United Liberty
On libertarians, Mitt Romney, and the future of fusionism
Tue, 09/25/2012 - 9:09am | posted by Jason Pye
Over the last few days, I’ve been reading some interesting conversations on Twitter and elsewhere about the role that libertarians will play in the presidential election. There has been a lot of talk about Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party’s nominee, spoiling the election for Mitt Romney. That has obviously caused some concern by and friction from conservatives, who are saying that a “vote for Johnson is a vote for Obama.”
Before I jump into some points, I’d like to remind my conservative friends that this is not one national race for president, but rather 51 separate races, including the District of Columbia. By my count, Romney has a long road to haul in many battleground states, including Colorado, Ohio, and Virginia. Right now, President Barack Obama holds a substantial advantage in the Electoral College, which is what ultimately matters on election day.
There is a disconnect between conservatives and libertarians. Our conservative friends tend to believe in the concept of “ordered liberty,” a principle perhaps best explained by Russell Kirk. To most libertarians, the concept of ordered liberty is really “soft statism.” As you might imagine, this view doesn’t really have much of an appeal to libertarians.
When it comes down to it, libertarians don’t fit anywhere on the political scale. While many will dumb down our beliefs as “socially liberal” and “fiscally conservative,” there is really much more to the equation. We believe in the sovereignty of the individual. Our view of morality can be best defined by what John Stuart Mill called the “harm principle.”
Most of the discussion, if you can call it that, has been conservatives essentially beating libertarians over the head, saying, “Vote for Romney or else!” Yeah, that’s not how you appeal to us. All that does is solidify opposition. It’s not going to work.
But what you could do is try to understand where we’re coming from on a few points, even if you don’t agree with them. And I’ve also included an important point that libertarians should consider before casting their ballot in November.
Not all libertarians are “Libertarians”: Many of you are probably scratching your heads at this one, but it’s true. Many, dare I say most, libertarians — by that I mean those that believe in the libertarian philosophy (ie. small-“L”) — don’t consider the Libertarian Party to be a viable option.
If you asked many who consider themselves to be libertarians what they think of the LP, as I have done in the past, they would tell you that the party has probably set the libertarian movement back because they are perceived as being a bunch of pot smoking hippies.
The libertarians who hold these opinions may or may not vote. It’s in our nature to be politically disengaged. We generally don’t like politics, and those of us that do get involved do it because we enjoy it, in some weird and twisted way.
There are many libertarians who look to the Republican Party as the best vehicle for political change, typically because they put economics on the pedestal. That’s not to say that they don’t believe the personal liberty aspect on the libertarian philosophy, but, like Milton Friedman, they are Republicans out of convenience.
The bottom line here is that it’s disingenuous to lump every libertarian into the Libertarian Party and tell them that if they vote for anyone other than Mitt Romney that they are voting for Barack Obama. If you want to win libertarians over, you don’t do it by making them sound like they are committing some unpardonable sin.
It’s not Ron Paul (for most of us): There has been a lot said about the swarm of Ron Paul supporters who will do pretty much whatever the he says. While I have great respect for Ron Paul and what he has done (though I may not always agree with him), this movement has alway been bigger than one man.
Yes, I know he was the Libertarian Party’s presidential nominee in 1988, but Ron Paul is not really a libertarian. I don’t mean that as an insult, but rather to point out that many of his more recent beliefs are grounded in traditional conservatism — whether you want to call that “Old Right” or “paleoconservative.”
Take, for example, his position on immigration. He tends to carry the same message as many Republicans in Congress. Another example is gay marriage. Sure, he believes in a federalist approach to the issue, but Paul has complained about the Obama Administration decision not to fight the challenge to he Defense of Marriage Act in federal court.
It’s true that libertarians do respect and admire many of his positions, such as his views on civil liberties and foreign policy; though some of do believe he could have relayed them better.
Many of his supporters may indeed be libertarian, but my interaction with them has led me to believe that they are mostly just angry and were never going to vote for anyone but Ron Paul anyway. In other words, don’t waste your time with them.
About Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan: Many of the people I see complaining about libertarians not supporting Mitt Romney were saying the same things about him during the Republican primary that we are saying now. Many conservatives said that Romney lacked a spine and his positions changed with the wind. They also noted that Romney’s signature achievement while Governor of Massachusetts — his health care reform law — served as the blueprint for ObamaCare.
In recent days, Romney has even touted his “expertise” on that particular issue, which indeed shows how truly out of touch he is with his base. On spending, Romney hasn’t presented much in the way of a real plan to cut spending. Sure, he talks a good game, but he’s said he wants to increase defense spending. There is little question that he’ll be too afraid to touch entitlements because of the political fallout that would follow, especially after his comments about the “47%.”
And on civil liberties and foreign policy; well, let’s just say there is no faith that Romney would do anything different that what Obama is doing now or what Bush did before. In fact, Romney has said that he could bomb Iran without congressional approval, getting us involved in yet another open-ended military engagement.
Like Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan talks a good game, but at least there is substance. Ryan comes across authentic. His budgets, the “Roadmap to America’s Future” and the “Path to Prosperity,” are credible plans that would deal with many of the problems we face. But there is another side to Ryan that many conservatives gloss over, such as his votes for Medicare Part D, TARP, No Child Left Behind, and the auto bailout. He hasn’t backed up the rhetoric he espouses when it has mattered most.
And even if he didn’t have those marks and others on his record, Ryan will have little role in shaping policy in a Romney Administration.
You say that Romney is still better than Obama. But from our perspective, all Romney does is maintain the status quo with bloated budgets, diminished civil liberties, and more foreign intervention. Tell us again, how is Romney better?
For what it’s worth, libertarians do have a lot to lose: Yes, my libertarian friends, you knew this was coming. We’ve discussed fusionism some here recently. We have sought for our own influence, and with some success. The Tea Party movement, though populist in its nature, popularized many libertarian beliefs on fiscal issues. Indeed, the heart of the movement is libertarianism.
For years, we complained about not having a seat at the table when Republicans were in power. That wasn’t always our fault. But 2012 does give us an opportunity to work with groups with which we share a mutual interest. No, I’m not telling you to vote for Mitt Romney, but I am saying that we should get involved with groups like the Club for Growth and FreedomWorks, both of which are of our mind on free markets and other fiscal issues.
Though the reasons for voting for another alternative are entirely understandable, if libertarians do shun Romney, we will be persona non-grata in conservative circles. Any hope of them working with us on particular issues will be hard to come by. And with that, our much needed voice and influence will be greatly diminished.
Personally, your vote is exactly that — your vote. I’m not trying to influence you one way or another, but be prepared for the fallout because conservatives are going to want someone to blame — whether its libertarians or Ron Paul supporters. That’s all I’m saying.
“Conservatives are going to want someone to blame” when Romney loses?Well, they can blame themselves for nominating and voting for a Massachusetts liberal with an “R” beside his name.
“…if libertarians do shun Romney, we will be persona non-grata in conservative circles.”
We’re already “persona non-grata” in (neo)conservative circles, and I could not care less about the “fallout” from (neo)conservatives after their weak candidate loses. They made their bed, now they can lie in it.
And as far as “shunning” goes, we were the first to be shunned. What goes around comes around…
I find it interesting that the Democratic Party is never considered as a viable alternative for disaffected libertarians. Why is this?
At the present time, we see Democratic executives challenging unions, reducing the size of government and waste, and promoting civil liberties. Andrew Cuomo and Rahm Emmanuel are examples of this.
Meanwhile, in the Republican camp, we have Nativist immigration laws, personhood amendments, and farcical gimmicks like cutting food stamps and funding for NPR ostensibly in order to pay for an ever expanding defense budget.
It seems clear to me that libertarians should remain independent and support candidates who align closest with their political views, regardless of party affiliation. We must work to mute the radical left, with their odd fixation on socialist economics, and the radical right, with their bizarre religiosity.
I had to sign up and respond to this, because I almost thought you were trolling, but then decided that you might actually be serious.
Democrats challenging unions? Obama’s billion dollar “stimulus” package was a giant political payout to unions for getting him elected.
Democrats reducing the size of government? I can think of no other group that has worked harder to grow the size of the federal government, adding more and more spending programs, more and more on government payroll, spending more and more on entitlements, raising taxes…Obama has not repealed the Patriot Act. In fact, he appeals any attempt to reduce its size and scope. His administration is currently appealing a federal judge’s decision to block a statute that gave the government the power to carry out indefinite detention. He sued to keep soldiers from voting in Ohio. He has expanded Bush’s wars into Libya and Yemen unConstitutionally and without the approval of Congress. He believes he has the power to assassinate Americans who might be suspected of terrorist activities, in direct violation of the 5th Amendment.
I cannot fathom how you believe ‘Democratic executives” are “promoting civil liberties.” What we have seen is an all-out assault on civil liberties under the Obama administration.
“farcical gimmicks like cutting food stamps”
I’m not even sure how to respond to this. Food stamps themselves are a gimmick, designed to make the poor dependent on government welfare, and therefore retain their vote to any politician who advocates for its expansion.
Democrats want to increase funding for all entitlement programs, AND increase funding for the defense. When did Obama cut defense spending?
We don’t have the money to spend on all this. Politicians have already spent it all. They have not only spent the wealth of this generation, they have spent the wealth of several more generations of Americans.
We must work to support the candidate that will fix the problem with the federal government. Unfortunately, it looks like that may not be possible. The two parties have built up a legion of poor voters that don’t care about the issues, only about their next government paycheck.
Actually, I am quite sure that guy isn’t trolling, because I have been looking at a similar sort of thing. Part of the reason that Ron Paul had a *better* chance in the general election than he did in the repub primary popvote was that he appeals to certain factions within the dems (including many dem-leaning independents). Now, obviously, moderates like Romney can also appeal to dem-voters… but only because Romney will often take positions indistinguishable from a democratic politician, hence the phrases Obamney and Robama. Pauliticians appeal to *different* kinds of independent-or-democrat voters than moderate-repubs.
Consider the occupy-folks, basically the polar opposite of the tea party. What is their #1 issue? No bailouts. Well… heck, that sounds almost libertarian. What is their number one enemy? The big banks. Uh — end the Fed, the signature issue Ron Paul got into politics over? There was a poll which included Gary Johnson at the beginning of September, and he pulls about 35% of his supporters from the tea-party, plus another 38% of his supporters from occupy! (For those of you that don’t know, the guy running on the libertarian party presidential ticket this year is Gary Johnson, the pro-choice version of Ron Paul, a two-term libertarian-leaning-republican governor of NM who was forcibly ejected from the primary-debates in 2011 by rule-changing ‘shenanigans’ just like we saw in Tampa during August.) By way of contrast, almost nobody from occupy supports Romney, and almost nobody from the tea party supports Obama, in terms of supporter-percentages.
Now, obviously, most of the members of the occupy-movement are *not* libertarian types. Plenty of them are hardline socialists-or-communists in their economic outlook. http://youtube.com/watch?v=4QTfNEDgusQ But at least some of them must be reasonable, because both Ron Paul and Gary Johnson have some appeal for them. Not everybody in the tea-party-movement is a racist theocrat, despite what you may have heard on teevee, and I submit that not everybody in the occupy-movement is a communist-hippie (as we too often assume). Every vote that we convert from the occupy-crowd over to the liberty-republican crowd counts twice, because we take one from Obama and put it on us.
There are other democrat-factions that might find the libertarian-leaning republican worldview attractive: the blue dog caucus, which is supposed to be fiscally conservative and socially liberal (sounds a lot like the generic description of libertarians eh?). Guys like Buddy Roemer, who ran in 2012 on the AmericansElect ticket before it imploded, and has the support of internet-copyright-god Lawrence Lessig, who used to be Boll Weevil dems in the Reagan era, then became republicans more recently… those folks seem kinda like liberal-libertarians to me.
Quite a few of the folks that supported Ron Paul during 2012 would have been democrats back in the 1960s, fighting the Conflict In Vietnam, standing up for civil rights, taking drugs, and living how they saw fit without regard for social norms: pot-smoking anti-war hippies, to put it bluntly. There are still some anti-war dems, despite Obama & Hillary. There are some dems that hate the patriot-acronym-act.
I don’t have (m)any illusions about getting a strongly-libertarian faction started within the democrat party, which is *far* more firmly dominated by their elite masters than the republican party has been up until now. (Rule#12 in Tampa will change that though, unless we fight it.) The dems had their equivalent of rule#12 passed back in the early 1970s. But, I do think the case can be made for poaching voters out of the democrat ranks, and perhaps even for converting some *sitting* dems, of the blue dog or the anti-patriot-act sort, over to the cause of liberty.
Here are the demographics of Gary Johnson voters — sometimes his curves look like Mitt’s, rarely they look more like Obama’s, but often they are somewhere in between. http://www.jzanalytics.com/DATA/Crosstabs_JZA_Voters_2way_and_3way_HR_08…
PPP does three-way polls from time to time in CO, since it borders on NM, and they are finding that Gary takes away from *both* Mitt and Obama. Therefore, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that Gary Johnson might be a spoiler in 2012… pushing his legalize-pot end-wars liberty and justice for all agenda, and throwing a couple key swing-states to Mitt (rather than the usual republican horror-story that all third party candidates — and especially ones that pauliticians like — are going to be the reason that Mitt *loses* the election in November).
To my mind, the whole reason that breitbart-folks and Paul Ryan are trying to put forth the talking-point that, without Ron Paul supporters, Mitt will lose… is not so they can woo libertarians, but merely so that they will have a scapegoat in 2013, when they are using rule#12 to crush any hope of the tea-party or the theologist-conservative-christian-right or the liberty movement from ever again having a shot at dethroning the neocon dempubs. If they merely wanted to woo voters, it would be far more effective to try and convert undecided independents, or to try and drum up some excitement among folks that usually sit elections out, or to make even *more* concessions to the obamacare-loving dem-leaning voters. Mitt is no fool, so my conclusion is that he isn’t trying to woo voters at all, but rather, setting up a fallguy.
I disagree that we should toe the line, and vote Mitt to avoid the threat of being the scapegoat. Instead we should expose their ‘shenanigan’ for what it is: a transparent ploy to make excuses for Mitt failing to energize enough republican voters to beat Obama, the most full-of-excuses bad-policy president we may yet have seen. Mitt is behind in the polls, because of who Mitt is — not because of some failing amongst libertarian-leaning republicans to support his Honest Efforts To Reach Out To Us… riiight. I remember how Ginsberg reached out to us with rule#12. http://www.fox19.com/story/19479204/reality-check-dnc-runs-over-delegate…
As I am a libertarian within the Libertarian Party, it is perhaps unsurprising that I believe the fusionism argument that began in the 1960s has proven insufficient for libertarians. I am convinced that fusionism has helped the Republican Party, but that it has done virtually nothing for libertarians. Instead it has divided our focus and our forces. Fusionism is an inherently problematic premise because it conflates two different ideas, coalition building and party building. One can form a coalition based on shared public policy positions, such as limited government. But once you try to make a coalition broader and include it within a political party, you get what I call false branding. You cannot play on the same partisan team as the Rick Santorum’s of the world, who are not only vocal in their opposition to libertarianism but also to the consistent application of individual liberty, without harming the central message of libertarianism. Libertarians within the Republican Party confuse the public about what is meant by libertarianism (especially its consistent and principled approach to individual liberty) by being labeled a Republican along with social conservatives and rent seeking establishment types.
What I find most annoying is the stereotypes of the libertarians within the Libertarian Party, which have no bearing in reality. Pot smoking hippies? I bet there are more pot-smoking hippies in the Republican Party than the LP, though I doubt they show up to the conventions. I see loads of professionals (accountants, lawyers, engineers), professors and rather normal appearing, middle-class types in the Libertarian Party. Does the LP also have some counter-culture types? Sure, what party doesn’t? But the LP can accept diversity without endorsing everyone’s personal choices, because we are dedicated to personal liberty. If someone is afraid of the diversity that results from empowering personal choice, then they belong in the Republican Party and probably aren’t really committed to libertarian principles anyway.
I applaud the efforts of Ron Paul’s supporters to try to make inroads into the local and state committees of the Republican Party, but as the latest convention showed, the Republican Party is a top-down party controlled by money interests more concerned with using government as a spoils system. They will simply ignore the local and state committees and marginalize libertarians within the party at any time where their control is threatened. A takeover of the Republican Party can never work, because it is merely a partisan vehicle, not a party of principle. They use libertarian sounding rhetoric at times, when they deem it useful, but they never govern in any way approaching libertarianism. That they have the gall to now ask libertarians to support their very un-libertarian candidate after the latest convention should be proof enough that their interests are only in using libertarians as an instrument for other purposes.
Hi Eric. Maybe you have heard all this before, or maybe you haven’t, but I’ll give it a shot. I’m a libertarian-leaning republican. In our state convention we sent a bunch of pauliticians to Tampa (not quite enough for a plurality — but might happen by 2014). We won some statewide offices in the party. We got some libertarian planks into the republican platform. We got Rand Paul on national television talking about individual liberty as the *key* to national success. Last but not least, we got enough states with pluralities to earn Ron Paul a nomination speech… and to deny us, the elite pooh-bahs, the leash-holders behind the party, had to show their hand, and do some blatant cheating.
Which was caught on video. Everyday repubs, the nice old ladies that run country parties, would never believe their mainstream-establishment-leadership would do such things. Now, they might. (I’d like to say now they *will* believe the truth, but selective perception and blind denial are still possible for many humans.) Yet, as you point out, we lost the battle. Crushed by the dark side of the force. Likely we will suffer in 2013, when the empire strikes back. (Ron Paul is yoda in this analogy.)
The libertarian party has also had some successes. The first electoral college vote cast for a woman. Getting on the ballot in most of the states, except if Romney attacks. Fielding some great candidates (plus inspiring some great think-tanks). But as far as winning elections, it has always been a hard row to hoe for the Libertarian Party. Ron Paul went over in 1988, and got 500k votes. Gary Johnson is on track to do ten times better this year, and win 5M votes. Awesome.
But in the long run, the third party route is *mathematically* a dead end. Everybody has heard the old saying that a vote-for-gary-is-a-vote-for-obama. It’s crap, of course. As long as you live in a non-swing-state, the electoral college votes for your home are locked up tight, set in stone. Vote as you see fit in those states. But for swing-states, the math takes over. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_of_clones
Because of our voting system, which is *mathematically* guaranteed to be two-party dominated, it doesn’t matter that George Washington urged us to avoid the poison of party politics. Some would say, okay, change the way we vote. (Gary Johnson often says this… but he means change hearts and minds, rather than functionally altering the voting-system mechanism so that it is least-surprise-adjusted-range-voting or some similar fix.) To really change the voting-mechanism, we need a constitutional amendment, which means we need 75% of the states and 66% of the congress to approve. All those folks are died-in-the-wool beneficiaries of the two parties.
This is why 50 years of libertarian thought has not grown into a power to be reckoned with in the voting-booth. Presidential elections, when many people can safely vote libertarian, are the *exception* not the rule. The spoiler-effect is most pronounced in local elections for sheriff and city council and mayor… but it also messes up district elections and statewide elections, if they are at all close. But voters instinctively know the math, which is, a vote-for-libertarians-takes-it-away-from-joe.
I won’t kid you. Taking over the republican party from the inside is a very tough job. It requires tedious work, being polite to people that *like* Santorum, and forming coalitions around candidates that are not the ideal liberty-candidates. Ted Cruz is a tea-party favorite, somebody that cap-L pure-true-blue libertarians are against, to pick an example mentioned on DailyPaul recently… but he is *far* better than the establishment-candidate he defeated in the repub primary, and because of the *math* of our voting system, he will utterly clean the clock of his true-blue-Libertarian opponent this November. But he will also beat his democratic opponent. And he already came from behind to beat his repub primary opponents Dewhurst and Leppert. Chalk up one more liberty-leaning Senate seat for the libertarian-leaning repubs. Not a perfectly Libertarian senator — but 90% there, methinks. And six years usually turns into 26 years, because unseating an incumbent is *very* tough.
I agree with you that 1960s style fusionism is a dead end: the kind of fusion you find in jazz music or cooking, where you take a blend of half libertarianism plus half neocon. I want 2020s style fusionism: not those entertainment-industry ones, but rather the scientific kind of fusion you find in spectacular supernovas. The time is quickly coming when the libertarian-leaning members of the state parties will achieve critical mass, and tip over into the majority. When that happens in enough states we *will* have our chance at rewriting the rules, so they become fair, and remain fair. Help us make it happen. Our forces and focus *are* divided. We need to make Gary Johnson famous in 2012, but if he does not win, then for the sake of the liberty-movement, we need him back in the Republican Party for the 2014 elections, so he can be in 2016 primaries. He’ll have the experience *and* the popularity by then.
The folks in RLC.org and GOProud are not afraid of the diversity of personal choice. Does being committed to libertarian principles mean you have to ignore what the math clearly tells you about our voting-system, and the past decades of losing elections proves? I am committed to the principles of liberty, but I also want to achieve them in elections: we need Constitutional sheriffs, we need Oathkeeper liberty-candidates in statehouses, we need a hundred Ron Pauls and Gary Johnsons in Congress, plus we need to keep having liberty-candidates on the debate-stage during the primary, until we get back our republic that Franklin gave to us.
Please — think it over. Supernova fusion, not cuisine-n-tune-fusion. Affiliating with the party of Reagan is not the worst thing imaginable, right? George Washington was a member of the Church Of England, under the King directly, from his baptism as an infant in 1732 until the Virginia legislature passed Jefferson’s statute concerning freedom of religion in 1786. Five years later, the 1st Amendment was ratified. Which means, it was 41 years from when George Washington became an adult, to when he achieved liberty. Isn’t the Libertarian party also 41 years old? If even half of the Libertarian-voters were to attend their local republican party precinct-caucus meetings in early 2014, imagine what would happen. Cap-L folks are smart & hard-working. Cap-V for victory.
Will you vote for Gary Johnson? http://celebrity-plugs.com/t/
Yes, my entire family is voting for Gary Johnson. I’m fighting for liberty and our Constitution, not Romney — a lying, cheating, election stealing candidate and his dirty political machine…. and those aren’t the only things Romney and Obama have in common.
Thanks to all with the strength of your convictions to stand against the bullying and tyranny from both quarters.
If the dinosaur GOP makes the Ron Paul supporters “persona non-grata” after the election, they do so to their own detriment. The GOP will continue to lose elections with increasingly bad results. Their tent will continue to shrink while the liberty movement continues to grow in leaps and bounds. The author fails to get this. The GOP is desperate. These silly threats are not believed by the Paul faction.
The threats are *not* aimed at us pauliticians. It doesn’t matter whether we believe the threats, or even hear them. They are aimed at the scared mainstream-establishment repubs that get all their news from teevee, and have heard those naughty Ron Paul whippersnappers are out to destroy the Grand Olde Party. Making threats about persona-non-grata to us, is actually a way of telling those everyday repubs what *they* should believe. Shaping opinion among the sheeple, in other words. Kinda like yellowcake from Nigeria being found in Iraq. Truthiness.
The rammed-thru-by-blatant-cheating Rule#12 is designed to permit draconian changes during 2013, with the excuse of preventing Ron Paul types from destroying the party… but in fact just solidifying the top-down control of the party by the elite pooh-bahs in DC. Remember how the 900 page patriot-acronym-act was just sitting around, waiting for something like 9/11 to happen? And once that got passed, well, time to invade Iraq, because we have to defend ourselves in the War On Terror!
We are seeing the beginning of the War On Pauliticians; rule#12 is the equivalent of the patriot-acronym-act for the RNC leadership. However, in this case, maybe the state parties can be galvanized to fight back in time. The members of the RNCmte on rules are all elected at the state level, as national committee man + national committee woman + state party chair. The next elections are in 2014, a mid-term with low turnout. If we can get the average county-precinct repubs angry enough about the cheating, and make them understand that Palin & Santorum & Huckabee & Buchanan & Goldwater & Ron Paul and every tea-party candidate is the true target of rule#12… and that we are guaranteed to have a Romney every year from here on out if we don’t get control of the RNCmte… then I believe we have a chance.
Wait, I’m confused….who should I vote for? Just kidding, it’s Gary Johnson - clearly.
pro legalization is around 50% dominated by the younger generation. So, being pro-legalization is attracting younger generation towards a political organization which is vocally speaking out for legalization.
If the older small l libertarians want to keep voting for the forces of anti-freedom it is they who are setting the libertarian movement back not the Libertarian Party.
check out lp.org and garyjohnson2012.com
Are you (the author) the Jason Pye who served as Bob Barr’s blogger during the 2008 campaign? Of the course the Bobb Barr that fairly early endorsed Mitt Romney. It’s pretty transparent what bad snake oil you are pushing.
Mitt and his stodge Paul Ryan are no friend of individual liberties.
Paul Ryan voted to make the Patriot Act permanent.
Paul Ryan voted to allow the military to indefinitely detain anyone as part of the 2012 NDAA.
Paul Ryan voted against repealing the indefinitely detain provisions of the NDAA.
Paul Ryan voted for warrant-less wiretapping of us phones and computers.
Paul Ryan is no friend of liberty.
I am. I’m voting Johnson, but thanks for playing.
Generally a good overview of the issues involved, but I would like to point out a couple of details of which you may be unaware.
Yes, Milton Friedman was involved in the Republican Party for many years. But he told the San Francisco Chronicle a couple years ago that he did not vote for George W Bush in 2004, and he opposed the Iraq War. Even for the pragmatist, the Republican Party has proved to be too committed to statism.
Ron Paul may not be everyone’s idea of a libertarian, and he does have some views that other libertarians don’t share, particulary his opposition to abortion. But he has associated with the libertarian movement since becoming politically active after Nixon (GOP) imposed wage & price controls.
Ron Paul spoke at Libertarian National Conventions in 1977, 1979, and 1981, and joined The Libertarian Party as a life member in 1987.
Ron Paul’s views on immigration are schizophrenic. When he spoke at the Libertarian National Convention in 1981, he specifically advocated open borders and free movement of people. He takes a moderate stand in “Liberty Defined.” But he has been dependent on the local Republican Party to be elected to Congress, and has taken a more typical conservative stand in his campaigns for Congress. The anti-immigrant ads in his campaigns for President are probably the work of his campaign staff.
All good points, Gene.
Many of us look at the Republican Party as libertarian-leaning precisely because of social issues, not necessarily economics.
Who is it that opposes seat belt laws? Republicans
Who is it that stands against tobacco bans? Republicans
Who is it that opposes more taxes on alcohol and Muslim attempts to ban liquor stores in certain inner-city neighborhoods? Republicans
Who is it that opposes idiotic trans fat bans, and bans on 32 ounce sodas? Republicans
Who is it that stands against political correctness and efforts by Islamists to impose Sharia law speech codes on Americans? Republicans
And nowadays, it’s Republicans half the time that are introducing legislation to legalize medical marijuana - notably Idaho, New Jersey and Maryland.
It’s not just the economics that we mostly agree with Republicans on. It’s the social issues. Democrats are pure social-fascists. Republicans side with liberty most of the time, and on the few issues that they’re wary about, they’re willing to at least listen to libertarian arguments.
Here’s the thing, if Romney wins, the Liberty movement is toast. The Neo- Cons will take it as a mandate to keep on selling us out to the highest bidder.
I’m okay with the “non-grata” thing — those guy are not Conservatives.
In case you haven’t noticed we are out to push these Neo-Cons and religious fanatics out to the corn field not win their favor.
We are not obsessed with getting that “Black Guy” out of office. We are about Liberty, Sound Money and Peaceful Free Trade — items that aren’t on either table.
Ron Paul had a following that extended far beyond the ranks of the GOP — he pulled in Democrats and Independents, that never got a chance to show their numbers outside of the GOP primary.
Sorry, Mitt must lose for the cause of Liberty.
.
Good column. However, there’s an apparent error at the end of your first paragraph, where you speak of “oncern by and friction from conservatives, who are saying that a ‘vote for Johnson is a vote for Romney.’”
Post new comment