idealist" in order to favor the status quo and stem progressivism. Carlson campaigned for Republicans and Republican-affiliated causes during his time as a Democrat. Parties and candidates In public correspondence in Slate with Texas Monthlys Evan Smith on November 29, 1999, Carlson agreed with Smith's low opinion of Donald Trump, who was then running for president with the Reform Party. Carlson wrote that Trump was "the single most repulsive person on the planet" and that the Reform Party consisted of "a bunch of wackos". Separately, he criticized the party's eventual nominee, Pat Buchanan. In his 2018 book, Ship of Fools, Carlson wrote that he had adopted some of Buchanan's views. Carlson voted for George W. Bush in the 2000 election. Carlson told Salon in 2003 that some Washington conservatives suspected he was "secretly liberal" because he liked John McCain. Carlson said in an interview, "by my criteria, Bush isn't much of a conservative". Carlson did not vote in the 2004 election, citing his souring on the Iraq War, his disillusionment with the once small-government Republican Party, and his disappointment with President Bush and like-minded conservatives. Carlson was reportedly floated as a potential candidate for the Libertarian nomination in the 2008 presidential election. He was included in polling at the 2008 Libertarian National Convention, with unconfirmed speculation arising that he was personally funding the effort. Carlson spoke at Ron Paul's independent Rally for the Republic convention, opposite the official 2008 Republican National Convention, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which served as a "message of revolt to the Republican Party" and a general celebration of Paul's policy proposals. He expressed his disappointment with the Republican nominee for the 2012 election, Mitt Romney, and the healthcare reform he signed in 2006 as governor of Massachusetts, which contained an individual mandate, saying, "out of 315 million Americans, the Republican Party managed to find the one guy who couldn't run on Obamacare". Writing for Politico in January 2016, Carlson expressed his support for Donald Trump's candidacy and his positions, such as his proposed "Muslim ban", and criticized the other Republican candidates for not similarly making immigration a core issue. During the Trump presidency, Carlson was described in Politico as "perhaps the highest-profile proponent of 'Trumpism'a blend of anti-immigrant nationalism, economic populism and America First isolationism". Carlson's commentaries did not uniformly praise Trump, but he had frequent scorn for Trump's critics; some commentators called Carlson an exemplar of