Irritating Republicans, Democrats, and everyone in between, Rep. Justin Amash (I-MI) announced Tuesday that he was launching his campaign to be the Libertarian Party’s nominee for the White House in 2020. Amash, who was unceremoniously asked to leave the Freedom Caucus after he came out in favor of President Trump’s impeachment last year, also left the Republican Party in the wake of his ideological disagreements with the president. Left with no home, no constituency, and no popularity, Amash has decided this is the perfect time to become the first third-party candidate in history to win the election. Good luck with that, bro.
“Americans are ready for practical approaches based in humility and trust of the people,” Amash tweeted. “We’re ready for a presidency that will restore respect for our Constitution and bring people together. I’m excited and honored to be taking these first steps toward serving Americans of every background as president.”
Amash’s announcement did not exactly send shockwaves of fear through the White House.
“I think Amash would make a wonderful candidate, especially since he is way behind in his district and has no chance of maintaining his Congressional seat,” Trump tweeted Wednesday morning. “He almost always votes for the Do Nothing Dems anyway. I like him even more than Jill Stein!”
That last name drop is undoubtedly going to give pause to Democrats. While Stein is a leftist (of a weird sort) and may have drawn votes away from Hillary Clinton in 2016, Amash is a right-wing libertarian who could conceivably do the same to Trump. But that’s assuming there are any Republican-leaning voters out there looking for an alternative to the president. If that’s the case, one might assume they could be lured to vote for Joe Biden. Unless, that is, there’s someone like Amash in the mix.
At best, Amash’s presence in the race will make no difference whatsoever. At worst (for Democrats), he will give Republicans turned off by Trump an excuse to vote for someone other than Biden.
That’s why former Rep. Joe Walsh, who now has first-hand experience about how little appetite there is in the Republican Party for a challenger to Trump, strongly urged Amash to reconsider his bid.
“At least one reporter tweeted that Amash recently said that he would run third-party only if he thought he had a chance to win. But he’s kidding himself,” wrote Walsh. “Even if, by some miracle, Amash doubled Johnson’s 9 percent result in New Mexico nationally, he would still only be in Ross Perot 1992 territory, when the billionaire got around 19 percent of the popular tally and still didn’t win a single electoral college vote. Amash can’t win.
“But he can siphon enough votes from the Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, to hand the election to Trump,” he lamented.
We have our doubts about whether Amash, who is scarcely known to the general population, can even do that much. But if he does, hey, he might accidentally turn himself into a great conservative hero.
