Presidential scouting reports: a libertarian fan's guide to the World Series of politics

Reason, June, 2007 by David Weigel, Jesse Walker, Nick Gillespie

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.

Tom Tancredo

Vitals: The grandson of Italian immigrants, Tancredo was elected in 1976 to the Colorado House of Representatives, where he slashed taxes and made many enemies before leaving in 1981 to make deep cuts at a branch of the state Education Department. He worked at the libertarian-leaning Independence Institute before making a 1998 comeback, winning a U.S. House seat in Colorado's suburban 6th District.

Pros: Before he dug his teeth into the illegal immigration issue, not much would have separated Tancredo from the libertarian mainstream or the Goldwater wing of the GOP. He's a dedicated tax cutter and government shrinker; in the state legislature he and his allies were dubbed "the Crazies" for wanting to kill the state income tax. In 2006 he allied with Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) on a bill to stop the Justice Department from raiding medical marijuana patients. Karl Rove called Tancredo "a traitor to the party;' which to everyone but Rove sounds like a compliment.

Cons: But Rove said that because of Tancredo's views on immigration.Tancredo is the leading opponent of open borders in either house of Congress, founding the Immigration Reform Caucus in 1999. He opposes legal immigration too; in 2003 he proposed to cap new citizens at 30,000 per year--about the same number that leaves the country annually. He doesn't like the cultural changes brought by immigration either, complaining that Miami's influx was turning it into "a Third World nation."

Bottom Line: The ascension of Tancredo to the White House might so terrify Mexican migrants that they stop coming across the border altogether. In that circumstance, forced to work on other issues, Tancredo might become a fairly libertarian president. This is an unlikely scenario.

Newt Gingrich (Undeclared)