Libertarian Chase Oliver: US needs more empathy
Libertarian presidential candidate Chase Oliver says he offers American voters a younger perspective than Republican and Democratic frontrunners.
“You probably noticed I’m a little under the age of 80,” the 37-year-old told the crowd at the Des Moines Register’s Political Soapbox at the Iowa State Fair on Saturday, taking a jab at President Joe Biden, 80, a Democrat, and former President Donald Trump, 77, a Republican.
Oliver is a gun-toting Second Amendment supporter, who described himself as “armed and gay” during his failed campaign to represent Georgia in the U.S. Senate last year. He supports a woman’s right to choose an abortion and the national legalization of marijuana.
On Saturday, Oliver called for “a cultural war ceasefire.”
“I don’t care how you live, who you love, how you worship, how you express yourself, if you do it in peace, that’s your business, not the government’s,” he said.
Oliver also said the nation needs more empathy in its approach to drug addiction, immigration, foreign relations and justice reform.
“There’s a war on drugs in this country that puts thousands of people in jail, instead of helping them with the addiction,” said Oliver, who stressed that people who harm others in drug-related crimes should be punished.
“That leaves people in jail that don’t need to be there. And that hurts our country.”
And instead of providing Ukraine with weapons in its defense against Russia, Oliver said he favors offering asylum to Ukrainians who want to leave the conflict.
“We should offer the same deal to Russians. That’s going to just destroy the morale of the Russian military,” he said.
“We can win that war without firing a single shot. You just have a little empathy for the people who are caught in a war zone. And for the people who, frankly, on both sides are being conscripted” into the battle.
Oliver said he supports an “Ellis Island-style immigration,” a process in the 1880s that enabled people to enter the country if their papers were in order and they were in reasonably good health.
“If you’re coming here to work and be peaceful, it’s not my business,” he said. “We need to have people in this country who will start small businesses and create prosperity.
“And immigrants do exactly that,” Oliver said. “What prevents immigrants from living their best life is our complicated immigration system” that keeps “workers in the shadows,” their labor exploited. That “keeps wages lower both Americans and immigrants,” he said.
Welcoming immigrants frees law enforcement to “focus on those who are really doing wrong,” Oliver said. “If you’re coming here … to traffic people or exploit people, that is our business, and we will shut you down.”
Oliver said his generation is disillusioned with the current political system. “It’s my generation that had the entire real estate market fall out from underneath us,” he said, referring to the 2008 housing crash that had many struggling to recover their financial footing.
“It’s my generation right now trying to raise families … with massive runaway inflation that was caused by the two-party system,” said Oliver, touting the need for a balanced federal budget.
“That used to be a rational idea,” he said. “But now in today’s political climate, that seems to be a somewhat radical idea.”
Oliver pointed to a recent poll that showed 53% of Americans would “definitely not support” Trump if he was the Republican nominee. Another 11% said they probably wouldn’t support him. And 43% of Americans said they would definitely not vote for Biden in 2024, with 11% probably not supporting him.
“That tells me there are a lot of voters out there who are looking for something different,” Oliver said.
He compared the Republican and Democratic parties to “professional wrestling.”
“They pretend they’re fighting one another, but what they’re actually doing is putting on a performance to get you upset, get you excited, take your money and take your vote for granted,” Oliver said.
“We Libertarians, we want to enter this race to be a check against the two-party system. And to give you somebody honest to vote for.”