The end of the libertarian Democrats

"WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN? It's almost -- almost! -- like part of the story's missing. Are you absolutely sure you want to stake the worth of your words on the purity and grassrootness of the Tea Parties being a non-partisan protest against government overspending? Really sure?"

Why yes.  I am sure.

There were plenty of people, Fiscal Conservatives and Libertarians, complaining about Bush's spending too.

Why were we not out in the streets then?  Because were were being boiled very slowly... like the legendary frog being boiled alive, government spending ratcheted up slowly enough every year that many would complain, but few would go so far as to organize against it. 

But then someone suddenly turned up the heat:

So you have an almost order of magnitude leap in spending, people are already grumbling - and then you are shocked, shocked at an equally great leap in outrage from the public?

I had never attended any protest before, not in college, not anywhere - but I've been to every Tea Party protest that's been held at the Denver Capital.  

So the real question is not where have *I* been. I've been here, growing more annoyed and finally taking action.  No, I think the real question is where the hell are YOU right NOW?   What reason do YOU have for NOT being at the tea parties, every single one?  Why on earth are you not as outraged as you claim the protestors should have been?  Or were you in fact ever outraged and not simply concerned at what this outrage means...  Are you truly concerned or are you protecting something?

I've been a registered independant my whole life and voted for all comers (Democrat, Libertarian, Republican) but I'm sick of the lot of 'em, I'll vote for anyone with signs of fiscal restraint at this point just to restore some sanity.  I've become laser focused on this one issue and from what I have seen of actually attending tea parties, so are most of the people there.  They come from all sorts of different philosophical origins, tea parties are where the true bi-partisanship is occurring that you can't see in Washington anymore.  It would even be more so if people like you were not trying to scare liberals away by claiming they are simply props of the Republicans.  Even if they were, why would you be so scared of sending out the message that we the people are sick of spending?  Is not that message alone worth sending no matter who you stand with to send it? 

Is that everyone knows what they are:  A noble idea coopted and corrupted by the Republican party.  Tax protests happen every year but it's usually just a smattering of libertarians who are honest and sincere about their message.

Then FoxNews and the Republicans got a hold of the protests and turned them into a Republican political rally.  Sure there were a few true libertarians there, but I'd bet at least 80% of attendees across the country were McCain voters and straight-ticket Republicans.  That's why nobody with any capacity for rational thought took them seriously: they were so obviously full of shit.

Those of you who truely believe in libertarian ideals should realize that the tea parties are counter-productive.  Because they're not seen as sincere idealogical protests, they're not taken seriously and they only do more damage to the message of small government.  It's somewhat ironic that so-called "conservatives" have done more damage to the conservative message in this country than Dems could ever hope to do.  While the Republican party is using the tea parties to try and win back the libertarian vote, they're only doing further harm to the libertarian message in what many libertarians probably cynically see as a giant "fuck you" for abandoning the Republicans in 08.

Whenever the leftists, such as dab8709 offer us unsolicited advice as to what we are doing wrong, I know we are going in the right direction.  Never take adivice from the enemy.  That advice is never in your best interest.  But, thanks dab, we will keep it in mind.  Right.

Rick

I am 67 years and have voted for D,R and I parties in my lifetime and I have been to two TEA parties.  There was very little hate towards any one party but a lot directed at our representation in DC.  Bush and Pelosi started taking away our freedoms and our wealth a little at a time but the gang in power now is using a fleet of moving vans to steal our wealth and our childrens future.  I have NEVER been to a protest in my lifetime but I feel I owe it to the children to defeat ALL of the gang in DC now who don't even bother to read the bills that are destroying our great country.  You people that critisize the TEA parties are being dishonest and are trying to put a partisan slant to them to discredit them.  You had better wake up or you won't have a country either!

who kos is talking about, and the crowd that you will find a typical teabagging event are not the same people.

Like me, these were people who didn’t instinctively reject the ability of government to protect our personal liberties, who saw government as a good, not an evil, but didn’t necessarily see the government as the source of first resort when seeking solutions to problems facing our country. They also saw the markets as a good, not an evil, but didn’t necessarily see an unregulated market run amok as a positive thing. Some of these were reluctant Republicans, seeking an excuse to abandon a party that has failed them. Others were reluctant Democrats, looking for a reason to fully embrace their party. And still others were stuck in the middle, despairing at their options—despondent at a two-party system in which both parties were committed to Big Government principles.

 

I think that your post misses the mark in that the people (like myself) that are described above are in fact very dissapointed in Obama's policys.

State secrets, bigger military, failure to prosecute torture, big bank /fed reserve power, DADT, telecom immunity, trade policy/manufacturing, immigration/wage deflation, and so on.

The Obama administration, the tea parties, the republican party, and this post doesn't address these issuess, and until someone does, we will be disaffected.

I don't know.  Don't care that much either.  All that I do know, however, is that I no longer feel all that good around Republican rank-and-file.  It's not as if they're just white bread like the Bushies, they're more hoohas and yahoos with a disturbingly low tooth-to-head ratio, who are less easily led than fooled.  I'm hardly jesting.  Folks who are comfortable calling others "socialists," "communists," "traitors," and generally despise anybody who doesn't agree with them.  They hate the media because it doesn't agree with them.  They love Fox because it does. 

There are rarely many brothers around, and it isn't that hard to figure out why.  Not that they are racist per se, but the notion that police should stop anybody they want and only the guity should care is prevalent.   They cede a lot of solid and easy libertarian ground to the ACLU, and this is just one example of how they're pretty comfortable siding with the man when it isn't their hide.

I studied with Straussians, had a fellowship at the Mises Institute, was acquainted with top paleos (Rothbard, Ron Paul, Pat Buchanan, Howard Phillips).  I used to to vote for the "furthest right" viable candidate (not the group above, btw), which I defined as the most constitutionalist who usually came along with a heavy dose of social conservatism (which I put up with).

I agree with Vern, I think.  One foundational problem with the right is that it did make common cause with the southern racists.  It put a fancy constitutional and abstract gloss on it - equality before the law, not equal results - but failed to really take the problem of racism seriously.   African Americans were justified in getting some results (whether the means were effective is another question).  Whether ordinary African Americans will ever see things as the right does is doubtful.  The right is now making the same mistake with gays, a less numerous group electorally, but another one that could bring some bleepin' style. 

The Right (that is, it's official organs) makes me suspicious.  First there was no financial crisis.  Then, it was minor and contained.  Then it was Fannie, Freddie and ACORN's fault, not their friends on Wall Street.  Meanwhile, Republicans' great financial reform was the 2005 BAPCPA, and especially dimwitted piece of legislation.  So Schumer and Hillary went along.  They suck, too.  They represent the Democratic plutocrats.

The ugly truth is that it's about money and votes.  No ideologue, right or left, is going to be very happy.   Another problem is that Republicans typically are in power only in those places where there isn't much to do, except go to church, go 4-wheeling and hear some crappy blues wannabe band.  

Yeah, government is way too expensive, but I'll take Boston, LA, Chicago, Seattle, San Franciso, over Red State America any day of the week.  I left out New York because it's gotten boring like Disney World (let's see what a financial meltdown does to make it interesting again).   

I think it was the financial crisis that did it for me.  It showed that the right doesn't really have much of nose for governing well.  They can blame ACORN and Barney Frank all they want, but assuming this is as bad as I think it's going to be, the right is going to get blamed for decades.  And it was in power when it counted.

... but if it is committed to either major party or any 3rd party -  it is irrelevent. 

As pointed out in the comments, it represents a small percentage of the electorate even if you accept the loose definition of "social liberal / fiscal conservative" (Which, BTW,  is exactly how I describe myself). That does not mean it has to remain politically impotent. Like any minority or issue centric group, it has political clout to the exact degree that it predictiably votes as a block. Hence the inchoate nature of this group. It tends to cancel itself out and can be safely ignored by politicians of the right and left.

The only solution I see for voters like myself in the short term is a voting heuristic based on a simple organizing principle that does not require marrying a party or following a particular leader.  That principle can be as simple as always voting for divided government. Easy to understand. Easy to implement. Thats how I always vote at the federal level.  If even 6%  of like minded voters consciously and consistently vote that way, it can slow the growth of spending and government.

Is it a cure for the disease of big overreaching government in either the social or economic realm? No. It is a tournaquet to slow the bleeding when nothing else does. And maybe, just maybe the patient stays alive long enough to find a cure. And maybe, just maybe it can also be a dose of viagra for the libertarian's chronic electile dysfunction.

It also means, as Jon aludes here,  that libertarian leaning independents need to "date" the Republicans for the next couple of cycles, even if it is a "two-bagger" date.

FWIW - I relate my "experimentation" with the libertarian dems in my post: "Dear Libertarians: We're just not that into you. Love Democrats"