It's a truism among hardcore Libertarians that voting for the lesser of two evils results in...evil. We just watched Republicans select, arguably, the most evil of the Republican contenders, Donald Trump, with 51% of the vote compared to distant second place winner, Ron DeSantis who lagged by 30 points. Nikki Haley, who, for different reasons, is probably equally evil to Trump came in third. Pundits speculate that a good chunk of her votes came from Democrats. Why would Democrats vote in a Republican primary, you ask. Well, because the Democratic party bosses decided to skip the caucuses in favor of mail-in ballots in deference to the supporters of Joe Biden who want to make sure that the first primary that counts is South Carolina, deemed friendly to Biden. So much for saving our Democracy.
Why is Trump evil? He's a loud-mouthed nativist who opposes almost all immigration. Despite the fact that his most recent wife and her extended family are all immigrants. His anti-immigration stance is a blatant populist appeal to white working-class voters who, incorrectly, blame their economic woes on competition from Mexican laborers. Trump extends his tribalist nativism to trade, opposing any trade with foreign countries that he, in his ignorant personal opinion, considers "unfair". In his first term he appointed judges who ruled against abortion rights. Regardless of your opinion on abortion, striking down Roe v. Wade has made it much more difficult for Republicans to get elected in most of the country. And we must remember that the lockdowns and forced COVID vaccination edicts all started under his watch. In the process he presided over the biggest deficit spending and money printing binge in the history of the Republic. Forget about his amorality in dealing with women, his unwillingness to let go of an election that the Democrats stole fair and square and his whiny complaints about how the media treats him. Trump in a second term would do more of the economy crippling nonsense in a second term than he did in his first term. Which is saying a lot. He's evil/
Biden is just a different flavor of evil. He's corrupt. He openly bragged about threatening to cut off aid to Ukraine unless a prosecutor going after the gas company Burisma was fired. Coincidentally, his son, Hunter, was on the board of Burisma. He's fully on board with and implementing draconian policies to, theoretically, stop global warming and appease the climate change Malthusian hysterics. Full implementation of his policies has the potential of dragging the economy and, indeed, civilization itself into a grinding downward spiral. For all his posturing about "saving democracy", he's the guy who refused Secret Service protection to his only significant primary competitor, Robert F Kennedy Jr. whose Father and Uncle were both assassinated. He's the guy who canceled the Iowa caucuses and is trying to stop the New Hampshire primary to make sure that the first primary contest is in Biden-friendly South Carolina. He extended Trump's ludicrous and economically disastrous COVID lockdowns and vaccination mandates and the Federal spending and money-printing spree that went along with it. He directly interfered with peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia leading to a war which Ukraine is losing despite billions in munitions being provided by American taxpayers. If the report from the only credible reporter on the subject, Seymore Hersh, is to be believed, he is behind blowing up the Nordstream pipeline, a direct act of war against Russia. He's bombing the Houthis in Yemen without a declaration of war. And, really, who knows if the "brain" behind these disastrous policies is Biden's or the former Obama staffers who are probably running the show from behind the scenes.. Biden is pretty clearly senile. And not in the early stages anymore. And, like Trump, forget about his amorality, hair-sniffing of little girls and showering with his teenage daughter. The guy is evil.
So if both the Democratic and Republican candidates for President in 2024 are evil, what's a voter to do? One choice is to ignore our corrupt political system as much as possible. The problem is, they don't ignore us. Another choice is to take a look at the winner of the Libertarian Iowa caucuses. That would be Chase Oliver who won with a resounding % against nine other candidates. Oliver is the former LP candidate for the U.S. Senate in Georgia. With a warchest of all of $7,790 he got enough votes to force Georgia's Senate election into a runoff in 2020. He ran on a slogan of "armed and gay" appealing to both conservative leaning and liberal leaning libertarians. Of course, all caucus and primary voting for LP candidates is non-binding. Te actual LP candidate will be picked at convention the weekend of May 24. But, despite the internal dysfunction of the national LP, the ultimate LP candidate will most likely be good. Not evil. Voting for good is always better than voting for evil.