US Congress(WASHINGTON) — Former Republican presidential candidate Thaddeus McCotter is not himself a libertarian, but the former Michigan congressman predicts an approaching libertarian takeover of the Grand Old Party.
At least, that’s the premise of his new book, Liberty Risen: The Ultimate Triumph of Libertarian-Republicans.
“The reality is you want to conserve what’s best but you want to go forward, you want to go forward from the industrial era to the Internet age,” McCotter told Top Line in a recent interview. “Government has to be reorganized for the future.”
Though he sees the march toward libertarianism as inevitable with the rise of the millennial generation, which he sees as forcing change within the party, he qualifies that this trend is gradual and has been going on for quite some time.
“The rise of libertarians is not something new within the Republican Party. I mean, Ron Paul actually puts that to rest, but the reality is [that]…the communications revolution is reshaping everything that we’ve known,” McCotter said. “That culture tends to be more libertarian, more empowered … and eventually that culture — and the millennials especially as they age and mature — is going to lead to match a consumer-driven economy to a citizen-driven government.”
Asked if Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul is the GOP’s answer for channeling the energy of the libertarian movement into the mainstream Republican Party in 2016, McCotter replied: “Well, I say we’re going to have a stallion, I’m not saying it’s going to be Man o’ War.”
Though McCotter tried his own hand at presidential politics in 2012, he has no plans of getting involved again in the 2016 contest.
“I’m done,” McCotter said. “I mean, I’m 49, I’m bald, and I’m happy. So, why would I go back?”
McCotter would not point to any one political leader as embodying the way forward for the Republican Party but analogized the coming changes to the successful populist movement led by Andrew Jackson in the 19th century.
“The country was expanding westward, and you had settlements and you had very rugged very individualistic very self-reliant,” McCotter said. “Eventually that cultural change came through…and the populist movement, the ‘King Mob’ as Jackson was called, actually triumphed by helping to lead in an expansion of democracy within the country, and that’s kind of what we’re going through now and we’re going to see now. Who it is, and how it’s going to happen, he or she, I don’t know.”
But for now, McCotter said, the GOP is in a time of transition.
“It doesn’t come over night,” McCotter said. “But I think that what they have to do is…they’re not cutting government, they’re doing what happens in every facet of life is they have to transform government to meet the present and the future needs of the American citizens.”
For more of the interview with McCotter, and to hear why he says the populist movement around Elizabeth Warren actually helps Hillary Clinton rather than hurting her, check out this episode of Top Line.
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