Category Archives: Op-Eds

Op-Eds

Election 2016: Time for Libertarians to Dump Bill Weld

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Libertarian Party Logo
Libertarian Party Logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I didn’t pay much attention in 1972 when vice-presidential candidate Thomas Eagleton was removed from  the Democratic ticket and replaced by Sargent Shriver after it came to light that Eagleton had a record of psychiatric hospitalizations. I have a pretty good excuse  for being distracted — I was five years old — and I’ve never looked into the mechanics of how that happened. But I’d like to see it happen again, this time in my own party.

The bylaws of the Libertarian Party’s national committee require that committee to “provide full support for the Party’s nominee for President and nominee for Vice-President as long as their campaigns are conducted in accordance with the Platform of the Party.” But they allow the LNC, on a 3/4 vote, to suspend either candidate. The suspension becomes permanent removal unless the candidate successfully appeals it to the party’s judicial committee.

Why on earth would Libertarians want to dump vice-presidential nominee William Weld? To let American voters, especially gun owners, know that the Libertarian Party still supports their rights as it always has.

Weld won the party’s nomination by a nose on the second ballot at the party’s national convention, after presidential nominee Gary Johnson pleaded for him to be chosen. One reason he was a hard sell to Libertarians was his anti-gun record as governor of Massachusetts (he supported and signed an “assault weapons” ban).

During the nomination campaign he went back and forth, telling Libertarians he had changed his views on guns one day, telling CNN he hadn’t changed his views on guns the next day.

Since the nomination, Weld has campaigned vigorously against the party’s platform — not just on gun issues but on due process rights — often spouting nonsense that makes him sound as ignorant and as nutty as Donald Trump at his worst.

Here’s Weld talking to REVOLT 2 VOTE correspondent Amrit Singh during the Democratic National Convention:

“You know the five-shot rifle, that’s a standard military rifle. The problem is if you attach a clip to it so it can fire more shells, and if you remove the pin so that it becomes an automatic weapon. And those are independent criminal offenses. That’s when they become essentially a weapon of mass destruction. The problem with handguns is probably even worse than the problem of the AR-15. You shouldn’t have anybody who’s on a terrorist watch list be able to buy any gun at all.”

None of the factual claims he makes there are true, nor is his stated position even remotely libertarian.

Libertarians support gun rights. Libertarians support due process, not presumed forfeiture of rights due to inclusion on secret enemies lists. These items are in our platform, and they’re not negotiable.

Some of my fellow Libertarians believe that removing Weld would damage Gary Johnson’s presidential campaign and possibly even irreparably harm the party itself. I disagree.

In this year of all years, doing the right thing — and being SEEN doing the right thing — is pure political gold. It’s time for Bill Weld to go.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Op-Eds

#NeverNeverTrump: What’s Evan McMullin Really After?

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Better For Trump

For months, voices from the #NeverTrump movement have confidently promised Americans a fifth credible presidential candidate, an alternative not only to Donald Trump but to Democratic pick Hillary Clinton, Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson and Green Party standard-bearer Jill Stein.

Echoing those promises, a shadowy group calling itself “Better For America,” funded by Mitt Romney associate John Kingston III, has been doing prep work for that unnamed candidate.

On August 8 the suspense, such as it was, came to an end. The candidate is David Evan McMullin, a name unfamiliar to voters but well-known on Capitol Hill. Starting as an adviser to congressional Republicans on national security issues, he rose to the position of GOP House policy chief. Now he’s running for president.

Why? The conventional wisdom says that he’s there to keep Trump out of the White House — even at the cost of a Hillary Clinton presidency —  by giving anti-Trump Republican voters somewhere else to go.

I think the conventional wisdom is wrong. When we look at what McMullin and Better For America are up to, and where, two far more likely reasons leap into focus. Those reasons are:

First, to help Trump get elected, but with plausible deniability so that the GOP wins the White House without #NeverTrump leaders having to lose face by kissing the ring (“we did our best but he won anyway, guess we have to live with it”).

Secondly, to ensure that Libertarian Gary Johnson doesn’t become the first independent or third party presidential candidate to carry a state since George Wallace won Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia in 1968.

McMullin is custom-made for Utah — a native, a Mormon and a graduate of Brigham Young. Better for America seems focused on promoting him there. The organization also made a seemingly unsuccessful  ballot access attempt in New Mexico.

Johnson is the former two-term Republican governor of blue New Mexico. He’s going toe-to-toe with Trump and Clinton in Utah’s polls and endorsements contest. If he’s going to win anywhere, it will be in New Mexico or Utah.

The most likely purpose of the McMullin campaign is to fragment the anti-Trump vote in New Mexico, Utah and perhaps other states, allowing Trump to win those states with smaller pluralities than he’d need in a race with fewer significant opponents — and to contain the threat of a third party breakout that might carry over into, and expand in, future elections.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Op-Eds

Police Violence: Peace Isn’t The Priority

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Korryn Gaines and son
Korryn Gaines and her son (photo widely distributed, allegedly from Facebook)

Precisely how did Korryn Gaines die? We don’t know, and probably never will.

The Baltimore County, Maryland Police Department admits that one of its officers shot her dead on August 1. In fact, the department admits that the officer shot first and that Gaines then returned fire in self-defense and defense of her five-year-old son (no, the department does not use those terms) before being gunned down.

The police also admit that before forcing their way into Gaines’s apartment and killing her, they went out of their way to ensure  their actions would be hidden from public view. The department contacted two social media services, Facebook and Instagram, asking that Gaines’s accounts be disabled so as to cut off her photo and video streams of what was happening. To their everlasting shame, the two firms complied with the request.

So we don’t know what happened. But we have a pretty good idea what happens next: The Baltimore County Police Department will “investigate” itself and announce that it has cleared itself and the unidentified officer who killed Gaines (he or she is currently on paid vacation, aka “administrative leave,” until the “investigation” is over) of any wrongdoing.

Baltimore County police chief James Johnson  characterizes his department’s desire for “peace” as the overriding priority justifying the concealment operation. Social media contacts needed to be stopped from urging her “not to comply with negotiators’ request that she surrender peacefully,” he says. “For hours, we pleaded with her to end this peacefully.”

Let’s dispense with the risible claim that “peace” was the priority here. Had that been the case, Johnson could have just called it a night and directed his officers to get in their cars and drive away.  Problem solved. Easy, peace-y.

If the priority was not “peace,” then what was it?

Officer safety? No.  Sending an officer into an apartment occupied by an armed woman isn’t very safe for the officer at all.

Public safety? No. At least one police officer fired multiple rounds — firing first, remember? — in an apartment building. Those rounds were probably 9mm, 10mm or .45 caliber rounds which could have penetrated walls (Gaines was allegedly armed with a 12-gauge shotgun, a much safer weapon for people on the other side of a wall).

The Baltimore County Police Department’s number one priority, their overriding concern, wasn’t peace, or officer safety, or public safety. It was — as has become the case with many American police departments, much of the time —  successful exercise of authority at any price.

That’s why the Baltimore County PD covered up the details of their killing of the ninth American woman of color to die at police hands this year. Just like a cat in a litter box.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY