Libertarians nominated Chase Oliver as their candidate after embarrassing convention.

 

Chase Oliver. Fox News/AP.

The Libertarian Party has nominated Chase Oliver as their candidate after an embarrassing convention. Fox News. Oliver got 60% of the vote in the sixth round of voting with his biggest remaining opponent being "none of these candidates" at 40% of the vote. Both Republican nominee Donald Trump and Independent candidate RFK Jr spoke at the convention but neither got many votes with Trump being ineligible. Oliver's victory is a blow to the Mises faction of the party, which is more right wing and conservative than Oliver, who is all in on LGBT rights. 

My Comment:

Much of the  attention given to the Libertarian convention was due to Donald Trump's speech with everything else being a minor distraction at best. The media loved seeing Trump being booed, but I think in the end he's the biggest winner of this convention to be sure. 

Why? Because they ended up with Chase Oliver for their candidate and the Libertarian Party has become a joke. Oliver is not a serious candidate and does not seem to have any kind of chance of getting the 3% that Trump was mocking the party for during his speech. 

Oliver is far left libertarian that seems to care more about LGBT rights than any other issue. That is not the thing that is going to get people that would normally vote Republican but are upset with Donald Trump. From what I understand he even supports puberty blockers for children, which is far outside of the norm for most people and something most libertarians probably don't agree with. I know he said he hopes to get 2% of the vote, but I doubt he will get even that.

Especially since there are other credible third party candidates. Though RFK Jr did not get a good reception from the libertarians either, he's a lot more likely to create an impact than Oliver will. Indeed, making RFK Jr. their candidate would have probably gotten the Libertarian Party more votes than they would have ever gotten before. But with them picking Oliver instead, they basically have no chance. 

Despite the cool reception I think both Trump and RFK Jr. were smart to speak to the Libertarian Party. Though it was a hostile crowd for both of them, I do think that they both succeeded in winning over disgruntled Libertarians who are not happy with the Oliver pick. It also shows the courage of both men, going into hostile territory and giving as good as they got. Biden would never have done so and if he had it would have been an absolute disaster. 

As for the Libertarians themselves, they are an extremely dumb party. Not only is Oliver a bad choice, they rejected Donald Trump's offer to give them a little power in his next administration. Rejecting that is an insane choice. Indeed, in a two party system it's often better to create a wing in one of the parties so you have at least a little power. Rand Paul is a great example of this, he's a libertarian at heart but he has done more for the movement as a US Senator than any of the most recent Libertarian Party candidates for President. Instead, the Libertarian party is making perfect the enemy of good and won't have much of an impact in 2024. 

As for myself, I don't really describe myself as a libertarian anymore. Though I like their stance on gun rights and foreign policy and I would rather live under a Libertarian administration than a Democratic one but they just aren't the party for me. They hate police regardless if they are good or not and they were the only people I have ever heard of that unironically defended price gouging during the 2020 pandemic. They also don't seem to have an answer for the far left. I'm all for people being left alone but the far left won't return the favor and the Libertarians care more about sticking it to the man than stopping them from destroying the country.