The rise of Vivek. The return of Masters. The college libertarians won’t go away. ( www.motherjones.com )

The 2024 election cycle looks like it will feature not one, but two late-30s contrarians who got their start rapping about libertarianism on elite college campuses. The first is Vivek Ramaswamy, the self-funder now enjoying a “breakout moment” in a presidential primary completely dominated by Donald Trump. The other is Blake Masters, who is reportedly planning another run for US Senate in Arizona after losing to Sen. Mark Kelly by five points in 2022.

Masters’ reasons for running again are not altogether obvious. His hard-right Senate campaign last year, which was bankrolled by his mentor and former boss Peter Thiel, defined how Republicans squandered the 2022 midterms by nominating candidates far out of step with voters. Masters called abortion “genocide,” repeatedly responded to news about gay people by saying “not everything has to be gay,” and published unsettling clips of himself shooting guns in the desert. The campaign deeply disturbed former close friends from his private day school and Stanford, who didn’t recognize the man they saw in the ominous videos. (Masters said he was inspired by the aesthetics of Terrence Malick, a director best known for a film about a sociopathic killing spree.)

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What Ramaswamy believes is more opaque than what Masters believes, but only slightly. The reason for that is Ramaswamy is a better politician and a better liar. “It was a dark day for democracy,” Ramaswamy wrote in a book last year. “The loser of the last election refused to concede the race, claimed the election was stolen, raised hundreds of millions of dollars from loyal supporters, and is considering running for executive office again. I’m referring, of course, to Donald Trump.” Now he corners his opponents for refusing to say they’d pardon Trump on their first day in office. The means justify the end, which is Ramaswamy gaining as much power as possible.