Chase Oliver has no regrets about campaign

Libertarian Party presidential candidate Chase Oliver says he has no regrets about his campaign, and that being the party's standard bearer was "the true honor of my life." 

Chase Oliver Calls Libertarian Party Presidential Run 'Honor of My Lifetime' | Reason | Joe Lancaster:

November 6, 2024 - "While battleground states continue counting votes ... the Libertarian Party (L.P.) will fall short of its relative recent successes.... L.P. candidate Chase Oliver looks likely to underperform 2020's numbers, when candidate Jo Jorgensen won more than 1.8 million votes and 1.2 percent of the national total. Speaking from his election night watch party in Dallas, Texas, Oliver tells Reason he isn't surprised that he fell short of other recent L.P. presidential tickets, but he has no regrets.... 

"'I think we did the best we could, considering there's been a lot of headwinds in this campaign,' he says. 'First and foremost, the two-party system is always trying to relegate alternative parties' voice[s],' and 'internal disputes within the party…led to less than full-throated support from our national leadership'....

"This was the first presidential election since the L.P.'s takeover by the Mises Caucus, an internal party faction more conservative than the previous rank and file. Michael Heise, the Mises Caucus founder who helped engineer the party takeover, endorsed former President Donald Trump last week in a post on X. Over the weekend, L.P. Chair Angela McArdle shared a pro-Trump video and added, 'You know you wanna be a part of this. It is irresistible.'

Chase Oliver at FreedomFest, July 2024 Photo by

 Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.

"Oliver sees his campaign as indicative of the party's struggles, and he hopes it can turn around in the future: 'Our campaign is not the low-water mark. In fact, we've been seeing a downward trend … because leadership has just not been able to retain membership. And I think that's due to the internal conflict. That's due to focusing more on shooting inward at each other than actually doing the professional party building. And I'm going to be looking forward, as an activist, as a lifetime party member, as a former candidate for president, to be looking to find members of the Libertarian Party who want to professionalize our operations and put us into a growth mode.'

"That said, Oliver says he does not have regrets about his experience. 'Running as the presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party, the party that I love, for the principles that I stand by, has been the true honor of my life,' he says. 'Even with any headwinds that I faced, I know that I've done everything I can to try to spread the message of liberty in a positive way. I'm so thankful that I have a staff and volunteers across the country who have put in the work.'"

"Would he run again in the future? 'I think so,' he says. 'But what I need to do first is focus on building our party [so it] can properly support a presidential campaign the way we have in the past. And I think that's my work over the next four years … trying to identify people across the libertarian spectrum, in states across the country, who want to organize and really build our party up going forward, and not being the [junior varsity] league for the Republican Party, and not thinking that Donald Trump is what we have to settle [for] in this country.'"

Read more: https://reason.com/2024/11/06/chase-oliver-calls-libertarian-party-presidential-run-honor-of-my-lifetime/

Democrats need to understand why they lost

American voters treated the 2024 election as a referendum on the governing Democratic Party's leftist economic and cultural policies, and voted a resounding no to them. 

What Democrats must learn from Trump’s victory | MSNBC | Brendan Buck:

November 6, 2024 - "[F]ormer President Donald Trump is returning to power riding a wave of discontent with the political left in America. Many find themselves stunned, wondering how this could have happened, but no one should be surprised.... While the polls showed the race a dead heat, something else was going on just below the surface: For the first time in decades, more Americans were identifying as Republicans than as Democrats.... 

"It’s hard to argue that the GOP has suddenly become more appealing. Indeed, the favorability levels for both parties remain relatively low. And Trump did not offer the country a compelling or serious plan to address his party’s problems. Instead, he offered them an opportunity to reject the perceived leftward shift of progressivism and to stake a claim for conservative culture....

"The defeated Democratic candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, ran a traditional politics playbook: shore up the base and then appeal to the swing voters.... Her debut provided a jolt of energy. The campaign orchestrated a flawless convention. She slayed her opponent in their only debate. And she tacked to the center long abandoned by Trump. It wasn’t good enough.... Though much improved since her short-lived 2019 run for president, Harris is still not an extraordinary political talent, and her interviews and the unscripted moments left something to be desired. And perhaps voters didn’t buy her appeal to the political middle after years of standing as an unapologetic progressive.... 

"By contrast, there was no question of who Trump is and where he stands. He once again rejected our conventions of how to assemble a majority coalition and created a new one by turning out new voters, often young and male, who find him entertaining and Democrats to be a nagging bore. His campaign was a rejection of the traditional playbook, run instead on grievance and cultural appeals.... 

"Trump’s win should not be viewed as a broad affirmation of him or his platform.... Trump has his adoring fans, to be sure, but a vote for Trump was as much a message rejecting the perceived leftward shift across American institutions — not just our politics, but media, entertainment and universities.

"A vote for Trump was not just one for border security, but also a vote against limitless multiculturalism. It was a vote against journalists furious that their paper didn’t endorse Harris. It was a vote against encampments on college campuses. It was a vote against what they see as boys in girls sports.... It was a vote against anti-Trump Republicans who[m] they see as enabling the left....

"Democrats charged Trump with being a fascist. To little surprise, after nearly a decade of similar charges, this rhetoric failed to move persuadable voters. Warnings against authoritarianism and speaking in defense of democracy are noble, but they were not a winning message. Voters care more about how your plans will tangibly improve their lives. They also care about their way of life, as Trump understood.... I loathe culture war politics. But particularly in times of national division and turmoil, it’s a formula that works — and Trump has proved it yet again."

Read more: https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-wins-election-results-2024-progressive-democrats-rcna178206

How Democrats are reacting to Trump’s 2024 presidential win | TODAY | November 6, 2024: 

Understanding the Trump landslide

Trump in Arizona, June 2024. Photo by 

Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

As with many Canadians (and Americans) these days, my starting point for reading the daily news day is social media site, X. The site owner, Elon Musk, maintains a free speech policy one cannot find anywhere else. The advantage of that to me is that, after an hour or so, I can get both an overview of the news and a short list of stories to follow up for possible mention on my blog. 

Yesterday, though, all I could find was one story that everyone wanted to post about, the 2024 American election result. It was not just that the Republicans won, but the size of their win. Not only did Donald Trump take the presidency; his party also took control of both houses of Congress. That is hyuge (as the new president would say) in the American system, where the Presidency and Congress (the executive and legislative branches) are formally independent. Let me emphasize its hyugeness by repeating it in its own paragraph. 

( A ) In 2024, the Republicans won the Presidency, the Senate, and the House. 

It seems that everyone on earth, or at least everyone on X, wants to talk about nothing else; and everyone has their own theory of why (A) occurred. One theory that I could not find anywhere on X was my own. I would like more people to know of my theory – not just because it was mine, but because it allowed me to predict (A) four years ago. Indeed, I offered my prediction at the time as a test of my theory: (A) happening would not prove my theory correct, but the failure of (A) to happen would have falsified this version of it. 

I wrote up my theory, and made my prediction, back in November 2020, in an article called " US election results are more of the same ." I was commenting on the fact that: 

( B ) in 2020, the Democrats won the Presidency, the Senate, and the House.

Checking back, I also discovered that: 

( C ) In 2016, the Republicans won the Presidency, the Senate, and the House;

( D ) In ​​2008, the Democrats won the Presidency, the Senate, and the House;  

( E ) In 2000, the Republicans won the Presidency, the Senate, and the House; and 

( F ) In 1992, the Democrats won the Presidency, the Senate and the House. 

To sum up: For the entire millennium so far, every incumbent president has been replaced by a challenger from the other party, in a repudiation of the incumbent's party. This repudiation has been total, with the challenger's party taking control of Congress as well as the White House. 

Those are facts. Are they just a coincidence or is there a theory that explains them? The theory that I have come up with goes like this: 

The first part follows from Ludwig von Mises' theory of interventionism. Mises taught that, while intervention was meant to be a compromise between minimal and total government, it would always tend toward the total. Each government intervention would have new, unintended consequences, new problems which had to be solved by yet more intervention. In that way, government would grow. But (and this is my own idea at this point), as government increased, so would the problems it created. It would tend to become a bigger, more commending government trying to perform ever more functions; but it would also increasingly tend to fail at performing any of those functions well. It would increasingly tend to fail at even to fail at its core functions of courts, police, and national defense. Given enough time, it would become both a totalitarian state and a failed state. 

Long before that point is reached, the government would be failing satisfy the needs of an increasing number of voters. Ironically, the more it tried to do, the more voters people it would fail to satisfy; as a government grows through interventionism, so does the number of dissatisfied voters. Those voters would give up on the party system to some degree. Some reject the system only slightly, becoming nominally independent but still retaining some loyalty to their old party. Others reject it completely and become non-voters. In between are the true independents, dissatisfied voters who reject and will vote to throw out either party. As their numbers grow, true independents increasingly determine the outcome of elections; and as they tend to vote against incumbent government, those incumbents tend to be repudiated at regular intervals. 

While the interval is regular, it is not independent of human agency. It can and has changed.  Currently it is four years (A-C), but before that it was eight (C-F). Since that change coincided with the first election of Donald Trump, it is fair to speculate that his first election is the main reason for the speed-up. Since his election, both parties have become increasingly negative. Negative campaigning has existed since the beginning of American democracy, but since Trump's election both parties have taken negativity to a whole new level. 

In the past the negativity of political campaigns began and ended with political campaigns. members of both parties were able to coexist socially outside political life. Today though politics, and its negativity, never ends. Partisans of both parties have come to see the other party as intrinsically evil, good only to be destroyed. The challenger party does little more than point to the failures of the incumbent regime. The incumbent party can increasingly dismiss the challengers' criticisms as "playing politics" and do nothing to correct them. As a result, the all-importand true independents – who can confirm the flaws for themselves, as well as their failure to be corrected – are increasingly unsatisfied, increasingly likely to defect to the challengers at the earliest opportunity. They have become motivated by anti-incumbency. 

This election has confirmed that four-year interval. However, since Trump remains a player it does not tell us whether the interval stays at four years or reverts to eight following his retirement. Based on the data, there is no way to predict that, for now. All that can be predicted is that in four years' time both parties will once again march into battle as if marching to Armageddon; and in that election the Democrats will win. However, how long that Democratic president will stay in office cannot be answered at this time. 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Ron Paul willing to work with Elon Musk in DOGE

Libertarian icon Ron Paul is interested in playing a role in Elon Musk's proposed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in a second Trump administration. 

Elon Musk asks this ex-Congressman to join second Trump term to reduce… | Hindustan Times | Tuhin Das Mahapatra: 

November  02, 2024 - "November  02, 2024 - "Elon Musk expressed interest in having Ron Paul in a potential Department of Government Efficiency if Trump wins the presidency.... 'Would be great to have Ron Paul as part of the Department of Government Efficiency!' he wrote on X (formerly Twitter).

"Paul approved Musk’s potential role as a government efficiency commissioner, replying, 'I'd be happy to talk with you about it, Elon.' 

"Paul, who previously sought the presidency as a Republican and a Libertarian, noted his willingness to advise Musk on economic policy, emphasizing his dedication to educating the public about government overreach.

"When asked if he would work with Musk to address government waste, Paul said, 'Well I would.... But I wouldn't want an official position, you know, because I've sort of steered away from getting too involved in the politics of it all right now.' He then highlighted, 'I always say young people that were in high school and college, when I was doing all the campaigning, [were] a receptive audience,' contrasting it with his lack of support from business organizations like the 'Chamber of Commerce.'

"Paul advised that Musk proceed with caution if tasked with reducing government spending. 'You know, a position is easy to have and to hold. But the truth is, you know, what if I did get in this position and all I had to do is sign a piece of paper and the Federal Reserve was eliminated, or you cut the budget by $2 trillion … the consequence would be is total chaos and probably civil war and all that,' he remarked.

"Paul stressed that the public should understand the rationale behind reducing government expenditures, especially as economic challenges grow. He sees an opportunity to guide future policies once 'this thing falls apart' arguing that certain political factions benefit from societal unrest. He said, 'The cultural Marxists do it on purpose: the more chaos, the better.' So he remains as a “reluctant optimist,' heartened by the responsiveness of 'a lot of people out there, a lot of young people that seem to be very receptive to what we've been talking about.'"

Read more: https://tribune.com.pk/story/2506968/ron-paul-responds-to-elon-musks-invitation-to-join-trump-administration

Ron Paul, Donald Trump, Elon Musk. Courtesy Spectator Australia. 

Ron Paul responds to Elon Musk’s invitation to join Trump administration | Express Tribune: 

November 02, 2024 - "Musk recently posted that he would welcome Paul’s involvement in the department, which he humorously referred to as the 'Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE),' alluding to the cryptocurrency Dogecoin.... Musk’s interest in a governmental role has become increasingly visible, with the CEO explicitly stating his willingness to serve in a Trump-led administration if the opportunity arises. Following Musk’s post, Trump hinted at appointing him to an advisory or official role if elected president.

"Paul’s legacy in politics includes founding the Foundation for Rational Economics and Education (FREE) in 1976 and serving as the first chairman of Citizens for a Sound Economy. Often cited as the 'intellectual godfather' of the Tea Party movement, Paul’s influence extends across fiscal conservatism and anti-interventionist policies. If appointed, the combination of Paul’s libertarian principles and Musk’s tech-driven approach could bring an unconventional dynamic to government operations under a Trump presidency."

Read more: https://tribune.com.pk/story/2506968/ron-paul-responds-to-elon-musks-invitation-to-join-trump-administration

In search of the real Kamala Harris

After Kamala Harris became the Democratic Party nominee for president, investigative journalist John Stossel set out to answer the question: Who is the real Kamala Harris.

STOSSEL: The REAL Kamala Harris | Toronto Sun | John Stossel:

August 24, 2024 - "Who is Kamala Harris? What does she believe? It’s hard to know. She won’t take questions from reporters. Instead, she reads from a teleprompter and gives the same speech again and again. So, as she gets the nomination, my new video looks at who Harris really is.

"She’s eager to spend other people’s money.... Last election, Stossel TV compared the candidates’ proposed spending.... Trump proposed spending $267 billion more. Biden, $297 billion. The socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders wanted to spend an astonishing $3.976 trillion! But Harris was even worse! $4.162 trillion in new spending. Last week, in her first policy speech, she proposed $1.7 trillion in new spending. At least that’s not as bad as what she wanted during COVID: She thought the government should give every American $2,000 a month. That would have cost taxpayers $21 trillion!....

"A few years ago, she endorsed eliminating private health insurance — having government take it over completely. Now her campaign says she 'no longer supports (entirely government-run) health care.' Who is the real Kamala Harris? 

"In 2019, she said she wanted to ban fracking. Now that Harris needs votes in Pennsylvania, where fracking provides jobs, her campaign claims she won’t ban fracking, and Republican claims that she would are 'false … an obvious attempt to distract.' But what’s false? She told CNN, 'I’m in favour of banning fracking.' She also wanted to force gun owners to sell their guns to the government. Now, a Harris spokesperson says, 'the vice president would no longer require this.'

"She used to brag about being a tough prosecutor, even taking pride in 'prosecuting parents for truancy.' But then, when progressives criticized harsh policing, she flip-flopped. During the George Floyd riots, as people looted and set fires, Harris tweeted, 'help post bail for those protesting.' Now the policing pendulum has swung back. Harris again brags about locking people up....

"Harris ... says radical things, like wanting 'equity' over equality and equal opportunity. 'There’s a big difference,' she says in an animated video. 'Equality suggests everyone should get the same amount. Equitable treatment means we all end up at the same place'.... So, we need even more government redistribution?

"Harris is a big-government, flip-flopping opportunist. It’s upsetting that the main presidential contenders are a cackling, economically ignorant big spender and a crass, self-absorbed bully....

"The best news is that America’s founders wisely created checks on executive power. Foolish people often say the president 'runs the country.' Thankfully, that’s not true.... The president runs only one of three branches of government. Each is designed to be able to stop the other from imposing tyranny. The founders wanted limited government because they’d seen the damage oppressive rulers did. If our next president must be Trump or Harris, I’m sure glad there are limits on their power."

Read more: https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/stossel-the-real-kamala-harris

Kamala Harris’s Track Record: Big Spending, Wokeness, Equity and Flip Flops | John Stossel | August 21, 2024:

Harris/Biden and the separation of powers

Justin Trudeau's father once said that for Canadians, living next to the USA is like sleeping with an elephant; even if it's the tamest. most well-behaved elephant in the word, “one is affected by every twitch and grunt.” So for the next few days, GDPA will be looking at the American presidential election. For the most part, I'll hold to my 2020 vow to stop mentioning Donald Trump (one can read the blog archives for that), and focus on other, less well-known alternatives. 

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in May 2023. Photo by Joe Biden. Wikimedia Commons.

Harris/Biden and the separation of powers | X | Insurrection Barbie: 

November 2, 2024 - If Trump is a dictator, name one time he usurped power from the other branches of government to enact his will in violation of the separation of powers. 

Here are all the times the Harris/Biden administration did exactly that:

1. The Harris and Biden administration extended the eviction moratorium after COVID by abusing their emergency powers at the expense of private property rights. 
2. This administration issued vaccine mandates for workers because their 'patience' had run thin. This was struck down by the courts as unconstitutional.
3. Our constitution gives the legislative branch the power to pass laws. This administration was not able to cancel student loan debt by getting Congress to vote on a bill to do so. So, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris did this by executive .... fiat. They did this after the Supreme Court said it was unconstitutional. Twice. 
4. In violation of our first amendment, they tried to enact a disinformation governing board to censor your free speech. Ultimately the public backlash was so great that they scrapped the project for now.
5. Through executive fiat and death by regulation they have upended our energy policies making our emergency oil reserves drop to the lowest they have been since 1984. They killed the Keystone pipeline and they defied court rulings and continued to opt out against holding oil drilling sales. 
6. This administration threatened and coerced social media companies to silence the speech of American citizens because it did not agree with the position of the government, in violation of the first amendment. 
7. This administration has absolutely zero respect for property rights and have publicly announced that they pledge to protect [sic] 30% of land and water by 2030. That is a land grab....
8. This administration has purposefully ignored our immigration laws and allow 13 million people into the country. They have willfully failed to uphold deportation orders, letting them lapse....
9. [T]hey have failed to secure our border and have allowed 425,000 criminals who have been convicted into the country.
10. They have targeted parents for protesting at their children’s school board meetings in violation of their first amendment rights of free speech and have had the FBI place them on a watchlist.
11. They have targeted pro-life demonstrators and thrown them in prison while letting pro-abortion activists burn down clinics. The executive branch has to faithfully execute the laws without bias.... 
12. They were not able to pass any legislation in Congress to force their transgender agenda into the school system so they passed it by executive fiat and the courts struck down much of it at this point.

Read more: https://x.com/DefiyantlyFree/status/1852587261650481476