Speaking Tuesday before an audience of supporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Donald Trump presented an hour-long speech announcing that he is running in the 2024 general election to regain the United States presidency. Trump used the speech to provide an introduction to aspects of the agenda he says he will pursue as president.
Tag: presidential campaign
Future of Freedom Foundation President Jacob Hornberger failed to win the Libertarian Party presidential nomination in Saturday evening online voting by party delegates. Hornberger, who has spoken at Ron Paul Institute (RPI) events and whose articles have been regularly posted at the RPI website, came in second place in the fourth and final ballot cast by delegates.
On Thursday, I wrote about Rep. Justin Amash (L-MI), in a ten-minute interview at MSNBC focused on why he is interested in seeking the Libertarian Party presidential nomination, saying nothing libertarian. Further, I noted that, when Amash was asked about what a libertarian would do concerning coronavirus (a policy area where government is heavily restricting people’s exercise of liberty, intentionally shutting down much of the economy, and spending with abandon), Amash chose to promote adding a new government program to hand out money to people — something the host noted does not sound like a limited government proposal.
On Friday, Amash was back in another national media interview focused on why he would want to run for president as the Libertarian Party nominee. This time Amash was interviewed for five minutes by Rachel Martin at National Public Radio (NPR).
Second act, same as the first.
After Rep. Justin Amash (I-MI) established a committee this week to enable him to run for the Libertarian Party presidential nomination, he was interviewed for ten minutes at MSNBC regarding his candidacy. Did Amash use this time to advocate for accomplishing libertarian goals — terminating the drug war, ceasing foreign intervention, and ending the Federal Reserve, for example? No. Instead, Amash repeatedly avoided talking about any particular policy issues. Then, when asked by host Ayman Mohyeldin to weigh in on government actions taken purportedly in response to coronavirus, Amash even managed to address this matter that involves incredible rights violations and vast spending in such a nonlibertarian manner that Mohyeldin soundly challenged Amash for supporting big government — the opposite of advocating a libertarian position.
Even most libertarians would probably agree that it is just about a sure bet that none of the current candidates or commonly discussed potential candidates for the Libertarian Party’s 2020 presidential nomination would, if he becomes the party’s nominee, defeat the Republican and Democratic nominees in the upcoming November general election and win the presidency.
Given the presidential nominee chosen at the Libertarian Party’s national convention in May is “sure to lose” come the general election, how can he make the best of his run? With winning taken off the table, an avenue for maximizing the campaign’s benefit would be for the candidate to take advantage of opportunities presented to express clearly a comprehensive libertarian approach to government. In this manner, the nominee would use the campaign to communicate a clear and strong libertarian message, thereby helping increase the number of committed supporters of the libertarian philosophy.
Matt Welch concluded his Wednesday Reason article regarding Super Tuesday results for the Libertarian Party presidential race with this statement: “Much can and will change between now and late May but, for the moment, Jacob Hornberger is your Libertarian front-runner.” Welch’s granting the “frontrunner” label to Hornberger seems to be based on Hornberger, in Super Tuesday state-level contests, continuing his streak of victories over other candidates for the Libertarian presidential nomination.
Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has been racking up wins in state-level contests of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. Much less mentioned in the media is that Libertarian presidential candidate Jacob Hornberger won the February 8 Iowa Libertarian caucus with 47 percent of the vote. This put Hornberger far ahead of other candidates for the nomination, including Lincoln Chafee — a former governor and United States senator — who came in second with 13 percent.
A Thursday Free Beacon article by Joe Schoffstall purports to expose Darius Khalil Gordon, a newly hired Bernie Sanders presidential campaign employee, as having “a history of racial slurs and denigrating remarks directed at gays, Jews, and women.” Some Twitter posts attributed to Gordon are presented in the article as evidence for this conclusion.
All the Gordon tweets but one included in the article are from a period in 2010 through 2012. Do they represent Gordon’s current thinking? It has been seven to nine years since he posted those tweets. It is even worth considering to what extent these years-old tweets ever really represented Gordon’s views.
In April, I wrote that it looked like Future of Freedom Foundation President Jacob Hornberger may run for president of the United States. As I noted then, many people familiar with the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity (RPI) have read some of Hornberger’s articles at the RPI website or watched one of his speeches at an RPI event. Here is an update: On Saturday, Hornberger announced he is seeking the Libertarian Party’s presidential nomination.
Ron Paul, who had been the 1988 presidential nominee of the Libertarian Party, spent much time in his 2008 and 2012 Republican primary presidential runs criticizing US intervention overseas and promoting following a noninterventionist foreign policy. Some people might expect Bill Weld would do the same thing in his current Republican primary challenge to President Donald Trump. Weld was, after all, the 2016 Libertarian nominee for vice president. However, as Weld made crystal-clear in his October 8 editorial at Foreign Affairs, Weld aspires to oversee as president a foreign policy that is solidly interventionist.