Writes Mike Holmes:

The first I have heard of this development (report that David Koch will fund a Gary Johnson LP Pres bid) was today in your Political Theatre on LRC.

I haven’t been active in the LP for roughly 27 years and haven’t kept up with the recent LP nomination battle. Nor in the 80s when I was involved with the national LP was I involved with the Koch faction, though it was largely gone after 1982. There were remnants of that group but there was no clear evidence that the Kochs funded any LP activism after David Koch bailed out the national LP in 82 after their hand-picked Director Eric O’Keefe ran up large debts and was subsequently fired by then Chair Alicia Clark in the famous Billings, MT LNC purge of O’Keefe & Company. David kicked in several thousand to pay off the O’Keefe debt, which was not publicized. He deserves some credit for that.

There were always some LP activists who wanted the Kochs to return to the LP fold in exchange for letting them run things again via surrogates. In my American Libertarian newspaper I referred to these people as “cargo cultists” for their belief that some magic billionaires will once again land in LP Land and drop bushels of money on the Party.

I find this Koch-G. Johnson rumor intriguing but so far unverified. Campaign finance limits severely curtail any large outright Koch donations to any LP campaign. Any such financial aid would have to be done via a Super PAC or multiple such groups. These would be technically independent of the campaign but could be used to finance expensive advertising efforts. ThesePACS can and do spend millions on campaigns.

Gary Johnson seems to be a sincere libertarian but more on a superficial level. Not one steeped in the writings of Rothbard, Mises, etc. or even populizers like Friedman, Hospers, etc. However as a former “real politician” who governed New Mexico along somewhat libertarian lines (high number of vetoes, etc.) he has decent  real world political credentials.More worrisome is the choice of former MA Governor William Weld, who in the early nineties was given a “libertarian” label by some. That was very generous and unlike Johnson, who has been an LP member for many years, I am unaware that Weld was ever an LP member. The libertarian Republicans I knew fairly well from Massachusetts were not very enthusiastic about Weld at the time, though he did manage to get elected as a Republican in a hardcoreDemocrat state. He has been absent from libertarian events or groups other than some DC think tank functions.

It is possible that David Koch may choose to support a Johnson-Weld ticket via a Super PAC in a strategy to block Trump from winning the election outright. This seems to be the theory. In fact, there is nothing that can be done to prevent a Koch Super PAC from running pro LP ads or anti-Trump ads for that matter. Legally candidates cannot control Super PACS, which isunder the direction of their funders.

The LP has a tradition in many presidential races of not endorsing VP candidates preferred by the candidate they nominate. Unless rules have changed recently the convention delegates choose the VP via a vote, not simply rubber stamping the candidate’s preferred choice. In some past races , the delegates seemed to take delight in rejecting those choices, possibly as a sop to losing presidential nominee candidates. So Weld may not pass muster, even with the prospect of casino donor money and his selection by Johnson.

While there are probably very few LP activists and delegates today who remember the Koch era of the LP, there may be still a residual suspicion of Koch money or any big funder influence with the Party nominees. The LP has a tradition of valuing independence of mind far more than possible financial resources, and that is a good instinct.

Finally, there is the question of whether or not a well-funded LP presidential campaign would hurt Trump more than Clinton (assuming she stays out of jail in the meantime). Well-funded is of course relative, since even a few million via a Super PAC is unlikely to derail major party campaigns which each will spend closer to a billion dollars for their campaigns. Such an effort might work if concentrated in a few close states, but even then the LP will remain a tough sale against the Trump-Clinton contestants.

While few libertarians will support Clinton, and those who vote for major party candidates will likely choose Trump, those numbers are small in any event and are unlikely to affect the overall outcome. More interesting is the effect of a decently funded LP campaign on independent, swing voters. There is an argument that cool-to-Trump independents, who might buy into the idea that he is mean-spirited or an authoritarian personality type, could bediverted from supporting Hillary if they were to find Gary Johnson an appealing alternative choice. Among disaffected ex Bernie-ites, the LP candidate might appear to be a more principled alternative to the corrupt Establishment power lust of la Hillary & Company. Millennials in particular could find the LP hipper and cooler than endorsing the tiresome clichés of Mrs. Clinton’s 70’s era worship of soft European socialism with a happy face. And a clear alternative to the Wall St. Clinton machine funders and her bloodthirst neocon foreign policy. What could be more “outsider” than the LP?

So as a Trump killing strategy, the potential Koch funding of a Johnson-Weld ticket has the potential to backfire.

Also, being natural contrarians, LP delegates could instead nominate former MN Governor Jesse Ventura just for the hell of it. John McAfee has run a decent LP primary campaign and is also an appealing “populist” gut feeling candidate. So Johnson-Weld is no sure thing. I doubt the Kochs have any internal LP assets to influence the nomination process other than theprospect of outside funding. Which worked well enough in 1980 with David Koch as the VP candidate (who did virtually zero campaigning as you might expect). But that was before Super PACS and was the only way the popular Ed Clark could enjoy the prospect of decent funding. At that they only raised/spent around $3.5 million, roughly $15-$20 million in current dollars. While a majority of that funding was from David Koch’s money, even at that it was small beans for a billionaire

While this is speculative, I think a visible LP candidate could even nudge Trump into a more libertarian direction on some issues. Trump has some libertarian instincts and seems willing to consider new ideas on many issues. Whether Gary Johnson would be as solid on the issue of foreign policy and war-peace is a good question. Johnson’s past positions have been decent libertarian positions, but without much depth. Trump has really blown up the neocon intellectual hammerlock on these subjects and while we can wonder if he would really enact changes, there is no doubt he hits the right notes and then some.

Who else (other than Ron Paul) has made an issue of the US government going broke to sustain its Empire and the welfare-warfare state?

The Koch rumor may just be a trial balloon or even wishful thinking. Whatever the case, the Kochs will do what they want and there is little anyone can do about it.

As always, I would advise the LP to nominate the best, most principled candidate they have. One who can stand up to the scrutiny and boldly articulate the radical libertarian agenda. As Rand Paul discovered, soft-soaping libertarianism in this day and age is a losing proposition.Decades of intellectual activism by libertarians, principally via the Internet, have plowed the political ground now anxious for the real deal. If they aren’t careful, citizen Trump might even outflank the LP on some key issues. So funding isn’t the main issue for them. Nor is being used as a cats-paw to defeat Trump or Hillary.

Unless you are yourself a billionaire, like Trump, it is best not to be owned by one. That is the story of the LP and the Koch family.