"Libertarian Girl" Supports Rand Paul

I have been inundated with emails by many pointing out that  the recent Daily Beast story on Rand Paul reports:

In addition to his usual retinue of staff members—Eleanor May, Doug Stafford—there was a new member of the team: a white-haired woman popularly known on the internet as Libertarian Girl.

Libertarian Girl personifies the tension between Paul’s electoral need to appeal to his father’s rabid supporters, but his politically-savvy inclination to keep them at arm’s length.

Libertarian Girl, Marianne Copenhaver, is a 27-year-old "political activist, graphic designer, digital strategist, and crazy bird lady," according to her Facebook page (which boasts close to 200,000 'likes') from Ohio.

"I started supporting Rand after I found out about Ron," she told me. "I did some research, and I found that Rand's views were very palatable and they gave me hope that even though Ron obviously is not going to be in Congress forever, there were other people like him…." 

How Copenhaver came to work for Paul is not completely clear. Copenhaver told me that Stafford, a senior Paul aide who previously worked for Ron Paul, contacted her about writing and blogging for the campaign. Stafford says at different points they both contacted one another: "Marianne contacted me via Facebook over a year ago and asked if she could help. A few months later we were putting together a group of volunteer bloggers and I asked for her help." She has been doing contract work, according to Stafford, for "about a month or so now." 

In a recent essay,  Copenhaver seems to have a problem with words actually having precise meaning. In defending Rand from a libertarian perspective against those who object to Rand's waffling on libertarian principles, she writes:

The cheapest trick of amateur thinkers is to purport to excommunicate others based on one’s own definition of a term.... If libertarianism were nothing but an app that you could download into your brain, we could all give up the struggle of thinking. But serious people recognize that ideas work in a different way...Many libertarians have made arguments for freedom that don’t depend on the NAP as the sole postulate of life...

As libertarianism becomes more and more popular there are going to be people who butcher the philosophy and act like cult members. There will also be people to guide them on the path to a better understanding. Libertarians need to decide whether they want to perpetuate a cult like purist mentality or be guides and advocates who help build a freer society.

Oh yeah, she is going to be perfect for Rand. Based on these comments alone, I think she should ask Stafford for a long-term contract and a raise.

-RW