Timothy Donner, a candidate for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate from Virginia, traces his libertarian pedigree to the 1950s – before he was born.
Donner, founder of Horizons Television, Inc., a media production company, and of One Generation Away, a free-market educational and public policy organization, is one of several candidates seeking the seat being vacated by U.S. Senator Jim Webb (D-Va.). He spoke to the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner over lunch at the Tobacco Company in Richmond on July 12, precisely eleven months before the 2012 primary election.
Deep roots
“My libertarian roots go pretty deep,” Donner said, “back to when my father was heavily involved in the founding of National Review magazine.”
Joseph Donner, he explained, was “a good friend of William F. Buckley and I grew up around William F. Buckley and his family. Buckley often called himself a libertarian, even though he’s known more as a conservative.” (The title of one of Buckley’s books is Happy Days Were Here Again: Reflections of a Libertarian Journalist.)
“As the years go by,” Donner continued, “I’ve become more and more libertarian.”
He noted that he had “always been libertarian in an economic sense. My views on the economy and the proper role of government are completely in keeping with libertarians.”
More recently, he said, his foreign policy views “are increasingly libertarian, as I see American adventurism expanding now into Libya.”
Donner said that he sees "pointlessness and recklessness" in the U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
‘Bulwarks of liberty’
He said the “bulwarks of liberty” – including limited government and free markets -- “are really the foundation of my campaign. As I’ve traveled the state, I’ve drawn a lot of libertarian support because I think that people can see that my views are largely libertarian.”
Donner drew a contrast between himself and his principal primary opponent, former Senator George Allen, who has asserted a “libertarian streak” of his own.
“I think it’s a little bit of a stretch to claim that you’re a libertarian,” Donner explained, referring to Allen, “when you voted for large expansions of federal power in education and in health care, as he did when he was in the Senate.”
Allen, he said, is “either libertarian and is misinterpreting what that really means.”
Putting it another way, Donner said that Allen “either believed in those programs (No Child Left Behind and Medicare Part D, for example), or he didn’t believe in them but he voted for them anyway. I don’t know which would be a bigger problem.”
Donner criticized Allen’s failure to take a position on the budget proposal of Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee.
‘Tell us where you stand’
“Unfortunately, Mr. Allen has refused consistently to take a position on the Ryan budget and the Medicare reform plan," Donner said. "Say yes [or] say no, but tell us where you stand on it because it’s the most important piece of legislation we’ve looked at so far this year.”
If Allen has “a ‘libertarian streak,’” he said, “I think only he can answer fully how libertarian he really is. “
Returning to the themes that are the basis of his own campaign, Donner noted his support of the proposed “cap and balance” constitutional amendment, which “would cap federal spending by constitutional mandate at 18 percent and balance the budget.”
That, he asserted, “is a purely libertarian idea in trying to reduce the size and scope of government.”
In part two of this interview, Tim Donner explains his position on the pending congressional vote on raising the debt ceiling and weighs the pros and cons of the Flat Tax and the Fair Tax as proposals to reform the U.S. tax system.
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