Bill Weld Lays Groundwork for 2020 Libertarian Presidential Run - Hit & Run : Reason.com - Matt Welch:
May 2, 2018 - "2016 ... vice presidential candidate Bill Weld ... is now openly laying the groundwork for a 2020 presidential campaign. The only question is whether he'll be the one running....
"'I take this stuff seriously," he told me. 'But I'm sincere when I say that I'm not talking about who is going to do the Libertarian race in 2020; I'm just here to say that I think that's a race that has some real potential to go the distance, and the sooner we all wrap our minds around that, the better'....
"Weld has been schlepping his favorite brown coat from Houston to New York to Long Beach for state conventions, delivering his rap about how the party can best grow from here ('The number one thing we need to do by November 2020 is to elect a Libertarian president of the United States') and sketching out tantalizing visions of '$50 million or $100 million in the bank at the beginning of the campaign'....
"Weld is also issuing strategic endorsements to some of the party's biggest names — Republican-turned-Libertarian Nebraska state Sen. Laura Ebke (facing her first re-election with an "L" by her name starting with a May 15 jungle primary), Massachusetts auditor candidate Dan Fishman (said to have a plausible shot if some local scandals break right), Phoenix mayoral hopeful Nicholas Sarwark (the party's national chairman), New York gubernatorial challenger and ubiquitous state-party-convention presence Larry Sharpe, and others. More rounds of endorsements are expected in the near future.
"Other party-building activities include filing lawsuits to make the allocation of electoral votes proportional instead of winner-take-all in four states (which, Weld says, would have resulted in the L.P. receiving 17 electoral votes in 2016); recruiting potential candidates, donors, and (quietly) vice-presidential possibilities; and starting the obligatory 501(c)(4) advocacy group, Freedom for America....
"Weld's access to money, media, and prestige stands in stark contrast to his potential presidential competitors, though that's in part because there really aren't any so far, aside from anarcho-libertarian activist and trouble-magnet Adam Kokesh. The Adam vs. the Man impresario has been dogging Weld on the L.P. circuit, challenging him to debates, ambushing him on camera with questions like 'How much did Hillary Clinton pay you off?' and accusing him of being a 'liar and backstabber'....
"At the same time, if a growing party is going to continue to grow, and to position itself as the beneficiary of the Democratic and Republican parties' ongoing nervous breakdowns, it is going to need to absorb major-party defectors with less libertarian cred than Bill Weld....
"The Libertarian Party has a truly valuable commodity: likely ballot access in all 50 states, at a time when the major parties are both abandoning even rhetorical support for balanced budgets, free trade, civil liberties, non-interventionism, and a host of other key issues. By planting a tentative flag in early 2018, Weld is establishing a floor of mainstream possibility — and signaling to any would-be outsiders eyeing the prize that libertarian-leaners are going to need to tack more Libertarian if they want to woo the activists who have made this moment possible."
Read this: http://gdspoliticalanimal.blogspot.ca/2018/05/reason-bill-weld-readying-2020.html
'via Blog this'
May 2, 2018 - "2016 ... vice presidential candidate Bill Weld ... is now openly laying the groundwork for a 2020 presidential campaign. The only question is whether he'll be the one running....
"'I take this stuff seriously," he told me. 'But I'm sincere when I say that I'm not talking about who is going to do the Libertarian race in 2020; I'm just here to say that I think that's a race that has some real potential to go the distance, and the sooner we all wrap our minds around that, the better'....
"Weld has been schlepping his favorite brown coat from Houston to New York to Long Beach for state conventions, delivering his rap about how the party can best grow from here ('The number one thing we need to do by November 2020 is to elect a Libertarian president of the United States') and sketching out tantalizing visions of '$50 million or $100 million in the bank at the beginning of the campaign'....
"Weld is also issuing strategic endorsements to some of the party's biggest names — Republican-turned-Libertarian Nebraska state Sen. Laura Ebke (facing her first re-election with an "L" by her name starting with a May 15 jungle primary), Massachusetts auditor candidate Dan Fishman (said to have a plausible shot if some local scandals break right), Phoenix mayoral hopeful Nicholas Sarwark (the party's national chairman), New York gubernatorial challenger and ubiquitous state-party-convention presence Larry Sharpe, and others. More rounds of endorsements are expected in the near future.
"Other party-building activities include filing lawsuits to make the allocation of electoral votes proportional instead of winner-take-all in four states (which, Weld says, would have resulted in the L.P. receiving 17 electoral votes in 2016); recruiting potential candidates, donors, and (quietly) vice-presidential possibilities; and starting the obligatory 501(c)(4) advocacy group, Freedom for America....
"Weld's access to money, media, and prestige stands in stark contrast to his potential presidential competitors, though that's in part because there really aren't any so far, aside from anarcho-libertarian activist and trouble-magnet Adam Kokesh. The Adam vs. the Man impresario has been dogging Weld on the L.P. circuit, challenging him to debates, ambushing him on camera with questions like 'How much did Hillary Clinton pay you off?' and accusing him of being a 'liar and backstabber'....
"At the same time, if a growing party is going to continue to grow, and to position itself as the beneficiary of the Democratic and Republican parties' ongoing nervous breakdowns, it is going to need to absorb major-party defectors with less libertarian cred than Bill Weld....
"The Libertarian Party has a truly valuable commodity: likely ballot access in all 50 states, at a time when the major parties are both abandoning even rhetorical support for balanced budgets, free trade, civil liberties, non-interventionism, and a host of other key issues. By planting a tentative flag in early 2018, Weld is establishing a floor of mainstream possibility — and signaling to any would-be outsiders eyeing the prize that libertarian-leaners are going to need to tack more Libertarian if they want to woo the activists who have made this moment possible."
Read this: http://gdspoliticalanimal.blogspot.ca/2018/05/reason-bill-weld-readying-2020.html
'via Blog this'
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