Now that Donald Trump is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, anti-Trump conservatives are casting about for a third party alternative. Retired Gen. James Mattis has already turned them down. Names like Mitt Romney, Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse and retired Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn are still being floated.
Could the Libertarian Party be a possibility? Unlike a hypothetical new party, the LP actually exists and has been around since 1971. Libertarian presidential candidates usually get on the ballot in all 50 states or close to it. There are already people running for the party’s nomination.
Conservatism isn’t libertarianism, but they share some principles about limited government and individual liberty in common. That’s more than many #NeverTrump Republicans feel they can say about Trump.
Gary Johnson, the former two-term Republican governor of New Mexico, was the party’s nominee in 2012 and is considered the front-runner for the nomination this time around. Four years ago, he received 1.2 million votes, the party’s highest raw vote total ever (1980 Libertarian ticket members Ed Clark and David Koch still hold the record for percentage of the vote at 1.1 percent).
In a race between Trump and Hillary Clinton, Libertarians could be poised to shatter these records. Both candidates are regarded as big government boosters. Ideology or policy aside, both have the highest unfavorable ratings recorded for major presidential candidates.
Voting Libertarian would avoid some of the procedural hurdles in the way of a new conservative third party: finding a candidate, qualifying for ballot access, perhaps obviating the need to raise vast sums of money. If nominated again, Johnson might just be high-profile enough.
“The next few weeks, while people are still reeling from Trump becoming the presumptive nominee, will be important,” libertarian Republican activist Dave Nalle told the Washington Examiner. If pollsters include Johnson in the polls during that period, Nalle said, and he does well enough to be seen as a credible candidate, it will help him.
Johnson is pro-choice until fetal viability, supports open borders and is closer to a noninterventionist foreign policy than many anti-Trump Republicans. Nalle said this won’t be a dealbreaker for moderate Republicans offended by Trump’s rhetoric. But many in the #NeverTrump camp are Marco Rubio-style conservatives.
Kurt Evans was the Libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate in South Dakota in 2002, receiving more votes than Democrat Tim Johnson’s margin of victory over Republican John Thune. He told the Examiner that Johnson’s positions on abortion and religious liberty will repel evangelicals.
“Johnson went so far as to say he would force a Jewish baker to make a cake for a Nazi,” Evans said, referring to religious freedom protection laws. An evangelical himself, he believes that a Clinton-Trump race would put some of those voters in play and libertarians should try to reach them.
Evans noted that Austin Petersen, one of the other Libertarian presidential candidates, is pro-life and might therefore be more attractive to conservatives than the better known Johnson.
In the hours after Trump’s triumph, Internet searches for the Libertarian Party spiked. So did new voter registrations as Libertarians. Maybe the LP will be the party Trump really grows.
