Small news, but Virginia’s hotly contested 5th District just got a Libertarian candidate, per the News & Advance:
Harmon, 27, is a student at Lord Fairfax Community College. He plans to transfer to Shenandoah University in Winchester after the semester is over. While studying economics, he will campaign against both major parties.
He hopes he can ride the wave of national discontent apparent in both Republican and Democratic presidential nomination contests.
“We’re seeing it across the board. People are getting irritated with Republicans and Democrats,” Harmon said. “… I believe once people hear what Libertarians stand for and what we believe, you’re going to see a lot more people floating over and voting Libertarian.”
Harmon perhaps isn’t wrong.
Jonah Goldberg writing for the National Review has already made the argument that the Party of Reagan cannot co-exist with the Party of Trump. D.J. McGuire in these pages has echoed the salient point that Trump isn’t just a mere big government conservative — Trump simply stands for big government. Susan Sili wonders whether duty binds us not to jump the ship, while in the pages of The Bull Elephant we are reading of a Stalinesque purging of the ranks by Chairman Whitbeck and staff — and apparently while on RPV time. Meanwhile, those who prize conscience above political religions have simply repudiated the environment of their own accord, as Andrew Schwartz has done. Lastly, former lieutenant governor Bill Bolling opines on the reasons why conservatism ought to be a governing philosophy, not a contrarian stance.
All good points. All well made.
The dangers come into sharper focus pending a 2017 gubernatorial contest, nevermind the fact that in Trump-Clinton contest that prospective Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson polls at 11%.
Virginia Libertarians seem intent on running a candidate in every congressional seat this year, and should they choose to present a united ticket in 2017 to build on Robert Sarvis’ surprising 7% capture of the 2013 electorate? Given the current chaos and the prevalence of social climbers in Republican leadership at the moment, it’s not looking good for party unity right now — and the prospect of Goldberg’s prophecy that the “party of Reagan” will walk becomes more and more a consequence rather than a prediction.
For years, conservatives and liberty minded folks have attempted to hold a revolution on the Battleship Potemkin, the argument being that it is easier to take over the party strictures and structures rather than go into port and build our own battleship over the course of a decade — the example given being that of the Libertarian Party. Given the LP’s lack of success since the 1970s, the great hope has been to build within the Republican Party — with some success in the Reagan years.
Those who are longstanding classical liberals and lowercase-l libertarians might have had their argument made for them. Ron Paul briefly gave hope to the rise of a liberty-leaning and constitutionalist Republican Party, but that hope seems all but quashed in the rise of the populist movement.
As the Republican Party lurches back to Taft-style protectionism and isolationism, the political landscape is demonstrating that Trump is no one-off candidate. The far right politics of France’s National Front, Britain’s English Defence League, Austria’s Freedom Party, Hungary’s Jobbink Party, and the rise (and return?) of the German National Democratic Party (NPD) all seem to be in vogue as common allies in the struggle against the Bolshevik menace pan-Islamist terrorism. Americans now have European-sized government; we now have European style parties.
Goldberg and McGuire have the stronger arguments here. The party of Ronald Reagan cannot co-exist with the party of Donald Trump. Party leadership today simply doesn’t have the character or strength to keep both sides united under common purpose (at least, not while they are picking off and threatening other voices with whom they disagree).
One suspects that the Libertarian Party will field candidates in each contested election — a wise strategy indeed.
America is about to have a contest between a nationalist on the right and a socialist on the left. If the moment for a party that defends individualism in the face of its enemies has come, then the Libertarian Party will have to heavily court the leaders of the liberty movement. Fusionism is what gave Republicans their majorities in the 1980s under Reagan, after all. How ironic it would be if the fusionism of the Reagan era no longer found a home in the Republican Party?
Therein lies the danger of the moment. So long as Trump continues to push out conservatives in favor of the nativist and racially-motivated right, and so long as Trump’s supporters and pretended leadership refuses to publicly renounce Trumpism in toto, conscience cannot assent — no matter how hard loyalty oaths are pushed on the Republican faithful. We have higher creeds and better loyalties to respond to, after all.
Republicans in Virginia’s 5th District are currently embroiled in a bitter five-way split for the nomination. Harmon — at the ripe old age of 27 — is a long shot at best for victory, and perhaps knows that his effort isn’t victory, but building an operation of like-minded friends who might one day achieve victory. Meanwhile, the Democrats are united behind one candidate, and with one purpose.
If that doesn’t sell you on the current political dynamic in Virginia, nothing else will. Republicans don’t have much time to save our party.
