Donald Trump has rocked the power brokers of the Republican Party, but his campaign against them holds little promise for libertarians.
“He was saying things about foreign policy that few Republicans dared previously to utter, and he was making all the right enemies,” Matt Welch wrote in Reason to explain the attraction to Trump among some libertarians.
Trump’s criticism of the Iraq War, his shots at military spending, and his dismissal of NATO as a raw deal for America was enough to attract some libertarians to Trump. Few things could be worse than a neo-conservative foreign policy, and with Rand Paul out of the race, some libertarians needed a new candidate.
For Welch, an embrace of Trump represented “desperately wishful thinking about the coming golden age of anti-interventionism.” Trump’s favoritism of “committing more war crimes,” a desire “to expand the use of torture,” and an immigration policy that “would require erecting an unprecedented police state” makes him a dangerous choice for libertarians.
“Trump’s policies, then, are anything but anti-interventionist. He offers a Jacksonian take on American belligerence, in which the already over-stuffed power of the executive branch will be wielded by a famously mercurial and off-the-cuff one-man brand,” Welch wrote.
The 2016 election so far has been an “ongoing authoritarian outrage,” and Trump has been a major driver of that. Trump has no policy base so much as a bombastic personality. He’s built a strong voter base, connecting over frustration and anger. His base, however, has projected more policy positions onto him than he’s declared.
“There’s never been anything like this. Give us a big mandate for the movement. The movement is about winning,” Trump said at a rally in Poughkeepsie, New York on Sunday. The “movement” isn’t one of peace, prosperity, or American exceptionalism. It’s one of Donald J. Trump. His foes have been neo-conservatives, and he’s derided a foreign policy that advocates American military action as often as possible to gain support.
“Why, then, do we choose Donald Trump? Because he is the least non-libertarian or the most libertarian. And why do I say that? And it’s mainly because of his foreign policy. He is awful on economic policy. He is no better than he should be. He’s really bad on personal liberties. But the third part, the third aspect of libertarianism, foreign policy, is the most important,” Walter Block argued in a discussion on why libertarians should choose Trump.
Regardless of the motivation, the support bolsters Trump. He’s no peace candidate, and his debate arguments with Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush seem more calculated than ideological.
“We’re going to keep winning. We’re going to win, win, win and we’re going to make America great again,” Trump said in Poughkeepsie. What he’ll win is unclear. For libertarians he persuades with empty rhetoric, the Pyrrhic victory will end in regret.
