Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may be considering a run for the Libertarian Party presidential nomination following a recent CNN interview conducted over the weekend.
Speaking with CNN anchor Michael Smerconish on Saturday afternoon, Kennedy was asked if he would consider seeking the Libertarian Party nomination. “Is it possible that you will seek still to be the Libertarian candidate, which would assure you getting on all 50 state ballots?” Smerconish said.
“That is something that we’re looking at,” Kennedy responded. “We have a really good, relationship with the Libertarian Party. I’m going to be speaking at the California Libertarian Party convention. I think it’s next week or maybe in a couple of weeks.”
Kennedy also said during the interview that he may speak to New York Libertarians at their upcoming state convention. The Libertarian Party of New York’s state convention is scheduled to take place from March 16 to March 17, 2024, in Watkins Glen, New York.
Smerconish then played an audio clip from an earlier interview between him and Libertarian National Committee Chair Angela McArdle, in which McArdle stated that Kennedy and the party had “a lot of good conversations” and are on “good terms.”
Polls referenced by CNN’s Smerconish during the interview that recently examined Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia indicate that when facing President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, Kennedy’s support ranges between the low and high 20 percent.
Kennedy previously sought the Democratic Party nomination before changing his candidacy to an independent run. He has since formed several new statewide parties to assist him with his goal of total nationwide ballot access. If Kennedy were to successfully seek the Libertarian Party’s nomination, it could potentially alleviate many of his ballot access woes, as the party had ballot access in all 50 states and the District of Columbia in the 2020 election cycle.
Kennedy is also the second candidate outside of the Libertarian Party to have considered or been rumored to consider the Libertarian Party’s presidential nomination this election cycle. Other than Kennedy, Vivek Ramaswamy, who was initially a Republican Party presidential candidate, was also in contact with members of the Libertarian Party regarding a potential nomination bid. Ramaswamy eventually withdrew from the race entirely following the Iowa caucuses.
The full interview between Michael Smerconish and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. can be viewed by readers on the CNN website here. Previous articles by Independent Political Report on Kennedy’s participation at the upcoming Libertarian Party of California 2024 State Convention are available here and here.
The Mises Caucus is NOT endorsing RFK Jr. for President, or for the Libertarian Party’s presidential nomination. The leadership of the Mises Caucus has endorsed Michael Rectenwald for President and Clint Russell for Vice President.
When Weld got the VP slot in 2016, some real libertarians sucked it up until he went out and started campaigning against the party’s platform — then asked the LNC to rescind his nomination and pick a suitable VP candidate.
“You” the party comrade collective do deserve to be tossed into the ash heap of history. You, the individuals who still call that first you “we,” deserve to escape from the metastisizing “we” which is ever more reminiscent of Ayn Rand’s “We” with each passing moment. Un”we” yourself, please, as thoroughly, as finally, and as soon as you can!
Some of you may deserve it more than others, but nobody deserves the cruel and unusual punishment of being among the last survivors on that Island of ever worsening horrors. I’m just not sadistic enough to allow myself to believe otherwise. But whether anyone does deserve that unimaginably horrible fate is not the real point here.
Ironically, a lot of people thought the “Mises Caucus” represented ultra hardcore radical libertarianism. Certainly not a surprise for some of us, but now we can see what that actually means in practice. Surprise, surprise, surprise.
As the months and years go by, it will get ever more obvious to ever more people, while a shrinking minority will tie themselves into an ever more intractable gordian knot of diabolically intertwined logical fallacies explaining why, in fact, they do.
But, don’t be sad. The circling the drain, downfall, fracturing, ever more vicious internal strife of ever tinier, more dogmatic, more irrelevant “libertarian”/ish parties will end up being a net positive for the libertarian movement and its stated goals.
It’s easy to let sunk costs help lead us to the erroneous fool’s gold of trying to fix, take back, reunite, heal, and/or supplant the l.p. with some “better” “libertarian(ish)” party. I can certainly understand that temptation – I wasted decades of my life trying to reinvent and fix the l.p. flat tired stuck in the mud jalopy and turn it into something of net positive value, plus a plethora of a wide variety of tangential efforts.
It’s only because of the broad scope and variety of those that I now understand how stupid that was, and always will be, regardless of how many people or which people keep spinning the wheels inside those flat tired ever further in the mud.
The best thing I can advise you and anyone and everyone else is to get as far away from that wreck as quickly as possible, because it could catch fire, explode, etc. No one can really know just how soon, how dramatically, or what nuclear, biological, chemical weapons of mass destruction, deadly chemicals, contagious viruses, or any other nasty thing you can think of are just waiting to be set off by a chain reaction inside that crazy, dangerous wreck.
Tl; Dr: run far, far away. Don’t look back. Don’t try to build a better rube Goldberg mousetrap. Just don’t. You will eventually thank me if you take this advice, or would if it was any of your business who I am or that I gave it to you. If you don’t take it, I tried, and the rest is up to you as freethinking individuals who can still make choices for now. Friends, don’t let yourselves remain “we”!
If Robert F. Kennedy, Jr is awarded the LP presidential nomination then it has become quite clear that philosophy has nothing to do with the LP. When William Weld was given the Veep spot on the ticket in 2016 many real libertarians cringed and sucked it up because he was supposed to bring a bunch of money and lots of media attention. A lot of folks weren’t too crazy with Gary Johnson, either. At least he had some serious libertarian leanings before he made the party switch. What in the world has happened to the party that nominated Harry Browne, Ed Clark and yes, David Bergland? If we allow the party to veer so far off course as to go with another “name” nominee like Kennedy, we deserve to be tossed into the trash heap of history. We either stand for something or we will fall for anything.
If RFK Jr can make an issue of ballot access statutes that would be a great help.
I would like to see what big 3 issues he wants to focus on, if any.
He needs to bring his supporters into LP’s now to get delegates, no?
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