A Utah state senator announced that he was leaving the GOP in despair after attending the Republican National Committee last week.
Sen. Mark Madsen (R-UT) said Monday that his experience as a Utah delegate confirmed all of his concerns about the future of the party.
“Every decision and inclination I had before was reinforced,” Madsen said in a press conference where he announced he would become a Libertarian, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.
Madsen, a three term senator from District 13, supported Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and was disappointed by convention-goers booing Cruz off stage when he urged Republicans to vote their conscience.
Like Cruz, Madsen seems himself as a strict constitutional conservative and believes that “the scales tipped” away in the Republican Party from an emphasis on states’ rights and entitlement reform.
The current direction of the party, he said Monday, “makes me want to cry.”
“I’ve invested a lot in that party,” Madsen said, according to the Tribune.
The Utah senator will retire at the end of this year and acknowledged that his announcement was “largely symbolic.”
There are lots of reasons I no longer consider myself a Libertarian and one of the reasons is, it has become the home for disaffected republicans. For the most part, the loudest libertarians seems to be republican lite.
Like most Republicans claiming some semblance of a conscience, they only unveil themselves as repentant and flee the party when they’re on the way out.
What commitment! What character! What principle!
(what a crock of shit)
Or just plain crazy. It seems a catch all label for a whole range of disenchanted groups.
You supported Ted Cruz, and in disillusionment from the GOP you went to the Libertarians? Oh, you are a very sincere believer, I can tell.
My father-in-law is a Libertarian. He worships FDR (he was a poor boy during WWII, and survived thanks to FDR, and he also had polio). He is a doctor (now retired), and really really hates Obama/Obamacare. I avoid political discussions with him, so I don’t understand the attraction he has to Libertarianism, except that it is very anti-Obama.