Matt Welch | |
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 Welch in July 2016 | |
| Born | Matthew Lee Welch July 31, 1968 Bellflower, California, U.S. [1] |
| Occupation(s) | Journalist, political commentator |
| Political party | Independent |
| Spouse | Emmanuelle Richard |
| Children | 2 |
Matthew Lee Welch (born July 31, 1968) is an American blogger, journalist, author, and libertarian political pundit. [2] [3]
Welch was born on July 31, 1968, in Bellflower, California. He was raised in Long Beach, California. [1] [ dead link ] He attended UC Santa Barbara as part of the class of 1990, but did not complete a degree. Through his mother, author Mary Bobbitt Townsend, he is the great-great-grandson of Rear Admiral Hugo Osterhaus. [4] [5]
In the late 1990s, Welch wrote for Tabloid.Net, along with Tim Blair and Ken Layne. [6] In the early 1990s, he was one of the founders of the Prague-based newspaper Prognosis. [7] He researched the effects of UN sanctions against Iraq, often criticizing the reporting of others. [8] [9] [10] Commentator Mike Rosen praised his research as "yeoman's work." [11]
In 2007, he wrote a portrayal of 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain from a libertarian perspective. In McCain: The Myth of a Maverick, [12] Welch argued that a McCain presidency would advance a statist agenda. [13] [14] [15] [16] Through a FOIA request, Welch obtained a copy of McCain's National War College thesis which, based on his experience as a POW, argued for the teaching of US foreign policy to military recruits. [17]
From 2008 to 2016, he was editor-in-chief at the monthly libertarian journal, Reason . [18] He now serves as editor-at-large. [19] From 2006 to 2007, he was an editorial page editor for the Los Angeles Times . [19] Welch earned the award for "Best Entertainment Review/Criticism/Column" in the 53rd Annual Southern California Journalism Awards, hosted by the Los Angeles Press Club, for his work, "Bailing Out Big Brother: Media criticism goes from rebelling against media oligarchs to handing them a lifeline." [20]
In 2011, Matt Welch co-wrote The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What's Wrong with America with Reason.tv editor-in-chief Nick Gillespie. [21] He has become a frequent commentator on cable news shows, and was co-host of the Fox Business Network current events and political discussion show, The Independents .
Matt Welch is co-host of The Fifth Column podcast along with Kmele Foster and Michael Moynihan.
Welch lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and two daughters. [19]
John Sidney McCain III was an American politician and United States Navy officer who served as a U.S. senator from Arizona from 1987 until his death in 2018. He previously served two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives and was the Republican Party's nominee in the 2008 U.S. presidential election.
William Kristol is an American neoconservative writer. A frequent commentator on several networks including CNN, he was the founder and editor-at-large of the political magazine The Weekly Standard. Kristol is now editor-at-large of the center-right publication The Bulwark and has been the host of Conversations with Bill Kristol, an interview web program, since 2014.
Robert Laurence Barr Jr. is an American attorney and politician who became president of the National Rifle Association in May 2024. He previously served as a federal prosecutor and as a U.S. Representative. He represented Georgia's 7th congressional district as a Republican from 1995 to 2003. Barr attained national prominence as one of the leaders of the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. During his time in the House of Representatives, he authored the Defense of Marriage Act, which was later overturned by the Supreme Court in 2013 and repealed by the 117th Congress.
John Frank Stossel is an American libertarian television presenter, author, consumer journalist, political activist, and pundit. He is known for his career as a host on ABC News, Fox Business Network, and Reason TV.
Reason is an American libertarian monthly magazine published by the Reason Foundation, with the tagline "Free Minds and Free Markets". The magazine aims to produce independent journalism that is "outside of the left/right echo chamber." The magazine has a circulation of around 50,000.
The 2008 United States presidential election was the 56th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 4, 2008. The Democratic ticket of Barack Obama, the junior senator from Illinois, and Joe Biden, the senior senator from Delaware, defeated the Republican ticket of John McCain, the senior senator from Arizona, and Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska. Obama became the first African American to be elected to the presidency. This was the first election since 1952 in which neither the incumbent president nor vice president was on the ballot, as well as the first election since 1928 in which neither ran for the nomination.
John Hospers was an American philosopher and political activist. Hospers was interested in Objectivism, and was once a friend of the philosopher Ayn Rand, though she later broke with him. In 1972, Hospers became the first presidential candidate of the Libertarian Party, and was the only minor party candidate to receive an electoral vote in that year's U.S. presidential election.
Thomas Gordon Palmer is an American libertarian author and theorist, a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and Vice President for International Programs at the Atlas Network.
Lisa Kennedy Montgomery, referred to mononymously as Kennedy, is an American libertarian political commentator, radio personality, author, and former MTV VJ. She is a commentator on Fox News Channel, a primary guest host of Fox's Outnumbered and The Five, host of the podcast Kennedy Saves The World on Fox News Radio and a columnist for The Daily Mail. Kennedy was the host of MTV's now-defunct daily late-night alternative-rock program Alternative Nation throughout much of the 1990s. She hosted Kennedy on the Fox Business Network from 2015 to 2023.
Nicholas John Gillespie is an American libertarian journalist who was editor-in-chief of Reason magazine from 2000 to 2008 and editor-in-chief of Reason.com and Reason TV from 2008 to 2017. Gillespie originally joined Reason's staff in 1993 as an assistant editor and ascended to the top slot in 2000. He is currently an editor-at-large at Reason. Gillespie has edited one anthology, Choice: The Best of Reason.
The following is a timeline of major events leading up to and immediately following the United States presidential election of 2008. The election was the 56th quadrennial United States presidential election. It was held on November 4, 2008, but its significant events and background date back to about 2002. The Democratic Party nominee, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, defeated the Republican Party's nominee, Senator John McCain of Arizona.
The 2008 presidential campaign of Mike Gravel, former Speaker of the Alaska House of Representatives and United States Senator from Alaska, began on April 17, 2006, when he declared his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in the 2008 election, in a speech to the National Press Club.
The first political debate before the 2008 Republican primaries was held on May 3, 2007, at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California. Other debates have taken place in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Florida. They were generally broadcast by television networks.
In American politics, a libertarian Democrat is a member of the Democratic Party with political views that are relatively libertarian compared to the views of the national party.
John McCain ran for U.S. president in the 2000 presidential election, but failed to gain the Republican Party nomination, losing to George W. Bush in a campaign that included a bitter battle during the South Carolina primary. He resumed his role representing Arizona in the U.S. Senate in 2001, and Bush won the election. Bush was President of the United States from 2001 to 2009. McCain won re-election to the Senate in 2004, 2010 and 2016.
Senator John McCain's personal character has dominated the image and perception of him. His family's military heritage, his rebellious nature as a youth, his endurance over his treatment as a prisoner of war, his resulting physical limitations, his political persona, his well-known temper, his admitted propensity for controversial or ill-advised remarks, and his devotion to maintaining his large blended family have all defined his place in the American political world more than any ideological or partisan framing.
The 2008 presidential campaign of Bob Barr, former Congressman of Georgia began on May 12, 2008. He announced his candidacy for the Libertarian Party's president after months of grassroots draft efforts. Barr was criticized by Libertarians who opposed his efforts in Congress, which included sponsorship of the Defense of Marriage Act and votes in favor of the USA PATRIOT Act and authorization of the War in Iraq, but he was supported by others who accepted his regret for those positions. Barr won the party's nomination after six rounds of balloting at the 2008 Libertarian Party National Convention. Former contender Wayne Allyn Root was named as his running mate. Reason magazine senior editor Radley Balko called Barr "the first serious candidate the LP has run since I've been eligible to vote."
The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What's Wrong with America is a 2011 non-fiction book by American political writers Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie. Welch is the former editor-in-chief of Reason, a position Gillespie also held from 2000 to 2008. The authors discuss the nature and influence of libertarianism in the United States. It is published by PublicAffairs, an imprint of the Perseus Books Group.
The 2020 Libertarian Party presidential primaries and caucuses were a series of electoral contests to indicate non-binding preferences for the Libertarian Party's presidential candidate in the 2020 United States presidential election. These differed from the Republican or Democratic presidential primaries and caucuses in that they do not appoint delegates to represent a candidate at the party's convention to select the party's presidential nominee.
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