That’s what Brendan Nyhan is saying…:
Via Mike Munger, my department chair here at Duke and the Libertarian candidate for governor of North Carolina, there are rumors that Tucker Carlson may take a shot at the Libertarian presidential nomination.
I’m not sure if this is for real or not, but I’m not as surprised by the idea as you might think. Many people forget that Carlson was a conservative but non-dogmatic print journalist before he started doing shout TV. In particular, he wrote a Talk magazine story about George W. Bush in 1999 that got him in a lot of trouble with conservatives. Along the same lines, I had lunch with him once in DC when he was doing Crossfire and I remember thinking that his views were more heterodox than his TV work suggested (he might have even referred to himself as a libertarian). And he was also kind enough to blurb All the President’s Spin even though it wasn’t in his interest to do so.
In any case, I would love to see a debate matching Carlson against Bob Barr and Mike Gravel.
I believe it would be an interesting idea. It would bring a certain legitimacy to the Libertarian Party. Carlson’s star power from TV would possibly bring people to the party that would not normally want to be a part of it.
On the other hand, I seriously doubt that Tucker Carlson would want to waste his time campaigning for a position that he knows good and well, that he could not possibly win, this late in the Presidential race.
So, While it may sound like a excellent idea, I just very highly doubt that Tucker would be interested in such a thing.