RFK Jr's Bid for the Libertarian Nomination

Constructive criticism of the candidate's recent courtship of the Libertarian Party

On January 27^th of this year, Robert FitzGerald Kennedy Jr. signalled that he is courting the Libertarian Party in his bid for the U.S. Presidency. This news has been welcomed by many people of various political persuasions, so it is time to evaluate that bid.

Undoubtedly there is overlap on numerous issues between RFK Jr’s platform and Libertarian objectives. Kennedy wants to undo U.S. military adventurism abroad and discontinue using our troops as the world’s unpaid policemen. He wants to roll back the security state, relic of the Bush/Cheney era, and to end government’s infringement on free speech via shadowy proxies with Big Tech. RFK Jr. wants more transparency in government, with a policy to protect whistleblowers rather than persecute them as we have seen all too often. He wants to end government’s medical mandates, realizing that choices about a citizen’s health are for the citizen and his physician alone. Kennedy wants to end the utterly ruinous War on Drugs, having struggled himself with substance abuse. All these are laudable Libertarian policies, which is why RFK Jr’s bid may be a good fit for our party.

That said, there are a few barbs in this deal. The most obvious objection is the timing. RFK Jr. came out strong against the Covidian regime back in late 2020, early 2021, publishing The Real Anthony Fauci which revealed the U.S. government’s policies against the ‘Rona depended entirely on which corporatist entities were paying Dr. Fauci at the time. Back then Kennedy was publicly and privately urged to flip Libertarian. Instead he pined for the Democratic nomination, longing to get back to Camelot. Yet even his family – former Illinois gubernatorial candidate Chris Kennedy, former Maryland Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, current U.S. envoy to Northern Ireland Joe Kennedy III – probably warned RFK Jr. that the Democratic Party would stab him in the back as it did Senator Bernie Sanders in 2016, and RFK Jr. had to concede their point in October 2023 when he went Independent, realizing that the Democratic machine would never let him challenge their incumbent president. RFK Jr’s courtship of the LP at this late hour comes across as opportunistic when it could have been regarded more favorably two years earlier.

Nor is timing the only thorn on this rose. RFK Jr. correctly recognizes several nationwide calamities such as the cost of living outpacing wages, rising tuition and declining healthcare. His respective answers to these are an increase in the minimum wage, legislative abolition of interest on student loans, and reduction in pharmaceutical costs by governmental decree. It is painfully obvious that RFK Jr. has never read Dr. Ludwig von Mises to know that government itself is the source of these market distortions, which will be more efficiently and lastingly mitigated the sooner government stops its protectionism in these markets, allowing prices to fall to equilibrium.

Nevertheless, Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s bid to the Libertarian Party will have to be reckoned with. His campaign has raised $15 million, and his PAC has $28 million in its war chest, which means that he can reach voters much more effectively than the dankest edgelord memes. Of course, we know that our best electoral odds are always at the local level, with our chances growing slimmer radiating upwards to the presidential level, so it may take many more millions for RFK Jr. to have a chance at the presidency on par with the legacy parties. Yet he may be able to get the Libertarian Party back on the ballot in those states which have disenfranchised us, and that in itself is quite valuable.

In any case, just as Larry Sharpe has been saying since 2018, the electorate is always enriched by having more options on ballot, not fewer, so in the abstract we appreciate that RFK Jr. is running, and in May at convention we’ll see whether his candidacy proves a good fit for our party.