Presidential Scouting Reports

A libertarian fan's guide to the World Series of politics

Nick Gillespie, Jesse Walker & David Weigel from the June 2007 issue

(Page 5 of 7)

Sam Brownback

Vitals: Brownback, the former president of the Kansas branch of Future Farmers of America, was a lawyer and radio host before becoming Kansas’ secretary of agriculture in 1986. He won a U.S. House seat in the 1994 Republican Revolution, and when Bob Dole quit the Senate to run for president, Brownback took his job. He converted from Methodism to Catholicism in 2002, solidifying an already pretty solid reputation as one of the Senate’s most pious members.

Pros: Plenty of candidates wave the cross on the campaign trail. Brownback does it all the time, even when it cuts against his party’s standard positions. He supports immigration reform that would let migrant workers become citizens. He opposes not just abortion but the death penalty: “I think every life is sacred and beautiful, whether it’s the unborn or whether it’s Ted Kennedy.”

Cons: Brownback is a major foreign interventionist, an early agitator for war in Iraq (he co-sponsored the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act), and the rare Republican who wants to intervene in Sudan’s Darfur region. After 9/11 he sponsored a bill to fund biometric tracking of foreign students in the U.S. He’s also, as his campaign will happily tell you, the most flamboyant social conservative in the race. He supports constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage and abortion, and has pushed for bans on stem cell research and cloning as well.

Bottom Line: Brownback represents a different shade of the “compassionate conservatism” championed by George W. Bush. But perhaps not different enough.

Mike Huckabee

Vitals: A trained pastor and theologian who headed the Arkansas Baptist Convention, Huckabee became lieutenant governor in 1993. Three years later, when Gov. Jim Guy Tucker’s career was shredded in a financial scandal, Huckabee slipped into the governor’s chair where he stayed until 2007. To judge from his press clippings, his greatest achievement in office has been to lose 110 pounds.

Pros: If you comb over his record carefully, Huckabee has shown the occasional flash of small-government sympathies. As a new governor he cut Arkansas’ income tax and supported a property taxpayers’ “bill of rights.” He passed another tax cut in 1997, and in 1999 he cut capital gains taxes. He has been a friend both to homeschoolers and to charter schools.

Cons: If you’re less charitable in reading the Huckabee résumé, he’s probably the most profligate spender in the race. He racheted up sales taxes and “sin taxes” multiple times over 10 years, usually under the cover of supporting public schools/education/“our children.” Cigarette taxes went up by more than 100 percent. He supported the 2003 expansion of Medicare, even though, as a governor, he could have stayed out of the debate in Congress. Huckabee is one of the biggest (figuratively speaking) nannies in politics; having shed all those pounds through exercise and diet, he now wants to regulate what kids eat in school and how their parents behave around them (like whether they smoke around their fat kids while driving their cars). And once those kids are whipped into shape, he wants to make sure they’re not learning too much about the survival of the fittest: “I do not necessarily buy into the traditional Darwinian theory,” he has said, arguing for “balance” in science classes.

Bottom Line: The vision of “compassionate conservatism” promised by George W. Bush was actually practiced by Huckabee, with all the flaws that entailed. He’s the GOP candidate who’d probably get along best with a big-spending Democratic Congress.

Ron Paul

Vitals: An Air Force veteran and obstetrician working in suburban Houston, Paul turned political after President Nixon abandoned the gold standard. He won a U.S. House seat in 1976, left in 1984 for a losing Senate race, ran for president as the 1988 Libertarian Party candidate, then returned to Congress in 1996 even though the national GOP threw its weight against him. He published a political newsletter through most of that period, becoming one of the best-known self-identified libertarians in politics.

Pros: No politician in the Capitol is more libertarian than Paul; he has embraced the nickname “Dr. No,” earned after scores of “nay” votes on bills he considered unconstitutional. Paul opposes nearly all foreign wars, all foreign aid spending, and all domestic surveillance, starting with the PATRIOT Act. In 2003 Reason named him one of our “35 Heroes of Freedom.”

Cons: Paul’s libertarianism wavers when it comes to immigration: He wants a border crackdown, stricter enforcement of visa rules, and an end to birthright citizenship. He also opposes abortion and gay marriage but would leave those issues to the states.

Bottom Line: It would be nice to live in a world where Ron Paul could actually win.

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