The Proposed Toxic Marriage Between RFK Jr. and the Libertarian Party Could Hurt Trump
Kennedy now has more in common with MAGA populists than the left
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. initially tried to run for president as a Democrat. When that went nowhere, he announced he would instead run as an independent. Now, the environmental-lawyer-turned-anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist is flirting with a possible third change in partisan affiliation. The nephew of the former president is now hinting that he may seek the Libertarian Party nomination.
The potential combination offers a compelling demonstration of the horseshoe theory, namely, that despite coming from opposite ends of the political spectrum, far-left and far-right movements can often converge into illiberalism.
It is by no means certain that a marriage between the nation’s largest (though fast-shrinking) third party and a candidate who has been polling as high as double digits will take place. Kennedy, whether running on the L.P. ticket or continuing as an independent, will certainly not be the next president of the United States. If the mismatch between early polls and the election performance of third-party candidates is any indication, he is unlikely to tally more than one to two percent of the vote. However, contrary to the fear of most pundits, there are also good reasons to think Kennedy could hurt Donald Trump more than Joe Biden.
Strange Bedfellows
At first blush, it would appear that the Libertarian Party and RFK Jr. couldn’t have less in common. The traditional libertarian commitment is to radically smaller government, slashing most laws, taxes, and regulations. Libertarianism is built on a maximalist and expansive understanding of individual rights and believes in limiting the government’s role only to stopping force or fraud. One common, albeit imprecise, description is that libertarians are fiscally conservative and socially liberal, combining opposition to the modern welfare state with support for causes like LGBT rights and drug legalization. Libertarianism is steeped in free-market economics, including opposition to a wide range of environmental and labor regulations. Libertarians also tend to be emphatic in their opposition to gun control laws, and hardliners in defense of free speech.
Kennedy, by contrast, can be fairly described as a big-government progressive, with a particular focus on environmentalism. He also thinks nothing of using state power in draconian ways to advance his goals. He has advocated imprisoning climate change skeptics and banning assault weapons. He was a big supporter of single-payer healthcare and a fan of Massachusetts Democrat Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s tax-and-redistribute policies. He’s never shown any interest in promoting free markets or small government.
This is why David Boaz, longtime executive vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute, lamented in a recent speech to Students for Liberty, “Can you believe that there are people who think an environmental extremist, tax-hiking, gun-grabbing big spender who’s also an anti-vaccine crank would make a good Libertarian Party candidate?”
Partly, of course, the two are contemplating a union out of convenience. But there is also a genuine meeting of minds on many populist themes between Kennedy and what the Libertarian Party has become now.
Here’s some background:
The Libertarian Party, as I’ve covered previously at The UnPopulist, has been completely transformed since its heyday in 2016 when it nominated a presidential ticket of New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson and former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld. But at the 2022 national convention, the party experienced a hostile takeover by far-right culture warriors under the banner of the “Mises Caucus,” incensed that the party had nominated socially liberal moderates like Johnson and Weld.
The caucus has supplanted the ideologically libertarian orientation of the party with a program of openly bigoted authoritarianism. Overt antisemitism, anti-LGBT animus, and explicit racism are now common from the party’s leaders, candidates, and official social media accounts. This is no surprise given that the Libertarian National Committee Chair Angela McArdle, a fan of Kennedy’s, proclaimed upon assuming office that the party will now be dedicated to fighting “wokeism.”
The result is dues-paying membership has collapsed nearly in half, from a peak of over 21,000 in January 2021 to around 12,000 in January 2024. Vote totals have also declined, hitting record lows in some statewide races. In New Hampshire, for example, the party had routinely received 4 or 5% of the vote in statewide races. But in 2022 an avowedly racist Senate candidate received only 2%, a low not seen in a three-way race for that office since 1984. Fewer candidates are appearing on ballots as well. The party fielded its smallest number of midterm U.S. House candidates (just 87) in almost 30 years. Some state parties have disaffiliated from the national party or even dissolved themselves in disgust and others have been torn apart in acrimonious schisms.
Marriage of Convenience
But despite this implosion, the Libertarian Party’s main selling point to RFK Jr. is that it is qualified for ballot access in more states than any other alternative party. The party will likely be automatically on the ballot of about 35 states. Petitions in the remaining states will likely get it closer to the mid 40s, though reaching all 50 (as the party did in 2016 and 2020) is probably out of reach, the party’s pronouncements to the contrary notwithstanding.
The allure of this ballot access prize for an unaffiliated independent like Kennedy is understandable. Thus far, Kennedy has qualified in only a handful of states for the general election ballot. In other words, even if he had a well-funded and well-organized effort, as an independent, Kennedy would likely manage to get on fewer state ballots than as the Libertarian Party nominee.
But what does Kennedy bring to the table for the Libertarian Party? In two words: name recognition. He can attract media coverage and help the party with fundraising in a way that none of the other contenders can.
The party’s most prominent face, former Congressman Justin Amash, has decamped to the GOP after failing to stop its slide into extremism and hatred; he recently announced a run for U.S. Senate as a Republican. This has left a fractured field of also-rans, among whom the caucus is split.
This is partly why Kennedy has a chance. High-profile but ideologically questionable candidates have a history of winning in the convention by walking back what were then considered retrograde and un-libertarian positions. Ron Paul, in between stints as a Republican congressman, had to recant many of his more extreme socially conservative positions to win the 1988 nomination over the more radical and left-leaning American Indian Movement activist Russell Means. In 2008, former Rep. Bob Barr eked out a win on the sixth ballot after offering an extensive mea culpa for his history of opposing gay rights and marijuana legalization.
Now Kennedy will have to do a switcheroo in the reactionary direction, a process he’s already started (more on that below). Even with that, his path to the nomination won’t be easy. The Libertarian Party nomination process is a miserable slog, requiring constant travel to poorly attended state conventions to face hostile audiences of party regulars. Debates with the other candidates of dubious quality are unavoidable. Candidates must work to secure placement of their supporters as national convention delegates. Harshly negative attacks from opponents are a given, and Kennedy offers a target-rich environment for libertarian purists. The national convention is likely to go to multiple ballots.
In the meantime, he’d have to put the rest of his campaign on pause for several months to focus solely on catering to a few hundred minor-party insiders. Essentially, every weekend between now and Memorial Day would be spent catering to a room of a few dozen fractious party members, as he found out at the party’s California state convention recently. Also, he would have to navigate the wreckage of an organization whose internal processes are in shambles, including multiple organizations claiming to be the party in several states.
Meeting of the Reactionary Minds
It’ll be a bruising process but still less onerous than obtaining ballot access on his own. And what Kennedy has going for him in the party is the ardent, albeit implicit, support of McArdle, the LNC chair, who clearly sees him as a kindred spirit. “We’re aligned on a lot of issues,” she told The New York Times, including, as she noted, a shared perception about the threat of the “deep state” and the need for populist messaging.
She is right about that. Like her, Kennedy slams "woke capital.” The Libertarian Party used to advocate radical open borders. But under the Mises Caucus it has become much more hostile to immigrants. It has gone beyond mere non-interventionism to outright support and endorsement of Putin’s war on Ukraine, sharing a stage with avowed pro-invasion propagandists.
On all of this, Kennedy is with them. In a discussion on X (formerly Twitter), hosted by none other than Elon Musk last summer, Kennedy said he planned to travel to the Mexican border to “try to formulate policies that will seal the border permanently.” He has urged the Biden administration to consider the war in Ukraine from the perspective of Russians, repeating debunked excuses and rationalizations for Putin’s actions.
And then there is Kennedy and L.P.’s mutual taste for anti-vax conspiracy theories and related medical quackery that often veers into outright bigotry.
Kennedy has long argued that drugs like Prozac, supposedly pushed by Big Pharma to pad its pockets, are responsible for the epidemic of mass shootings in the country. He proclaimed that Anne Frank had more freedom under the Nazis than unvaccinated Americans, and then apologized when even his own wife distanced herself from the remark. Later, he was heard musing that the Covid-19 virus seemed to spare “Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese” in a leaked recording of a private dinner. He hadn’t meant it that way, he insisted.
Likewise, on Tim Pool’s podcast, McArdle promoted “German New Medicine,” a full-blown neo-Nazi idea about Jewish doctors giving people cancer and other diseases to conduct white genocide.* When asked why her caucus was featuring an avowed Holocaust denier as a speaker at events, she averred that he was an admirable “truth-seeker” because he was willing to fearlessly ask “whether or not Jews run Hollywood.” The national party’s X account posted, and then deleted, a notorious antisemitic caricature. State parties have also sparked outrage for similar insanity.
The growing closeness between Kennedy and McArdle’s Libertarian Party was on full display at the recent California convention. The reception that Kennedy got was nothing if not obsequious, as Semafor’s Dave Weigel’s reporting suggested. A party regular, Larry Sharpe, lobbed Kennedy soft-ball questions on the panel he moderated. And when one disruptor angrily objected to this gentle approach, he was summarily removed from the room. Kennedy subsequently received only a single vote in a straw poll, but that is not necessarily indicative of the final outcome since he has not yet joined the party or actually entered its nomination race.
Even on guns, the two sides are closing the gap. The California convention organizers obliged Kennedy by arranging a totally gun-free zone—complete with checkpoints and guardrails—even though libertarians are ardent supporters of both gun rights and gun culture. Kennedy, for his part, last year evinced a newfound respect for the Second Amendment. He is on record noting that gun control can’t meaningfully reduce gun violence. “I am not going to take people’s guns away,” he has declared, contradicting his previous stance.
Who Will RFK Jr. Hurt?
Many have assumed that given the Kennedy name and left-of-center background, he poses a threat to Biden. He’s certainly much more interested in attacking Biden than his other presumptive opponent, reliably pulling his punches when asked about Trump.
But there are reasons to doubt RFK Jr. in 2024 would be good for Trump. Kennedy has now firmly ensconced himself in the populist right, pandering to culture warriors and the MAGA-inclined with his anti-woke, anti-vax, pro-gun, and border enforcement messaging. Hence, it’s not clear how many potential Kennedy voters would have Biden as their second choice. Moreover, running as a Libertarian candidate would make him even more harmful to Trump given that that label reliably tends to pull more votes from Republican candidates than from Democrats.
Polls at this point can be misleading, too. For complicated reasons, third party candidates almost always poll much better than they ever actually perform. Simply prompting voters with the option increases how respondents select it. Moreover, his appeal to Democrats is going to be eroded further if more prominent third-party or independent options, who are genuinely more to the left than him, such as Cornel West and Jill Stein, are on the ballot. Indeed, polls of Wisconsin voters by the respected Marquette University Law School found that Kennedy pulls more support from Republicans than Democrats when Stein and West are offered as alternatives.
Notably, Kennedy’s approval ratings with Republicans far outstrip his approval rating among Democrats, who seem to quickly lose any affinity for his famous name as soon as they hear more about him. When fears of a wasted vote and anti-spoiler messaging whittle down that base of support to its most strongly ideological core, there are good reasons to think that will include more otherwise-Trump than otherwise-Biden voters.
Trump’s own campaign and the RNC apparently see things this way. Their previously positive attitude towards RFK Jr.’s Democratic primary campaign evaporated as soon as he announced he would run in the general election. Their negative statements slamming RFK Jr. as just a “Democrat” and “typical elitist liberal” indicate that they fear that he is more likely to play a spoiler against Trump.
Kennedy and the Libertarian Party deserve each other. And if their pairing hurts Trump’s chances, that can only be good news for those who regard the former president as a grave threat to liberal democracy.
*Correction: We misstated the podcast on which Angela McArdle had appeared. We have corrected the error, which we deeply regret.
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In 2014, when I would hear the word libertarian, I would think about freedom, free migration, and small government. In 2024, when I hear libertarian, I think about bigotry, racism, and collectivism.
Very well-written analysis of the psycho courtship between RFK Jr. and the MAGA-remade Libertarian Party.