If Ron Paul, Rand Paul, or Gary Johnson had been elected president during any of their White House runs, two of the top agenda items for these libertarian leaders would have easily been criminal justice reform and Congress finally taking back its constitutional war powers.
It’s happening.
The Senate and House overwhelmingly passed the First Step Act this week, considered by many to be the most sweeping criminal justice reform legislation to date. For years, libertarian Republicans and conservative reform groups like Right on Crime and the Koch network have joined with progressives on this front, making little headway. Now a bipartisan majority in Congress and a Republican president are set to make it a reality.
This unprecedented reform passage took place just a week removed from the Senate voting to end U.S. support for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen. This “is historic because really it’s been a long time since Congress has stood up, grabbed their constitutional power and said to a president, ‘You can’t go to war without our permission,” Sen. Rand Paul said of the vote. “In fact, I can’t remember it really ever happening that Congress has done this.”
For the latter half of the 20th century and the beginning of this one, many progressives, traditionalist conservatives, and libertarians have wondered why Congress hasn’t officially declared war since World War II or asserted itself much at all in the foreign policy realm, despite its constitutional obligation to do so.
For the first time in, well, forever, Congress has reasserted its war powers.
Unlike with criminal justice reform, President Trump doesn’t support Congress overriding him, but that’s the point. The legislative branch was meant to check the executive, and just did.
The New York Times’ Ross Douthat tweeted amid all this:
The Yemen vote, criminal justice reform, is this … could it be …
— whispers —
(a libertarian moment?)
— Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) December 13, 2018
That all of this is happening under Trump is noteworthy.
When the New York Times originally published its lengthy 2014 cover story “Has the ‘Libertarian Moment’ Finally Arrived?” by Robert Draper, that question hinged primarily on youth attitudes toward politics and technology, but also on the presidential prospects of Rand Paul. After his campaign failed and Trump ascended, many on Right and Left were eager to dance on the surely now-dead Libertarian Moment’s grave.
These critics were always shortsighted. The early aughts could fairly be described as a neoconservative moment within the Republican Party, which came and went, somewhat. Then there was the rise and fall of the Tea Party. Now we find ourselves in a populist moment, which will likely be as permanent as its predecessors. The surface notion that any legislation that is seemingly antithetical to the broad spirit of these moments is somehow DOA isn’t true.
“Law and order” Donald Trump wasn’t supposed to be the president who ushered in criminal justice reform. Just ask former Attorney General Jeff Sessions. You might also think the same Trump who said George W. Bush lied about Iraq, who opposes nation-building and that pals around with Rand Paul might be more open to constitutional interpretations of how the U.S. wages war. Nope. He doesn’t care.
And it doesn’t matter. Libertarian victories like these can happen when the stars are aligned, and libertarian-leaning leaders are in positions to capitalize on them. That’s exactly what happened this month. In no way did senators Rand Paul and Mike Lee achieve these victories alone nor could they, but their influence on the process was integral to each effort’s success. How many in the Republican Party besides libertarians have been reaching across the aisle to build coalitions on these foreign policy and civil liberties issues for many years? Sometimes hard work pays off.
To top the week off, President Trump now says he will immediately bring home all U.S. troops from Syria. “I am happy to see a President who can declare victory and bring our troops out of a war,” responded regular Trump confidant Rand Paul. “It’s been a long time since that has happened.”
It has been a long time. How momentous.
Jack Hunter (@jackhunter74) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is the former political editor of Rare.us and co-authored the 2011 book The Tea Party Goes to Washington with Sen. Rand Paul.
