There has been some political commentary out there suggesting that Bill Weld should run for the presidential nomination of the Libertarian Party.  In particular, George Will recently wrote an article asking if Bill Weld can restore conservatism by running on the LP ticket.

Bill Weld is a former Republican governor of Massachusetts.  In 2016, he joined up with the Libertarian Party and became the nominee for vice president.  Gary Johnson, the presidential nominee, favored Weld as his running mate.

Although there are several reasons why Johnson is not a libertarian, he certainly has more libertarian leanings that Bill Weld.  The following are 10 reasons why Bill Weld is most assuredly not a libertarian. In fact, it is even hard to say he holds many positions that are libertarian leaning.

• Bill Weld is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). This is the ultimate organization of the establishment.  It is hard to imagine any member of the CFR being a libertarian unless the person is acting as a secret spy for information.  If Bill Weld is acting in a covert way in any way, it is to infiltrate the Libertarian Party on the behalf of the CFR, not the other way around.

 

• Bill Weld supported the Iraq War that started in 2003. While this was quite a while ago, and he has since hinted that the war was probably a mistake, he has not made it a point to say that his views have changed in any significant way.  It is easy now to say that there was faulty intelligence and that it was probably a mistake, especially since the political winds have dramatically shifted since that time.  Unfortunately, Weld is still a hardcore interventionist, and there is little evidence to make us believe he would pursue a non-interventionist foreign policy.

 

• Bill Weld did not shrink the state government as governor of Massachusetts. As with many politicians, he talks about shrinking government but has few specific proposals to actually do so.  Despite preaching fiscal conservatism, the state budget grew under his watch as governor.

 

• Bill Weld did very little else in bringing liberty to Massachusetts. If he had any sort of libertarian leanings at the time, you would think there is something he could highlight that he accomplished as governor that actually resulted in a lasting change.

 

• Bill Weld does not call for the abolition of any federal departments. He obviously does not believe in the Constitution or decentralization in virtually any capacity if he can’t think of one federal department to abolish.

 

• Bill Weld is not in favor of ending the federal war on drugs or legalizing drugs, or he has certainly not made this clear if he is. He says he wants to legalize marijuana, but he apparently does not take this same position in regards to other drugs.  Weld was actually a federal prosecutor earlier in his career, which included many drug cases.

 

• Bill Weld is a proponent of more gun control by government, although he has had to somewhat soften his stance for the Libertarian Party.Weld also said that you should not be able to buy any gun if you are on the terror watch list.  These people whom he wants to deny the right to own a gun have not necessarily been convicted of any criminal offense.

 

• Bill Weld thinks highly of Angela Merkel, the German president. When his running mate Johnson was asked his favorite foreign leader, Johnson struggled to come up with an answer, so Weld answered Merkel on his behalf. While this is a difficult question to answer for any libertarian because there aren’t many foreign leaders promoting a message of liberty, it is hard to understand why any libertarian would cite Merkel as a leader to admire.  She has been a shill for the European Union and a massive welfare state.

 

• Bill Weld helped George W. Bush prepare for debates in 2004. He went on to support Mitt Romney in 2007 for president, but endorsed Barack Obama over John McCain in the general election. Weld endorsed Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election.  In 2016, Weld endorsed John Kasich in the Republican primary.  Unless Weld had a dramatic shift in his political views in a short timeframe in mid-2016, it is hard to believe he has any significant libertarian tendencies with all of those recent endorsements.

 

• Bill Weld is so anti-Trump that he was actually campaigning for Hillary Clinton in 2016 (see here and here). He said that, “I’m not sure anybody’s more qualified than Hillary Clinton to be president of the United States.”  He was sabotaging his own ticket (Johnson/ Weld) because he absolutely did not want to see Trump elected.  Again, you have to wonder if Weld was sent by the CFR/ establishment to infiltrate the Libertarian Party in an attempt to soften the LP message as well as to take down Trump.

 

There are many more reasons out there on why Bill Weld is not even close to being a libertarian. If Bill Weld becomes the presidential nominee for the Libertarian Party, then the party should just change its name to Another Establishment Party.