Strategies for Libertarians

I am writing this at Porcfest, an annual libertarian gathering in northern New Hampshire put on by the Free State Project. Lots of very free range kids, some of them selling things, a lot of well behaved dogs, a few people openly carrying firearms, a weird cultural mix of hippy and libertarian gun culture. I may write another post about it; this one is about an issue for libertarians posed for me by a talk I just heard by Angela McArdle, sometime chair of the Libertarian Party and currently of the Mises Caucus.¹

The talk was about alliance as a strategy, specifically alliance of the Libertarian Party with the Trump movement. It apparently occurred to Trump more than a year ago that although the LP had no hope of electing a libertarian president they might be able to determine which of the other candidates got elected, that libertarian votes might be the margin of victory for one candidate or the other. He got in touch with McArdle, invited her for dinner at Mar-a-Lago, asked her what he would have to do to get libertarians to vote for him. She offered a number of proposals. Trump ended up speaking at the LP convention, promising to free Ross Ulbricht if elected and to put a libertarian in his cabinet. McArdle successfully supported a left of center LP candidate for the presidential nomination on the theory that he would pull votes from Biden² and, in a webbed talk delivered after the LP convention, advised libertarians to push his campaign in blue states, said that her objective was to defeat Joe Biden. As to libertarians in red states, whether they support the nominee of their party “is entirely up to you.”

Trump, once elected, pardoned Ross Ulbricht and appointed RFK, an LP member but not by any other standard a libertarian, to his cabinet.

McArdle’s talk was a defense of the strategy of which this was an example, in her view a successful one, the strategy of trading libertarian support for small wins, that being the most that libertarians could expect to get in exchange. It is a defensible strategy but it occurred to me that there were two costs neither of which she mentioned.

The first is to the reputation of the libertarian movement. The Libertarian Party has long labeled itself “The Party of Principle;” part of the attraction of the libertarian movement is the appearance of consistent support of liberty across a wide variety of issues, from drug laws to professional licensing to immigration, of being motivated by a consistent philosophy of freedom. If the party is seen as visibly supporting Trump, as it will be by anyone who listened to McArdle’s webbed talk, it will be seen as sharing the responsibility for all of his actions, some of them far from libertarian. That will make it harder to recruit or retain as members, of the movement as well as the party, anyone opposed to Trump’s policies. Since Trump is not a libertarian that is likely to include not only anyone left of center but also anyone seriously committed to libertarianism.

The second cost is the effect of alliance with Trump, or with any other non-libertarian movement, on libertarian doctrine. Libertarians who are Trump allies will feel pressure to minimize the conflict between his beliefs and theirs, to create libertarian defenses for unlibertarian policies in order not to feel obliged to attack their allies. That effect will be reinforced by the change in the personnel of the movement as Trump supporters join, libertarians hostile to Trump’s policies leave. In enough time the result is likely to be a “libertarian” party, possibly a “libertarian” movement, that is no longer libertarian.

This is not an entirely theoretical picture. The takeover of the LP by the Mises Caucus was associated with increased support within the party for immigration restrictions, the abandonment of what used to be regarded as a core libertarian position, at least by the hard core of the movement.³

An Alternative

The strategy that I have long argued for⁴ starts, like McArdle’s, with the observation that although there are not nearly enough libertarian votes to elect a libertarian president there might be enough to determine which major party candidate gets elected. It views this fact as providing an opportunity not for bargaining between the LP and the parties but for competition between the major parties for libertarian votes, to be obtained by supporting whatever libertarian policies are most consistent with that party’s ideology and political base. This was, as I interpret the history, the strategy of the Socialist Party in the 20^th Century; their most substantial electoral victories were two congressmen and several mayors of Milwaukee but before the end of the century much of what they supported was in the platforms of the major parties. Like McArdle’s strategy it trades libertarian votes for small wins.

Unlike McArdle’s approach, this strategy does not require anyone in a position to bargain on behalf of libertarians, fortunate since no one is. It also does not require bargaining within the libertarian movement. Any bargaining happens within the major parties as their members, libertarian Republicans and Democrats or party professionals seeking libertarian votes, try to persuade others in their party to adopt policies that will appeal to libertarian voters. Unlike her approach it appeals to both parties, gives both an incentive to adopt policies that will appeal to libertarians. Unlike her approach it does not risk tainting the reputation of libertarianism, since they are appealing to us, not we to them. Nor does it give libertarians an incentive to tweak their views to move them closer to the views of one or the other major party.

It does, however, give individual libertarians an incentive to work within one of the major parties, to identify as libertarian Republicans or libertarian Democrats in order to be positioned to persuade the party to tweak its positions in ways designed to appeal to their fellow libertarians — also to make an informed guess as to what tweaks are most likely to be acceptable to fellow party members. A libertarian Republican is still a libertarian but unlikely to be a Libertarian, an LP member. Which may be a reason for someone who identifies with the Party to prefer an approach that works through the party.

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1. The major Porcfest talks were recorded and will be webbed, but are not up yet.

2. “I endorsed Chase Oliver as the best way to beat Joe Biden” (from her webbed talk)

3. I am writing this footnote in the Porcfest location of the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire, listening to a talk by a speaker exploring possible arguments for immigration restrictions. I am reminded of the ways in which Murray Rothbard’s version of libertarianism changed as he moved from attempted alliance with the New Left to alliance with the right and of the effect of alliance with the right on Ron Paul’s movement as demonstrated in his newsletters.

4. “His real function in this election is to force the Republican party—ideally both parties—to shift in a libertarian direction, by demonstrating that there are a lot of votes there, and at the same time to increase public support for policies currently supported by neither party.” (comment on Ron Paul from my blog, January 22, 2012)

“His odds of getting enough votes in one or more states to convince the losing party that they would have won if only those voters had voted for him are much higher—which is a reason for them to look for libertarian issues that they could support in the future.” (Comment on Gary Johnson from my blog, November 06, 2012)