Meet Jo Jorgensen: A principled but extreme Libertarian Party presidential alternative

This came across clearly when Jorgensen sat down with me for an exclusive interview. Her libertarian bona fides are beyond reproach.

In some ways, that’s a good thing. For example, Jorgensen has never held elected office and is the total opposite of a career politician. “I have no experience in raising taxes, making decisions for other people, or being in endless wars across the globe,” she boasted. And her positions on national security are delightfully out-of-sync with the Washington foreign policy establishment. (Putting her far closer to the public’s war-weary disposition.) “I want to turn America into one giant Switzerland: armed and neutral,” Jorgensen told me. “Bring the troops home. Being everywhere around the world means we’re less safe, not more safe.”

But when it comes to the rising issue of confronting a mounting threat from China, Jorgensen’s lack of political or national security experience may explain why she has few answers.

She rightly notes that a trade war won’t work because “a tariff is actually a hidden tax on the consumer. Our people are just going to be paying more.” Instead, Jorgensen offered up a vague suggestion to pursue individual bad Chinese actors via the Department of Justice for intellectual property theft. “Rather than punishing the citizens of the country and getting into some kind of trade war with them, I would try to take to court the [individual] people who were responsible,” she said.

As for how the DOJ could circumvent the Communist Party to accomplish this? “We may not be successful,” she answered honestly. “But we can try.”

Interestingly, Jorgensen is manifestly unconcerned with China forcing companies to give up their intellectual property in order to access the Chinese market. “If you want to give up your intellectual property to go be in China … there should be no law against being stupid,” she said dismissively. “If a U.S. company wants to give away its secrets, let them do that. The government shouldn’t stop them.” So, too, Jorgensen dismisses concerns over China’s “dumping” strategy, where it floods foreign markets with artificially cheap goods, kills off the competition, and then raises prices. “If they flood the market with cheap stuff, okay, that’s good for us,” she said. “Then they start to jack up the prices? Heck, we’ve got 3D printers building guns. It’s so much easier now … for the free market to respond.”

“There are so many licensing laws and big government [policies] in place that prevent companies from … responding,” Jorgensen continued. “We need to remove those barriers and let small businesses pop up in [response to] demand.”

“Let’s become more pro-business in the United States … so businesses can respond quicker to China,” she concluded.

While Trump voters who may have grown weary of his antics may find Jorgensen’s generally dovish foreign policy appealing, it seems unlikely that she will be able to assuage the concerns of GOP-leaning voters worried about unfair trade practices and the threat posed by China. In her pitch to Republican voters, she says she understands why they wanted an outsider but that Trump hasn’t followed through on reining in the debt, bringing the troops home, and fulfilling many of his other promises.

There’s a bigger issue, though, when it comes to Jorgensen’s ability to make inroads with conservative and Republican voters: abortion.

Jorgensen has perhaps the most extreme pro-choice position possible on when abortions should be allowed. In our interview, she said she supports essentially zero government restrictions on abortion. Jorgensen opposes even widely popular laws that limit fringe, barbaric abortion practices such as late-term abortion and selective abortions targeting unborn babies with Down syndrome. This makes her far more extreme on the issue than 2012 and 2016 Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson, who took a more centrist approach.

In fairness, Jorgensen did offer up that she would never support taxpayer money going to fund abortion. She also noted that she vociferously opposes Obama-era attempts to force nuns to fund abortifacients. On both fronts, this makes her far more friendly to the wider pro-life cause than Biden.

Jorgensen claims to be the most pro-Second Amendment candidate in the presidential race. This is no doubt true — but Jorgensen may actually be such an extremist on this issue that even conservatives balk at her positions: She told me that she believes all gun laws are infringements on the Second Amendment, even those that bar convicted domestic abusers or paroled murderers from owning firearms. “If they are so dangerous that they shouldn’t own a gun, they should still be in prison,” she said.

Jorgensen’s Second Amendment absolutism even extends to supporting private tank ownership — yes, of military-style tanks. It’s a niche policy question but is revealing as to just how far out there Jorgensen is on the issue. But perhaps her absolutist stance can win over some of the most die-hard Second Amendment voters — even voters who don’t want tanks in their garage can be darn sure that the candidate who would allow private tank ownership isn’t going to take away their guns.

In her case to conservative voters, Jorgensen compared the Democratic Party’s position in favor of government-controlled healthcare to giving everyone failed Veterans Affairs healthcare. “This is healthcare — a life or death situation,” Jorgensen lamented. “Why would you want the government in charge of that?” She compared government-run healthcare to a monopoly and noted that “monopolies don’t cater to their customers.”

Yet Jorgensen’s position on the role of the federal government is so ideologically libertarian that it seems certain to isolate centrist voters wary of Biden’s leftward drift.

Despite the fact that the U.S. is still struggling to contain COVID-19, Jorgensen told me she would abolish the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Food and Drug Administration entirely. At the very least, she said she would vastly scale them back to little more than information-gathering entities that make recommendations, not rules. Jorgensen said the federal government should be scaled drastically back just to include the original four departments established under George Washington: War, State, Treasury, and Justice.

Jorgensen also told me she would have opposed pretty much any federal COVID-19 stimulus legislation. “The money has to come from somewhere,” she said. “Instead of sending my money to big corporations and airlines, I would rather take my money and choose to spend it on small mom-and-pop stores.”

“Since when can the government spend money better than a business when it comes to creating jobs?” Jorgensen asked.

Her criticisms are well taken, and the trillions of taxpayer dollars that Congress has passed in the name of COVID-19 relief have been deeply flawed and wasteful. But to suggest that the federal government would have done little or nothing at all to help revive the economy under her watch isn’t going to win over many voters. Small-government advocates need to offer alternative free market solutions — doing nothing at all won’t satisfy voters. They’ll default to big-government solutions instead.

And arguing to abolish the CDC in the middle of a pandemic, while in line with the principled Libertarian Party position, is tone-deaf and unlikely to resonate with the public.

There’s something to be said for incrementalism. Even small-government conservatives and libertarians ought to understand that you can’t radically change everything overnight. This is the biggest shortcoming of the Jorgensen campaign. Her vision for America is principled and rooted in libertarian values — but it’s utterly detached from our reality. So far, Jorgensen has struggled to sell her proposed revolution as a viable path for weary voters who already find themselves drowning in chaos, crisis, and uncertainty.

Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is a freelance journalist and Washington Examiner contributor.