Libertarians Say 'Brave' Ted Cruz Should Endorse Them, Not Trump

Libertarians seeking their party's presidential nomination say Sen. Ted Cruz should endorse them rather than Donald Trump, who rebranded the Texas Republican "Lyin' Ted" before forcing him out of the GOP primary with a crushing victory in Indiana on Tuesday.

Cruz hasn't said if he will endorse Trump, whose campaign trail attacks included retweeting an unflattering photo of the senator's wife and repeating alleg ations that Cruz's father was with Lee Harvey Oswald before President John F. Kennedy's assassination.

On Tuesday, Cruz called Trump a "pathological liar" and "utterly amoral."

The vicious GOP primary, the Libertarians hope, will push Cruz to endorse them and deliver his socially conservative, Constitution-toting base, which they view as rational for a variety of policy reasons as well.

"Ted Cruz has always been brave and stood up to the establishment of his own party, even when it came to shutting down the government, so I wouldn't put it past him," says Austin Petersen, one of three candidates seeking the Libertarian nomination at a Florida convention this month.

"With Donald Trump winning, I might be the only pro-life, pro-Constitution candidate on the ballot," Petersen says. "[Cruz has] always shown the courage to buck the leadership of his own party. It would be shocking, but I don't think it would be out of character for him."

New Mexico's former Republican Gov. Gary Johnson also is seeking the Libertarian nomination, which he won in 2012 before collecting more than 1 million general election votes. Johnson is doubtful Cruz would endorse him but says it would be welcome.

"That would be huge, that could be the quantum leap we need, the attention we need," says Johnson, who was supported by 11 percent of responsdents in a recent hypothetical match-up against Trump (at 34 percent) and Democrat Hillary Clinton (at 42 percent) from Monmouth University.

"There is an opportunity here," he says.

But Johnson says it may be more realistic that the senator would say nice things about the Libertarian candidate, a wink-and-nod to disillusioned supporters, than openly defy expectations of party leaders.

Unlike Cruz, Johnson takes a socially liberal stand on issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage, which he backed in the 2012 campaign while President Barack Obama and Clinton were still opposed.

Johnson says his appeal to Cruz or his supporters would be consistent support for smaller, less intrusive government. He says Trump's proposals to deport millions of immigrants living in the country illegally and to build a border wall are fisically irresponsible and authoritarian.

"I would be the smaller government guy," he says. "Although Donald Trump may say 'smaller government ,' the words coming out of his mouth suggest otherwise."

Petersen, meanwhile, says religious freedom and tax policy are planks of his platform that should appeal to Cruz, who himself has staked out broadly libertarian positions against government mass surveillance and military interventions abroad while expressing support for states' rights to legalize marijuana, though Trump has some similar positions, also breaking with GOP leaders.

"Trump believes in a progressive income tax, and that is absolutely opposed to the type of system Ted Cruz and I are championing," Petersen says, adding he believes Trump's support for temporarily banning Muslim immigration violates the spirit of the First Amendment. He says his campaign raised several thousand dollars on Tuesday night, an unusually large haul he attributes to Cruz exiting the GOP race.

Petersen, owner of the publication The Libertarian Republic, was a staffer at FreedomWorks when the advocacy group helped Cruz pull off an upset Senate primary win against the party establishment's choice in 2012. He raised money for libertarian Ron Paul's 2008 GOP primary campaign and helped train libertarian activists overseas working with the Atlas Foundation.

Before serving as governor of New Mexico from 1995 to 2003, Johnson was an entrepreneur. He worked construction jobs in his teens before founding Big J Enterprises, which he built into a 1,000-employee construction firm that he sold in 1999. He took a job as president of Nevada-based startup Cannabis Sativa Inc., which sells marijuana-infused lozenges, in 2014 before resigning in January.

The third candidate in the Libertarian race, antivirus software pioneer John McAfee, could not be reached for comment. He told U.S. News earlier this year that Americans should be "truly ashamed" for allowing Trump's name-calling rise to the top of the Republican primary. "If I can't win in a year when we have dissatisfaction and children on stage, well then the Libertarians should just give up," he said.

Steven Nelson is a reporter at U.S. News & World Report. You can follow him on Twitter or reach him at snelson@usnews.com.