(TND) — Former President Donald Trump's upcoming speech at the Libertarian National Convention isn’t sitting well with some libertarians.
“Libertarians are some of the most independent and thoughtful thinkers in our Country, and I am honored to join them in Washington, D.C., later this month," Trump said in a statement issued by both his campaign and the Libertarian National Party.
But David Boaz, a prominent libertarian figure, said Trump’s appearance this Saturday at the Libertarian National Convention “undercuts the whole party.”
Boaz, a distinguished senior fellow of the Cato Institute and the author of “The Libertarian Mind: A Manifesto for Freedom,” said Trump will dominate media coverage of the convention.
“The Libertarian Party is a political party. Not a very successful one, but it is a party organized to run candidates and win elections. And no political party’s nominating convention has invited a leading candidate from another party to be the most prominent speaker at their convention,” he said Thursday. “So, it's just incongruous as a political party that you would invite somebody like that in.”
Boaz’s colleague at the Cato Institute, Peter Goettler, penned an op-ed Thursday in The Washington Post that Trump’s appearance at the convention “has many libertarians scratching their heads.”
Goettler is the president and CEO of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.
So, who will be the Libertarian Party’s presidential nominee?
Boaz said he couldn’t tell you.
He said none of the candidates enjoy widespread name recognition.
“If you don't have polls and you don't have primaries, it's hard to know which of these candidates is ahead,” he said.
The Libertarian Party was founded in 1971 and runs hundreds of candidates every election cycle, including during presidential elections.
Jo Jorgensen was the 2020 nominee.
Gary Johnson, a former governor of New Mexico, was the party nominee in 2012 and 2016.
Ballotpedia lists over 30 registered Libertarian presidential candidates this time around.
Boaz calls himself a libertarian with a small “L.”
He’s not a member of the Libertarian Party, he said.
And he said the party has recently “swerved off an off-ramp and is no longer within what I would call a big-tent libertarianism.”
A lot of Americans are disillusioned with Republicans and Democrats, he said.
And he believes a lot of Americans share libertarian ideals without sharing the label of libertarian.
“Sometimes we say in a very broad sense, libertarians are fiscally conservative and socially liberal,” Boaz said.
He referenced a poll conducted some years back by the Cato Institute asking people if they would describe themselves as fiscally conservative and socially liberal. He said 59% of the respondents said yes.
Libertarianism is the idea that adult individuals have the right and the responsibility to make the important decisions about their own lives, Boaz said.
The political philosophy is grounded in individual rights, free markets and limited constitutional government.
“So, I think if you look at issues like school choice, and endless wars, and out-of-control government spending, and a lot of aspects of civil liberties, then you're going to get libertarian answers on a lot of those questions,” he said. “And if the Libertarian Party had enough money to let voters know that that's what they believe, too, then I'm sure there'd be a lot more Americans calling themselves libertarians.”
But Boaz said Trump doesn’t represent the ideals of libertarianism – with perhaps the exception of Trump’s support for tax cuts.
And Boaz said having Trump speak at the convention could tarnish the party’s reputation among casual observers who might otherwise find interest in libertarianism.
“The more fundamental concern is the Libertarian Party is supposed to be libertarian, and Donald Trump is not. He's very much not,” Boaz said. “He's a protectionist. He's a would-be autocrat. He talks about how Article 2 gives me the power to do anything I want. Not to mention he ran a two-month coup to steal a presidential election.”
ncG1vNJzZmivmpawtcKNnKamZ56axLR7zZqroqeeYsSwvsudZq2qpaK9tHnSqZyem5hirrV5y6KZnqqklr%2Bqrc1mp5qqpK56pLvNr5ynrJmku2610qerZquZqcGqusZmrp6knGLEqsDHZqqopZViuaquxKurmqqZlru0ecKaq6hlmaPAtbXTrqueZaCkuarAyJyqZqSZl7KzwMCroJqmmai6brXNnaCvoZSqrq150aKeoayjYrOzscRmpJqqm5rBtHnLoqSirJWZeqS7zayroqylqbawusClZKCnppq%2Fr7nEp6tmnJGrtqV5waiYsw%3D%3D