Hot-Tub Libertarians

As the Republican Party abandons its commitment to small government, how politically impotent are libertarians? Let me count the ballots.

Specifically, let me count the ballots from 2004. Exit polls (along with, well, all polls) tend to ignore libertarians as a group, so one has to approach such questions from the side, as opposed to head on. But here's one measure of how libertarian-leaning voters voted in the last presidential election: While George W. Bush gained 10 points between 2000 and 2004 among voters who thought government should "do more," he stayed essentially even among voters who felt government should not do more or should "do less."

In other words, despite No Child Left Behind, campaign-finance regulation, steel tariffs, the Medicare prescription-drug bill and exploding government spending generally, libertarians stood by their man. (I should know. I did, too.)

That's no way for an organized voting bloc to behave. If no amount of sticking your finger in a constituency's eye will make them vote against you, you're going to poke through until you hit brain. But, of course, no one ever said that libertarians were organized -- or that, when it comes to politics, they have much in the way of brains.

It's a tough question, and one libertarians have spent far too little time effort researching, but there's a quick and dirty answer: somewhere between 9 percent and 20 percent of the electorate.

The 20 percent figure comes from Gallup, which labels as libertarian voters who say they oppose the use of government either to "promote traditional values" or to "do too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses." Gallup finds an equal number of populists (people who want more government intervention in both the economy and the culture). And it finds that 27 percent of Americans are conservative and 24 percent are liberal.

The 9 percent figure comes by way of a recent analysis done by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. Last month, Pew released an analysis, based on a survey of 2,000 people, which was aimed at finding the ideologues among the American voting public -- those voters who held consistent ideological views on a sampling of subjects, such as health care, gay marriage and Social Security reform.

Libertarians were the smallest group, as defined by Pew, followed by conservatives (15 percent), populists (16 percent) and liberals (18 percent). A full 42 percent of voters held no identifiable ideology (these are presumably the people who vote for whomever's tallest).

Perhaps the most interesting fact in the Pew survey, however, was that less than 6 in 10 libertarians voted for Bush in 2004. While few libertarians seem to have deserted the president between 2000 and 2004, they are split roughly evenly between the two parties. The Pew survey finds 50 percent of libertarians identifying as Republicans, 41 percent as Democrats.

Given that libertarians' traditional home has been in the conservative base of the Republican Party for about five decades, as part of a strained partnership with social conservatives, their almost 50-50 split between the two parties today is big news.

According to Pew's "political typology," libertarians used to be one of three groups that made up the Republican Party, along with social conservatives and economic conservatives. But, since 1994, they've been replaced by a group of voters Pew has called Populists, but most recently renamed Pro-Government Conservatives. In essence, it would seem, these Pro-Government Conservatives -- about 10 percent of the electorate, largely female and southern, and equally at ease with universal health care and banning controversial books from libraries -- are squeezing libertarians further and further toward the fringes of the GOP.

That, of course, gets to the question of whether a bunch of individualists can ever be organized. A man who should know a little about that, the Cato Institute's executive vice president, David Boaz, tells two stories. In one, a man wouldn't come to a rally for 1980 Libertarian Party presidential candidate Ed Clark because he had to look at his sister-in-law's car. In another, a man skipped a rally at the 1984 Democratic convention in San Francisco because he had a more pressing engagement ... in a hot tub.

"I think libertarians are looking at their sister-in-law's car, instead of going to political meetings," Boaz says. "And there are also libertarians who are in hot tubs in Sausalito." These may seem like small things, Boaz argues, but the cumulative effect is that people who don't care much for government are the hardest to convince to care about changing it.

The challenge, then -- for those who don't want to see the Republican Party succumb once and for all to big-government conservatism and who don't want to see it become overrun with populists lacking in respect for taxpayers' money and individuals' right to be left alone -- is either to organize existing libertarians more effectively to vote and contribute time and money as a bloc or to identify new constituencies with an overriding interest in remaking the time bomb we call the New Deal (everyone under 40 comes to mind).

So, libertarians: It's time to get out of that hot tub! Put down that wrench! And start thinking about how you're going to reclaim your rightful place in the conservative coalition.

If you average Connor and Souter with Roberts and Alito, does that make the decision making of Republican appointments 50-50? Roughly equal to flipping a coin?

Talking about repealing the 17th is easy. There is a way that you can personally lead such an effort, and it would be an effort likely to end in success. Please see post #45.

If Republicans are going to be the political party that you would like to see them become, it is going to take significant changes in the leadership of the party with the replacement of many incumbents. The leadership won't change substantively unless sufficient numbers of Congress change enough to have a large enough and conservative enough Republican delegation to elect more conservative leaders.

Surely you must realize that most people seeking careers in politics are little more than whores selling political favors in exchange for votes or campaign funding. Are you too blind to see that the Republicans are tending to occupy the ground formerly occupied by the Democrats who are moving even farther to the left? Instead of taking our country back, Republicans are taking it further into socialism, but just at a slower pace than Democrats. And in truth, if you look at Bush's and the Republicans budgets, federal spending is growing at an even greater rate under Republican control than it was when Republicans were in the minority. Arguably, a case can be made that Republicans are more effective at achieving your stated goals when they are in the minority than when they have power.

Open your eyes Jim. At best, Republicans are fighting a rear guard action while retreating into socialism and still growing government. Freedom in America is becoming nothing more than illusion. We used to have it. We still have the warm fuzzy memories of it. And like the frog slowly headed for a boil in the still cold water, we buy into the illusion and think we are OK. We aren't! And if you are too blind to see the difference and start taking action to the contrary, neither you nor FreeRepublic are likely to have any significant effect toward "reversing the trend of unconstitutional government expansion and is advocating a complete restoration of our constitutional republic". In a way, your blindness is actually tragic: "In our continuing fight for freedom, for America and our constitution and against totalitarianism, socialism, tyranny, terrorism, etc., Free Republic stands firmly on the side of right, i.e., the conservative side. Believing that the best defense is a strong offense, we (myself and those whom I'm trying to attract to FR) support the strategy of taking the fight to the enemy..." Why? You haven't recognized that the Republicans are slowly becoming the enemy.

It is not too late. And we can take our country back. In fact, we can take it back in far less time than almost anyone can imagine. It just takes some thought and leadership. There are still large numbers of very conservative Americans. Given the chance, they will vote for genuinely conservative leaders. Ronald Reagan's two landslide elections and the 1994 Congressional elections proved it. Jim, if you will lead the debate, FreeRepublic can become the catalyst that gets Rush and other conservative talk show hosts on the same page. All it takes is the courage to believe the truth. If you have lost your faith in the American people, and think you are doing yourself or them a favor by slowing the rate of descent into hell, then you are going to end up boiled just like the frog.

Just as grass-roots Americans need leadership, so does FreeRepublic. There once was a man named Jim Robinson who had a fire in his belly and he was willing to fight for freedom. The sacred fire of liberty is barely perceptible in the America of today. As dim as it is, it still stands between us and total darkness. Jim Robinson, can you still hear the ringing words of Ronald Reagan, "We have come to a time for choosing; we will preserve for our children this the last best hope for man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.....history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening." Was he speaking to you Jim Robinson, or has the fire in your belly gone out?

In 1976, Republicans remained loyal to an incumbent. They rejected Ronald Reagan and we paid a terrible price. At the time, I didn't have enough faith in Ronald Reagan. I did not believe he would have enough courage and determination to run again in 1980. President Reagan said this: "Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction, It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have known freedom and then lost it have never known it again. Knowing this, it is hard to explain those who even today would question the people's capacity for self-rule. Will they answer this: if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? Using the temporary authority granted by the people, an increasing number lately have sought to control the means of production, as if this could be done without eventually controlling those who produce. Always this is explained as necessary to the people's welfare. But, "The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principle upon which it was founded" [Montesquieu]. This is as true today as it was when it was written in 1748."

It would be a mistake to let allegiance to the Republican Party over rule your allegiance to freedom. You are being presented with a decision to make. You can lead FreeRepublic toward freedom or lead them deeper into the Republican fold. These really are two different paths. Even doing nothing would be a choice. In 1964, if Republicans were actually succeeding at your goals, would President Reagan have given up his Hollywood/TV career to enter a field that he described as being a lot like the world's oldest profession? And in spite of President Reagan leadership and the example he set, in spite of the Contract with American and the gains Republicans made as result, are the Republicans closer now to achieving your goals than they were when President Reagan picked up the torch that holds the sacred fire of liberty? Jim, ask yourself, which choice would President Reagan want you to make? Would he prefer defeating Democrats to recovering our lost freedom?

"Well, like I said, the very best thing we can possibly do for the long term is to make sure we continue replacing liberal activist judges with constitutionalists. Judges are forever."

Long term for the United States is about a decade if you believe the Gokhale-Smetters Report.

And as for Bush's appointments, if we wanted to delay the implications of Gokhale-Smetters, why did Bush push for Medicare Prescription Drugs and why did he appoint Bernanke? Federal Reserve Chairman are not forever, but they sure have an effect on the short term. I would proffer that the appointment of Helicopter Ben is a either a sign of desperation (panic) or insanity. And the Bernanke appointment sure as hell isn't the appointment of someone who is a passionate believer in the Constitution.

Try contrasting George Bush with Ronald Reagan. Anybody who believes the kind of leadership explemplified by Bush is taking us back toward the Constitution, needs to reconsider their thinking.

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