Thomas Massie and the Death of Constitutional Democracy
Thomas Massie’s defeat is not just a story about one congressman losing a primary. It is a warning about what happens when principle collides with populism and organised power.
“If legislators always vote with the President, we have a king. If legislators always vote with the prevailing wind, we have mob rule. If legislators always vote with the Constitution, we have a Republic.”
- Representative Thomas Massie, concession speech, 19 May 2026
Democracy will not and cannot cause greater liberty in the long term. It will always degenerate into either some form of populist authoritarianism or an oligarchy, usually a plutocracy. The former is the likely direction of South Africa’s democracy, while the latter is the likely direction of America’s democracy, which has just seen Thomas Massie lose his Republican primary.
Massie’s loss dealt a severe blow to the libertarian wing of the Republican Party, which had already lost Justin Amash in 2021 for his principled support for the impeachment of Donald Trump. Both Massie and Amash lost after going against Trump and powerful special interests. In the Republican Party, in terms of elected representatives at the federal level, only Rand Paul remains, as Kentucky’s representative in the US Senate.
Rand Paul is also not safe. He has frequently incurred Trump’s wrath. The difference between him and the other two is that he has not yet directly threatened Trump himself, as Amash did through impeachment, and he has not yet been deemed a threat that can’t be ignored by the powerful special interests backing Trump, the Israeli lobby in the case of Thomas Massie. But it’s only a matter of time. Authoritarians like Trump cannot stand principled constitutionalists and liberty lovers.
Trumpism is essentially a right-wing populist usurpation of the Ron Paul, Rand Paul’s father, revolution. This was the mostly anti-war and pro-liberty movement that became prominent in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections. Trump seems to understand instinctively that libertarians, more than the left wing, he is happy to work with left-wingers like RFK Jr and Tulsi Gabbard, are the true threat to his power.
Despite some libertarians deluding themselves into thinking that voting for Trump would be better for liberty than voting for the Libertarian Party, notably the US Libertarian Party’s Mises Caucus, before the election, Trump himself has systematically undermined and purged libertarian-leaning elements of the GOP. Amash was one of the first examples. He had to leave the Republican Party in 2019 due to the aforementioned support for impeaching Trump, for trying to bribe a foreign power through US aid into giving him dirt on a political opponent. The second sign was Trump’s decision to choose JD Vance over the more libertarian-leaning Vivek Ramaswamy, despite Vivek essentially handing the Republican nomination to Trump by dropping out early and thus putting other candidates in a position where they would look bad if they didn’t drop out.
The only good thing that came out of that is that Vivek now looks likely to win the Ohio election for governor in November, after winning his primary with an 80%+ landslide, including winning all Ohio counties. Trump must be commended for endorsing him, even if it was only meant as a consolation prize for not choosing him as his running mate.
Massie has also been to South Africa, where he has spoken at the libertarian seminar, including the one I attended in 2024. In his speech, he recounted how Trump called him a “third-rate grandstander” because Massie forced lawmakers to travel to Washington during the Covid lockdown to vote for the CARES Act Covid stimulus bill, which added trillions to the US debt. Massie wanted a quorum to be present in the House and to have a recorded, individual roll-call vote. He did win on having a quorum present in the House, but failed to get the roll-call vote. His thinking was that such important legislation needed lawmakers to be present in the chamber and their votes to be recorded.
Lately, he has found himself fighting with Trump again due to the Epstein files. Massie worked with Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna to co-write the Epstein Transparency Act. Massie didn’t stop there. He also forced a vote on the then-bill through a discharge petition. The petition, which is apparently a procedure to bypass House leadership that rarely succeeds, succeeded with 218 votes. The legislation was then passed by 427 votes to 1 in the House and passed by unanimous consent in the Senate. This meant the Act was veto-proof and forced the Trump administration to release the so-called Epstein files, the same files that have led to the resignation of the UK’s former US Ambassador from the House of Lords, pressure on the UK Prime Minister, the arrest and loss of his royal title by the brother of the British King in former Prince Andrew, contributed to the resignation of the US Attorney General, and led to other resignations in government and business across the world.
Most importantly, the Act provided us a small window into how power works behind the scenes. It was all thanks to Thomas Massie for pushing for transparency, even when it was unpopular. As Thomas Massie has pointed out, because it is an Act rather than an executive action, it will bind future administrations too.
Yes, Thomas Massie is imperfect. He supports the Jones Act, a protectionist law that has led to a terminal decline in the US shipping industry and unacceptable costs for Americans who live on islands like the Hawaiian archipelago and Puerto Rico. But compared to every other Republican legislator, he is far ahead of everyone except possibly Rand Paul. I would personally choose Massie over Paul the younger.
Thomas Massie also doesn’t believe in foreign aid and foreign wars. He has consistently voted against all forms of foreign aid. The biggest recipient of foreign aid just happens to be Israel, so the Israeli lobby in America went after him. He also opposes the ongoing war against Iran that the Israeli government lobbied for. On the day of voting, Israeli newspaper Haaretz called Massie’s primary the most consequential primary for Israel, and the primary became the most expensive in US history, with the current count estimating that at least $33 million has been spent, when the typical primary usually sees about half a million dollars in spending.
Massie first won his seat in 2012 by 44.7%. He then went on to win three further primaries, ranging from 63% of the vote to 81%, between 2020 and 2024. This is only looking at his contested primaries because his seat is considered a safe Republican seat. All his races were always going to be contested when he ran afoul of Trump and the Israeli lobby.
This race saw some ridiculous accusations thrown at Massie. He was accused of disloyalty to his dead wife, according to known adulterer Donald Trump, because Massie married too early after his wife died. He was also accused of antisemitism, being a leftist, despite being the most principled constitutionalist liberty-lover in the US House of Representatives, sexual assault, etc. Despite this, Massie ran a principled campaign focused on American sovereignty and constitutionalism. His argument was that, if the constitutional position happens to be the Democratic position at that particular time, you vote with Democrats. Indeed, Massie tends to vote more with Democrats when Republicans are in the White House and more with Republicans when Democrats are in the White House.
The overwhelming message of Massie’s loss is that principle will never win in a popular contest when special interests are motivated to defeat the principled position. It was already proven in Justin Amash’s loss and Ron Paul’s loss before him, and in the struggle of the US Libertarian Party to make meaningful progress. The term “liberal democracy” is an oxymoron, unless the “liberal” means anything but classical liberalism. The mob and powerful lobbies will always collude to undermine your rights. South Africans will do well to learn this lesson.
Mpiyakhe Dhlamini is a libertarian, writer, programmer and an Associate of the Free Market Foundation.
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Excellent!