate Dr. Ron Paul, who, if given the opportunity, would provide the type of fiscal sanity not seen in Washington, D.C., since the Calvin Coolidge administration.
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Like scorpions stinging their frogs, politicians break promises to their supporters at a troubling clip, and libertarians won’t accept the status quo on spending, foreign policy, gun rights, or a multitude of other issues. But at least for now, the Trump-libertarian alliance makes all the sense in the world.
The deal paid dividends at the ballot box for Trump, and all signs point to several major wins for liberty lovers in the coming years. Even if the benefits of a Trump administration are modest from the libertarian perspective, they would still reflect the highest level of influence by libertarians on national politics since the Ron Paul revolution.
Brady Leonard (@bradyleonard) is a musician, political strategist, and host of The No Gimmicks Podcast.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
