by Guest

contribution by Henry Steinberg

Until recently American libertarianism appealed solely to a certain type of radical, modern bourgeois youth. Without a large class of people to appeal to it languished in obscurity. Since it’s inception in 1972 The American Libertarian Party has passed the 1% mark at a presidential election only once.

However, in the last two Republican primaries Ron Paul, a former Libertarian Party candidate for president, managed to attract national attention and not an insignificant degree of support as a Republican candidate.

Will libertarianism finally become a permanent part of mainstream America politics, or fade back into obscurity now that Paul has announced his retirement?

The composition of Paul’s support does not suggest permanency. The slightly cultish dedication Ron Paul’s supporters had to their candidate masked deep, unspoken divisions. Polls taken before the Iowa primary showed that only half of the people who voted for him considered themselves Republicans, and more Democrats were prepared to support him than any other GOP candidate.

This reveals a fragmented and disunited base, which we can split into three distinct factions: There were of course libertarians, who largely shared Paul’s Austrian Economics and minarchism.

But there were also many paleo-conservatives, Christian militiamen from the deep south, who were enticed by Paul’s paranoid speeches about a looming police state, his creationism, his extreme isolationism, and cultural backwardness. There was a significant liberal contingent, who appreciated his fiery attacks on American foreign policy.

If this rickety coalition is to be turned into a permanent section of the Republican party, a new candidate will need to emerge from high-government who has the ability to appeal to these sections. And due to the lack of an organization that wasn’t centred around Paul, this new man will need to appear soon.

Libertarians, long suspicious of the Republican Party and conscious of the divisions within Paul’s support, have nominated the Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson, former governor of New Mexico, as the heir to Paul. However, it seems unlikely he can transfer over that support.

Johnson is purely a libertarian candidate, and lacks the strange mosaic of positions that allowed Paul to canvass so widely. He will fail to attract Paul’s liberals because he is fiscally a double of Paul, and on foreign policy he is quite conventional, and often appears barely interested. He will also not attract the paleo-conservatives, as he is pro-immigration, socially liberal, and isn’t interested in conspiracy theories.

The only other candidate proposed is Ron Paul’s son Rand Paul, and the question of whether he could lead his father’s movement is irrelevant, as he clearly doesn’t want to. His senate campaign was centred around the Tea Party, and all of his manoeuvres since taking office suggest a career politician.

The contemporary libertarian movement, in that it existed only to support Ron Paul. is as likely to sustain itself as a united socialist Yugoslavia.