Three House Liberty Caucus incumbents beat back well-funded establishment challengers in hard fought primaries — that’s what Reps. Justin Amash (R-Mich.), Walter Jones (N.C.) and Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.) have done.
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The House Liberty Caucus–a group of libertarian-friendly congressman founded by Amash–is surviving and could even be growing.
Amash revealed while sitting on a panel at Young Americans for Liberty’s 6th annual Convention last week that “three dozen people show up” for Liberty Caucus meetings. That number only shows signs of increasing, with potential arrivals like Dave Brat in the House and as small-L libertarianism gains more influence in the D.C. politics.
Amash, Jones and Huelskamp pushed their opponents to the brink, forcing opponents to spend, and spend more.
Justin Amash had to contend with a nasty smear campaign from opponent Brian Ellis, who was aided by biting rhetoric from Reps. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and Devin Nunes (R-Calif.).
Despite this, Amash had the real turnout in terms of donations, outraising Ellis quarterly “$252,000 to a number below $100,000 in individual donations.” Ellis had a greater average donation amount and the support of PAC’s and lobbyists, while Amash had a lower donation amount but more in total from individuals.
Amash, the congressman who votes every time and explains why he voted in this or that way on social media, defeated Ellis 57-43 Tuesday night and demanded an apology from his opponent after he called to concede.
“To Brian Ellis, you owe my family and this community an apology — for your disgusting, despicable smear campaign,” he said. “You had the audacity to try to call me today, after running a campaign that was called the nastiest in the country. I ran for office to stop people like you — to stop people who were more interested in themselves than in doing what’s best for their district.”
Amash was serious about wanting to stop people like Ellis and he did.
Walter Jones is cut from the same cloth at heart, but the 71-year-old and 20-year congressional veteran has a different style than young Amash.
A humorous exchange at the YAL Convention between the two was telling. Jones, giving advice to the young audience on how to best promote freedom, said “Get off the internet and get into the streets.” Jones added, “Why not stage a protest: No more money for Afghanistan.”
Amash chimed in, “Well, maybe a little internet.”
Jones is every bit as conservative as Amash and vice versa, but he’s more old school. Today, Jones is best known for his unwavering anti-war stance, which developed after he befriended Ron Paul.
Jones supported the Iraq War initially and gained notoriety for a short-lived “freedom fries, freedom toast” boycott of France out of “disappointment” in “France’s attitude.” France, you might recall, refused to get involved in Iraq and called war “premature.”
“Watching France’s self-serving politics of passive aggression in this effort has discouraged me more than I can say,” Jones said at the time.
But Jones would repent and do a complete one-eighty.
Since that time, he’s written over 12,000 letters to families who lost loved ones in Iraq, and even tried to impeach Presidents Obama and Bush over their foreign military ventures.
Needless to say, Jones is reviled by establishment Republicans and was challenged in a very close race this year by former Bush official Taylor Griffin, who had plenty of cash at his disposal.
“Outside groups spent more than $1 million to paint Jones as ‘liberal’ and boost Griffin’s candidacy in the 3rd District. But Republican operatives in North Carolina said Jones’ deep ties to the Tar Heel State were too much for Griffin to overcome,” Roll Call reported.
Rush Limbaugh took note of the tension between Jones and the establishment:
That is the true indicator of the strength of the tea party and of, I would say, of the weakness of the establishment. This campaign against Walter Jones looked like an attempt to send a message to other potential Republican renegades that the leadership and the D.C. establishment could come after you and beat you — and they did, but they didn’t.
They came after Walter Jones with big money and they failed.
Jones defeated Griffin 51-45.
Tim Huelskamp had a strange enemy to contend with in his battle for re-election against Alan LaPolice: The tea party.
According to Mother Jones, “Tim Huelskamp just wanted to get rid of a program that good-government advocates consider corporate welfare. He ended up in the tea party’s crosshairs instead.”
Huelskamp cosponsored a bill that would eliminate the government mandates inherent to the “Renewable Fuels Standard, which requires fuel to contain a certain level of ethanol.”
Kansas.com provided helpful context:
Huelskamp opposes federal subsidies and requirements for alternative energy, which has angered some agrarian interests in the district, especially farmers who want to lease land for wind turbines and corn growers who benefit from ethanol subsidies. It’s the first time in recent memory that a Republican incumbent in the 1st District hasn’t gotten an endorsement from the Kansas Farm Bureau and the Kansas Livestock Association, both of which sat out the primary.
The Now or Never PAC, which has thrown down $8 million for tea party candidates since 2012, spent $260,000 in attack ads of Huelskamp that LaPolice claims “aren’t in support of me—they’re against Tim, and I have no idea who they’re coming from, nor do I necessarily care.”
LaPolice’s background platform included support of Common Core.
But despite the late push by LaPolice, Kansas agrarians and the Now or Never PAC, Huelskamp won 55-45.
Huelskamp sat on the same panel as Amash and Jones last a week ago and remarked “If you think they’re afraid of you,” referring to Congress, “you’re having success.”
Though still a relatively small group, the number of libertarian, constitutionally conservative congressmen seems to be growing, or surviving, judging by their recent defeats of big money, establishment challengers.
The popularity of principled congressmen like these and the greater number of them in House begins to make more sense if you view the growth of an organization like Young Americans for Liberty as another barometer or thermometer of the movement.
In 2009, YAL had 60 student leaders attend its convention. In the intervening years that number increased to 70, 130, 267, 303 and finally 325-plus this year.
As YAL — a young libertarian activist base or constituency — grows, so might the number of liberty-minded members in Congress. This correlates in many ways with the attitudes of the rising Millennial generation who will constitute two-thirds of the electorate by 2020.
For the liberty-minded, are principles finally taking precedence over mere politics? Time will tell.