Jamie Frost Remmey — Libertarian for U.S. House, PA-01 — On Ballot Access, Defend the Guard & War
- Jeff Kellick
- Jul 30
- 2 min read
Updated: Aug 16
Interview Episode for Self-Evident: The Road to 1776 — Episode 7i
A Mile of Signatures by Hand — Just to Get on the Ballot
This is the Thursday interview closing Week 7 of Self-Evident: The Road to 1776 — the week we traced the Dutch Republic, the first modern commercial republic, which grew prosperous not by concentrating power but by refusing to. All week the argument was that liberty and prosperity travel together, and that power held far from the people tends to be power misused. This conversation puts a living face on it: a candidate standing in the middle of the machinery, who can tell you what it actually costs to try to build a piece of that refusal today.
Jamie Frost Remmey is the Libertarian nominee for the United States House in Pennsylvania’s First Congressional District, in Bucks and Montgomery counties, challenging five-term incumbent Republican Brian Fitzpatrick and Democrat Bob Harvie. She is not a career politician and does not pretend to be one — she is funding the race out of her own pocket and those of friends and family, working two jobs while she does it, and gathering by hand the more than 5,000 valid signatures Pennsylvania demands before it will print a third-party name on the ballot at all.
Two threads run through the conversation, and they are the same thread seen from two distances. The first is close to home: what it takes for a third-party candidate to reach a Pennsylvania ballot, and what that machinery reveals about who the system is built to serve. The second reaches back to the week’s history — the Dutch insight that decentralized power keeps people free — and forward to the war power: to Grotius and the free sea, to who may send Americans into combat, and to Defend the Guard, the state-level reform that would bar a governor from releasing his state’s National Guard into overseas combat unless Congress has done its one constitutional job and voted to declare war. The last time Congress did that was 1941.
This week’s standing question runs through all of it: did this leave Americans more free, or more governed?
⏱️ CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction: The Dutch Act of Abjuration
00:37 Episode Overview: Interview with Jamie Frost Remmey
03:32 Interview Begins: Challenging the Duopoly
05:44 The Influence of Dark Money in Politics
08:43 Building Support for Third Parties
13:18 The Unfair Hurdles of Ballot Access in PA
18:02 Decentralization and Reclaiming Congressional Power
21:20 The Defend the Guard Movement
26:49 Executive Overreach and the War Powers Act
28:16 Policy Differences with the Incumbent
29:34 Where to Find and Support the Campaign
30:51 Post-Interview Reflection: The Cost of Liberty
31:48 Defend the Guard as the Dutch Design Rediscovered
34:03 Conclusion and Preview of Next Week
📚 Companion article — Article 7, “The Dutch Experiment,” on the improvised republic and the free-sea principle behind this week: [article URL]
🎙️ Self-Evident: The Road to 1776 — Episode 7, Interview | Consequential Actions
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Consequential Actions
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Defend the Guard: https://DefendTheGuard.us
Rebecca Whiting Memorial Day Speech: https://x.com/LPofMN/status/2076428019334250795?s=20
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