degrees askew. They are completely lost. With aplomb and
conviction they can make the case that all this country needs
to be great again is another $100 billion in the next omnibus.
So I must concede that the Libertarian Party and its passionate
members are the keepers and arbiters of True North for liberty
and fiscal conservatism.
Let me end with this Socratic inquiry: A mediocre libertarian
can make a great Republican, but is the converse true as well?
NEGATIVE:
We Can Help Kill
the Two-Party Monopoly
BILL WELD
VIRTUALLY EVERYONE IN the United States is coming to the sad
conclusion that the two-party monopoly of Republicans and
Democrats in Washington, D.C., is choking off creative policy
making, to the detriment of the country at large.
This unhealthy situation has been years in the making. Both
parties had noble antecedents: Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic-
Republican Party, which prevailed in 1800, and the Free Soil/
Republican coalition that elected Abraham Lincoln in 1860. But
despite being born in dynamism, both parties are now ending in
orthodoxy—brittle, calcified orthodoxy.
Decades of hyper-gerrymandering congressional dis-
tricts have produced a House of Representatives composed of
extreme-left Democrats and extreme-right Republicans, who
fear defeat only from a primary opponent even further out on the
fringe. The result is that neither caucus has the wisdom or the
incentive to reach across the aisle, even when a teenager could
quickly see a middle approach that would advance the public
interest without harming anyone.
This “duopoly” status quo obviously needs to change, but
where will the change come from? One of the existing parties?
Not bloody likely. Rs and Ds in Washington are obsessed with
being re-elected so they can continue to enjoy the perks of office
and the adulation of those who elected them, even if only by a
slim majority. To quote from the musical Oklahoma, with them
it’s all or nothin’—either they cling to office or they’re voted out.
They must demonize their opposition, stir up their base, or die.
So we cannot appeal to sitting members of the R party or the
D party to mend their ways, because they don’t see that their
ways need mending, and even if they did, they would view such
internal reform as against their self-interest. Their only reward
is re-election, and that by definition means the status quo.
It is a truism in economics that competition produces more
efficient results than monopoly, and the same goes for politics.
So there is a way out of this mess, and that is the introduction of
a principled, entrepreneurial third party to compete for votes
with the Rs and the Ds.
The Libertarian Party—fiscally responsible, socially tolerant,
and on the ballot in all 50 states—could easily play this role. It
has fully developed and thoughtful policy views. If pollsters
described the R, D, and L parties by their positions, the Ls would
have a majority in the polls right now. As it stands, we could well
elect the next president of the United States.
It has been rightly pointed out that the odds of a third-party
candidate being elected in 2020 are at least as good as the 2014
odds of Donald Trump being inaugurated in January 2017 or
the 2015 odds of Emmanuel Macron being elected president of
France in 2017.
If we want a new broom to sweep things clean in Washing-
ton, the answer is not the R party or the D party. It is the Liber-
tarian Party.THOMAS MASSIE is a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from
Kentucky’s 4th congressional district.B I LL WELD was the 2016 Liber tarian Par t y vice pre sidential nominee. A s a
Republican, he served as governor of Massachusetts from 1991 to 1997.The debate continues!
For point/counterpoints on open vs. closed
borders, positive vs. negative rights, and thick
vs. thin libertarianism, visit reason.com.REASON 49“If a pure-as-the-
wind-driven-snow
Libertarian actually
got elected, how long
would he or she last
before selling out?
About an hour.”