libertarians

We've seen a lot of social conservatives upset over today's intemperate attack by Kathleen Parker (Note: she was unnecessarily contemptuous, but her point that "the Republican Party -- and conservatism with it -- eventually will die out unless religion is returned to the privacy of one's heart where it belongs" is worth serious consideration).

Well, I am a libertarian, so let's talk about the Kathleen Parker of the social conservative crowd: Mike Huckabee.

This week, Huckabee called libertarians the "real threat" to the Republican Party...

In a chapter titled "Faux-Cons: Worse than Liberalism," Huckabee identifies what he calls the "real threat" to the Republican Party: "libertarianism masked as conservatism." ... "I don't take issue with what they believe, but the smugness with which they believe it," writes Huckabee, who raised some taxes as governor and cut deals with his state's Democratic legislature. "Faux-Cons aren't interested in spirited or thoughtful debate, because such an endeavor requires accountability for the logical conclusion of their argument." 

We've come quite some way since 1975, when Reagan said "I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism."  

Oh, and it happens that Huckabee does, in fact, take issue with what we believe. In May of 2008, Huckabee called blamed election losses on Republicans being too "libertarian" (this is obviously some strange usage of the word "libertarian" that I was previously unaware of), accused us of being un-American (my response to that is unprintable, but I would be glad to say it to his face if he wanted to repeat his comment to my face) and then proceeded to make the standard, cartoonish Democratic argument against libertarianism.

The greatest threat to classic Republicanism is not liberalism; it's this new brand of libertarianism, which is social liberalism and economic conservatism, but it's a heartless, callous, soulless type of economic conservatism because it says "look, we want to cut taxes and eliminate government. If it means that elderly people don't get their Medicare drugs, so be it. If it means little kids go without education and healthcare, so be it." Well, that might be a quote pure economic conservative message, but it's not an American message. ...

If you have a breakdown in the social structure of a community, it's going to result in a more costly government ... police on the streets, prison beds, court costs, alcohol abuse centers, domestic violence shelters, all are very expensive. What's the answer to that? Cut them out? Well, the libertarians say "yes, we shouldn't be funding that stuff."

Excepting the anarcho-capitalists (who basically aren't a part of the electoral equation, anyway), I don't know a single libertarian who says we shouldn't fund police, prisons or courts.  Most libertarians who are aligned with the Right or the Republican Party are less concerned about the few billion that Huckabee describes here than they are about the few trillion other dollars the government is spending, or the uncountable additional costs of unnecessary regulation and legislation. (This is a perfect illustration of my problem #3 with Mike Huckabee, noted below)

So, let me boil down my problems with Mike Huckabee.

• Huckabee is a Rawlsian liberal + social conservative: Mike Huckabee describes his political philosophy as (a) the Golden Rule ("Do unto others as you would have them do unto to you", and (b) a passage from the Bible ("Inasmuch as you have done to the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me").   This is not "conservatism"; it is basic Rawlsian liberalism.
• Huckabee makes little distinction between religion and politics: It's not that he's religious.  It's that Mike Huckabee appears to be incapable of drawing a meaningful distinction between religion and politics.  For instance, in 1997, Governor Huckabee held up a disaster relief bill for weeks because he objected to its description of floods and tornados as "an act of God".   He explained his position on another bill by saying "I drink a different kind of Jesus juice."  He has asserted a Christian duty to support other policies.  The Right desperately needs to remember that where the government intrudes, church recedes.
• Huckabee accepts the Democratic framing: Mike Huckabee seems to have far more complaints with Republicans than with Democrats.  Worse, he embraces liberal or Democratic caricatures to attack Republicans.  Whether it is his attacks on libertarians, business or the Club for Growth, Huckabee almost invariably misrepresents their views, portraying them in the same cartoon terms that Democrats like to use (see the examples quoted earlier in this post).

This is easily as contemptuous, as offensive as anything Kathleen Parker has written about social conservatives.  So, yeah, a columnist express disdain for social conservatives.  Cry me a river.  We libertarians had a social conservative Governor and Presidential candidate call us the "real threat" and "smug", and brazenly misrepresent our views before calling our message un-American.

Social conservatives have to realize that they need the fiscally conservative, socially moderate/tolerant voters if they want to be a part of a winning coalition.  The limited government message won revolutionary victories for Republicans in 1980 and 1994; it is the only viable organizing principle for the current Republican coalition. 

Huckabee may believe libertarians are the "real threat", but his God, Guns and Butter agenda would destroy the Right far more effectively than the libertarian cartoons that exist in Huckabee's head.

I have spent the last week recovering from the disappointment of election day. I have spent a lot of time talking to the mid-level operatives from the McCain campaign. (the top level are on TV playing the recriminations games, in undisclosed locations, or drinking their brains out in Vegas)  There are things that we can learn from this election.

The first is that John McCain won the primary because of an often neglected part of the coalition: military voters. Redstate's Erick Erickson said the point well on the night of the Florida primary:

Tonight was not a failure of conservatism, but a triumph of military voters who have made their home in the Republican Party because we are the party of a strong national defense.

In both South Carolina and Florida, they won it for McCain. In the grand coalition of the GOP, we've talked about social conservatives and fiscal conservatives. We've all ignored the military voters, except John McCain. And he won them big. His message resonated.

This is not a sufficient grassroots for the GOP in a national race, but it was a powerful one in the primary. We as a party should feel and water this part of the coalition better than we have done in the past. We will likely get a generation of candidates who served in Iraq and/or Afghanistan who will be powered by the volunteer work of volunteers who supported McCain. In addition, I wouldn't be surprised if this developed into a meaningful faction in GOP politics in the next couple of years.

Second, the GOP is good at managing the mechanics of GOTV. However, we are not very good at managing and empowering our grassroots. The Democrats are. Open Left's Mike Lux, now on the Obama transition team, said:

I am grateful that field organizing and working with grassroots volunteers is actually in fashion again, and in so much bigger a way than it has ever been in my lifetime.

At a time that technological and volunteer energy was at an all-time high, even on the GOP side, the RNC deployed a mythically small number of field staff, opened a mythically small number of campaign offices, and generally deprioritized grassroots. We simply didn't tap into that energy effectively. Often we failed because we were inept. Often, these were the product of intentional decisions by state parties (see below) who were afraid of new people (see above). More broadly, a whole number of volunteer engagement plans failed to materialize. I still have drafts of some of them.

Third, many of our state parties are completely dysfunctional. COMPLETELY. There have been some horror stories out of state parties that should have been able to pull their own weight but simply weren't. I won't name names yet, but it is not good. There is indeed a correlation between the states that have lost elections and the state of their parties. There are two solutions to this. Either someone needs to take them over from below or, much less preferably, they need to be fixed top-down from DC with new staff, bypassing and eventually surpassing the state parties.

Fourth, history will probably show that the mistake of squashing of the libertarian grassroots out west in the form of the Ron Paul campaign could resonate for years. Fewer activists, less money, etc. Many people will try to blame McCain and/or his campaign, but I do not believe that a single state party stood up for a significant part of their grassroots. Often, the parties were so weak that they ended up being complicit in tossing out Paul-supporting libertarians because they were afraid of new people coming in and taking over. These same parties were already in desperate places because of their inability to respond to the growing strength of latino voting blocs with outreach to bring them over. These are not the responses of healthy parties.

NOTE:  Cross Posted At Political Capital

Ah, moderates.  I've been hearing that term thrown around a lot lately, but unfortunately I haven't seen a great deal of exploration of the concept - instead it seems like the "go to" word when describing a faction of the party which is not of the socially conservative ilk. 

It is unfortunate that this article is necessary, but alas in many recent readings (such as here) I have come across descriptions of the friction within the Republican Party, and what has struck me has been the remarkable lack of understanding of basic political philosophy in not only the media, but in the right as well, including honestly grasping what a moderate is, and who exactly is about to "go to war" inside the right.

The upcoming “war for the soul of the GOP” as its being called lately is being described almost universally as “Moderates vs. social conservatives”.

::sigh::

First of all, lets get something straight - there are a lot more than just two factions within the Republican Party, and it is certainly a hell of a lot more in-depth than “moderates vs. conservatives”. Such descriptions hearken to the notion that politics is bi-polar, which is born of a two party system I suppose. You are apparently either left or right, or somewhere in the middle.

Sorry folks, but there is no "right" and "left" and "center".  Those concepts are artificial creations.  We keep hearing, "does the republican party need to go further right?" - but what are they asking?  Should the party go more right economically, socially or both?  If you go left on one and right on another, does that make you a "moderate"?  (no it doesn't)

Such descriptions, as I’ve noted before, are completely divorced from reality or critical thought. There are at lest four main “groups” of political thought across the landscape of political philosophy, popularized by the libertarian party’s two dimensional model of political thought. For the sake of reference, I’ll be referring to them as such:

• Authoritarians - Economic statism, Social statism
• Libertarians - Economic liberalism, Social liberalism
• Progressives - Economic statism, Social liberalism
• Conservatives - Economic liberalism, Social statism

This isn’t just a theory, this is more or less the general makeup of everyone’s political brain. Yes, there are variations on all of these things - I’ve met libertarians for example that range from isolationists to broad internationalists on foreign policy - but lets not use those fractures distract from the fact that most people fall in these general categories. We can deal with the dozen or so verifiable “strains” of Republicanism at another time, but for now, lets deal with the three main factions that we see competing - conservatives, libertarians, and true moderates. I say true moderates for a reason that I will outline below.

When somebody says the war within the Republican Party is “moderates vs. conservatives” - what in the living hell are they talking about?

The only thing they can be talking about is social policy and the culture wars.

Why? Because primarily the grassroots of the Republican Party is made up of a collection of conservatives and libertarians, both of whom agree on economic liberalism. Yes, I know the leaders of the party have acted like authoritarians - who cares? We know they don’t represent the actual grassroots of the party, so lets just set that aside and agree that nearly everyone in this country who would be predisposed to vote for a Republican would be either a libertarian or a conservative. But then again, there are the “moderates”.

So what is a moderate? A true moderate is somebody who can’t make up their damned mind and just blows with the wind on any and all issues. These are the real cancer within the party - the folks who conspire with Democrats to increase spending, expand entitlements, raise taxes, support earmarks, and the entire litany of state loving activities of the left. They do so because they see compromise on those government issues as “the center” and don’t want to be extreme. They do the same thing with social policy as well for the exactly same reason.

These are the people that need to be excommunicated from the party. These state loving, compromising, wishy washy, sail where the wind blows you lawmakers are the ones who don’t belong with us, and aren’t helping us anyway.

But it isn’t where the war within the party is going to be fought. True moderates as I just described are widely hated by everyone within our party - libertarians hate them because they compromise all freedom oriented principles, both economic and social, as they run to the politically safe road. Conservatives hate them because they tax and spend like Democrats, and they are much more liberal on social issues. I think we’re all on board with not liking these people.

But the coming war isn’t with this definition of moderates, which is the essence of my problem with the description I keep seeing in the media about the Republican schism.

No, the real war is between the culture warriors and the libertarians, about what role, and how much of a role, social issues will play in the Republican Party’s new strategy. Since both libertarians and conservatives are agreed on economic liberalism, this is the only place they can fight - but since the media needs to label something they don’t understand, they do the intellectually lazy thing and say it is “moderates” vs. “conservatives”.

I’m sorry, but moderates aren’t going to war with anyone. They’re out of the equasion, and to even bring up that label when discussing the future of the party is a dis-service to the conversation. If for no other reason that it irritates the living hell out of libertarians to be labeled as moderates, because they are moderate about nothing.

In any event, social issues is where the friction really is within the party - but the continual, inaccurate description of the conflict that is coming as “moderates vs. conservatives” feeds into the insanity that Soren Dayton talked about the other day - the idea being propagated by Rush Limbaugh and others that the problem with the party is that “true conservatives” have been betrayed, and that “moderates” have corrupted our core principles.

This gets us into people within the party labeling other people RINOs, when some of those “RINOs” are anti-government crusaders that would just as soon eliminate 10 executive departments, cut taxes by 20% across the board, and institute market reforms on every entitlement we have, but simply have a disagreement about the role of social warfare within our politics.

This is an ideological contest between people who want to almost exclusively fight the Republican political war on the culture battlefield vs. people who want to downplay the culture wars, and focus on what unifies the two camps, economic liberalism and good government reform.

Count me squarely with the libertarians in this fight - and not just because I am one. I, nor anyone in this camp is a “moderate” about anything - indeed I would argue it is likely I am more hawkish on economic liberalism and government reform than 95% of the Republican Party.

We simply see that stressing a message of economic freedom, low taxes, spending restraint, balanced budgets, government reform and a strong national defense are much more effective in uniting people across multiple regions than the culture wars are. Hell, I’m a religious person (Catholic), militantly pro-life, and I’m not exactly the biggest fan of the homosexual lobby, but that doesn’t mean I want that to be my sales pitch to the American people.

Many social conservatives that I know are in this line of thinking as well, because they recognize that no matter how “right” the Republican social agenda is, it remains divisive and will shrink the base of support of the party if it is the focus and lead argument for the party. Such fights may be appropriate to make - but by defining your movement by them, you give the impression that you aren’t really interested in serious governing, you simply want to use the government as a tool of social control.

For better or worse, my friends, people want to elect people they believe will be good stewards of government. They want it to be as efficient and minimalistic as it can be, they don’t want it to waste resources or profit on its existence, they want common sense, good solutions, they want their money protected, and they want to feel safe living in this country. They don’t like power being more important than protecting the people, and they want to trust.

That appeals to our common agreements between libertarians and conservatives. Moderates do in fact have a place, and I would not dream of throwing them out with the bathwater (no political party in a two party system competing with such an unbreakable wall in entertainment and education as the Democrats have, could ever hope to be viable without at least a few moderates) - but the real division in the party has nothing to do with moderates.

Ronald Reagan built an electoral model on unifying the splintered, broken and seemingly defeated Republican Party, and he didn’t do it by campaigning on a gay-marriage ban in the constitution. He did it by asking us to believe in ourselves, take individual responsibility, fight the growth and power of the Federal Government, and reform our most basic institutions so they serve the people.

Unifying narratives work.  If you think that somehow not fighting the social wars as a central theme of campaigning will somehow mean we cede those issues, or "give up" on them, you are a political novice.  Messages to voters that unify and inspire are what work - things that inherently divide us (like culture) do not work.  This is why Barack Obama has thrived on quite literally nothing.  He got people to buy into a message - and for better or worse, he portrayed it as a message of pragmatic unity. 

Well, the right has its own unifying message of common sense and pragmatism, and its about time we stopped sniping each other over social and cultural issues, and set out to push forward with a unifying message - such as what was done during the Reagan Revolution and the 1994 overthrow of Congress.  Those movements were about common sense, good government ideas, and a positive inspiring vision of America.

We've lacked "that vision thing" for quite some time now, and become little more than economic statists increasingly fighting one battle - culture.  Lets hit the reset buttom and understand not only what our common causes are, but what any random generic American - yes independents and democrats - can see about our agenda that they like.  Small government, reform, efficiency, and intelligence.

That is a message we can all come together on (hell, even the moderates can probably hop on board that train), and if the Republican Party had any sense left in it, this would be the focus of our party as we pick up the pieces from 2008. But more than that, we can’t just sell ourselves that way, we must behave that way once we regain power.

I for one am hoping that this is the consensus the party arrives at after the election. But for the love of all that is holy, lets stop speaking about ourselves as though there are “true conservatives” and “moderates”, because politics is not bi-polar, and the people being labeled as moderates are not moderate by any definition of the word.

Hot Air's Ed Morrissey points out a new Rassmussen poll that suggests libertarians are a swing vote...and they're swinging to Obama.

Libertarian voters make up 4% of the nation’s likely voters and they favor Barack Obama over John McCain by a 53% to 38% margin. Three percent (3%) would vote for some other candidate and 5% are not sure. These results, from an analysis of 15,000 Likely Voter interviews conducted by Rasmussen Reports, challenges the conventional wisdom which assumes that strong support for a Libertarian candidate would hurt John McCain.

Contrast that with a Pew study in 2004, which showed libertarians "favored George W. Bush over John Kerry, 59 to 41 percent."   Note, also, that other polls show more libertarian representation in the general public: "9 to 13 percent libertarians in the Gallup surveys, 14 percent in the Pew Research Center Typology Survey, and 13 percent in the American National Election Studies..."  This is a very sizable swing vote.

Reasonable arguments can be made for libertarians to vote for Barack Obama, John McCain or Bob Barr.  So far, though, the only argument that stands out has been Robert Samuelson's...

So, vote for McBama. Though their differences on Iraq are clear, neither has forthrightly addressed some of America's obvious domestic problems—costly government retirement programs, immigration, our energy appetite. For me, McCain does have one provisional and accidental advantage. By most appraisals, the Republicans will get slaughtered in the congressional elections, and I have a visceral dislike of one-party government. It didn't work well under Bill Clinton or George W. Bush.

Divided government doesn't ensure good government, but it may limit bad government by checking the worst instincts of both parties.

Milton Friedman has also touted gridlock as the best way to restrain government.  In fact, even Howard Dean has made the pro-gridlock argument, saying in 2005 that "Do we want a Democratic Party that's in charge of everything? Well, you know, I suppose it's my job to say yes. But the truth is, as an American, it's better when parties share power."  

I understand the desire of many libertarians to punish the Republican Party, though I wonder if they are turning from the current battle to fight the last one.  I also understand the desire of many libertarians to explore a coalition with the Democratic Party, though I suspect that interest will fade after a few years of practical experience with Democratic power.   

There is, however, some undeniable libertarian value in gridlock.   Voting for Obama suggests a great deal of faith in one-party rule.  I'm not sure why that would work out better with Democrats that it did with Republicans.

[Promoted - Rick Sincere, a smart political observer, who blogs at Rick Sincere News and Thoughts, offers a good overview and analysis of the VA-8 Republican Primary race.  This is a good contrast between the Huckabee wing of the Republican Party (Ellmore) and the Goldwater wing of th Republican Party (Singh).  You can put me in the Amit Singh camp - Jon Henke]

An otherwise low-key congressional nomination contest in Virginia’s Eighth District took an intriguing turn three days before the Republican primary, when the Washington Post reported that one of the candidates had, in an effort to discredit his opponent, made up quotations from that newspaper in a campaign flier.

(promoted by Soren. I think that this is tremendously important and that there is more for our party to gain by figuring out how to embrace Ron Paul supporters, although I confess to not knowing what that will really mean. Again, looking for thoughts.)

We all know the kind of success Ron Paul had during the presidential primaries: he organized a legion of followers with unparalleled levels of commitment and passion, not to mention outfundraising nearly every other Republican candidate.  By the same token, he never translated his organization into electoral victory.  But it's become apparent to me recently that the Ron Paul revolution is alive and well, and the implications could be far-reaching for the GOP. 

Last weekend, at the Virginia state GOP convention, unknown delegate Bob Marshall came within just a few votes of defeating former Governor Jim Gilmore for the nomination to run for U.S. Senate.  While some of Marshall's success stemmed from Gilmore's less-than-pure abortion stance, and far better organization on Marshall's part, Marshall also capitalized on the under-the-radar efforts of the Paul campaign to take over state, district and county parties.  As a voting delegate to the convention, I received mailers from Marshall attacking Gilmore for his ties to the Council on Foreign Relations, and he also implied that Gilmore supported a "North American Union."  Nothing in Marshall's career suggests that he's ever been active on those sorts of issues, but he clearly saw them as a way to stimulate the Paul followers and it paid off.  Gilmore, who went in expected to walk away with a 60-65% victory, won the nomination by less than 1%.

In VA-8 (my district), Amit Singh, who has been endorsed by Ron Paul and reaped benefits financially, faces social conservative Mark Ellmore in a primary this Tuesday, June 10th.  Needless to say the results of this primary are worth watching.  While it's unlikely either candidate will be able to defeat Jim Moran in November, the primary will be another indicator of whether the Ron Paul revolution may in fact change the Republican Party.

Paul is a little out there for me, but I think it's fair to say that Ron Paul Republicanism is just about the only kind of Republicanism that's thriving at the moment.  Has Ron Paul reshaped the party?  Will Ron Paul-lite candidates succeed in 2008 and beyond?  Does the GOP only borrow a few thoughts from the Paul crowd and discard the rest, or return to its pre-internationalist past?  The world wonders...

David Boaz is quite right to criticize both Barack Obama and John McCain for urging people to pass up opportunities to do well financially even as they (Obama and McCain) pile up the big bucks. I suppose that this aversion to life in the private sector--and the financial benefits such a life brings the participant--is understandable when it comes from Obama, but as I have asked in the past, whence the contempt from McCain? Surely, he must understand that the very people who he apparently has contempt for--people who have gone into private enterprise--are the same people who, as Boaz points out, have worked so hard and done so much to augment the standard of living for all Americans.

If Republicans want to revive the fortunes of the GOP, a return to roots is necessary and part of that return involves an appreciation for the hard work that is necessary to generate wealth. Such work and its byproduct may seem crass to some, but if Atlas really does shrug at some point, the consequences for our economy and our standard of living in general will be parlous and disastrous. Republicans used to understand this and used to appreciate private enterprise. Nowadays, however, we have McCain winking and nodding at the pro-poverty populist faction that denounces anyone who thinks that it might be a good idea to cut taxes and reduce the size of government--and to do so in favor of the private sector, which is more efficient on its worst day than government is on its best.

John McCain may well win this year's Presidential election. I think he is the best candidate remaining. But he won't revive the Republican Party if he turns it into a pale version of the Democratic Party. We already have one pro-big government, private sector-bashing party. We really don't need a second one.

Mike Huckabee gave a recent interview to the Huffington Post where he outlined his vision for the Republican Party:

What can the party do to reverse course?

Republicans need to be Republicans. The greatest threat to classic Republicanism is not liberalism; it's this new brand of libertarianism, which is social liberalism and economic conservatism, but it's a heartless, callous, soulless type of economic conservatism because it says "look, we want to cut taxes and eliminate government. If it means that elderly people don't get their Medicare drugs, so be it. If it means little kids go without education and healthcare, so be it." Well, that might be a quote pure economic conservative message, but it's not an American message. It doesn't fly. People aren't going to buy that, because that's not the way we are as a people. That's not historic Republicanism. Historic Republicanism does not hate government; it's just there to be as little of it as there can be. But they also recognize that government has to be paid for.

If you have a breakdown in the social structure of a community, it's going to result in a more costly government ... police on the streets, prison beds, court costs, alcohol abuse centers, domestic violence shelters, all are very expensive. What's the answer to that? Cut them out? Well, the libertarians say "yes, we shouldn't be funding that stuff." But what you've done then is exacerbate a serious problem in your community. You can take the cops off the streets and just quit funding prison beds. Are your neighborhoods safer? Is it a better place to live? The net result is you have now a bigger problem than you had before.

Just because fiscal conservatives and most libertarians oppose big government doesn't mean they want to throw people on the streets, have anarchy in the streets, and eliminate schools. Most fiscal conservatives/libertarians believe maintaining law and order is one of the very few things government should be doing. Most fiscal conservatives/libertarians believe private charity and the private sector are the most efficent means to deliver services like healthcare and education because government bureaucracies are inefficent, consume much of the resources that can be used to help the receipents, require burdensome taxation, and often do not have the best interests of the receipents at heart. Most conservatives/libertarians believe that there should be a safety net for those among us who truly cannot work or are old.

Finally, have the failures of 2006 demonstrated to Huckabee the need to include conservatives/libertarians in the GOP fold. Fiscal conservatives and libertarians stayed home or defected to the Democrats over excessive spending, government waste, and intrusive government in 2006 and Huckabee wants to continue this. More "compassionate conservatism" will not win elections for Republicans. Only a platform embodying the principles of limited government, Federalism, a strong national defense, and defending traditional values will put us back into power.

Taking Huckabee's advice would destroy the conservative movement.