United Liberty
The GOP Doesn’t Have a Libertarian Problem
Wed, 11/21/2012 - 2:07pm | posted by Ron Davis
A friend shared this interesting post with me the other day. Basically, with Romney losing the election and the Republicans trying to blame everybody but themselves, the question of the party having a “libertarian problem” arises. The author makes a couple of points that are worth considering.
Mitt Romney ran against libertarian ideals.
There was almost literally nothing libertarian about the GOP’s presidential ticket. They ran on a platform of government a little smaller than the Democrats would prefer. Expand the war on drugs. Expand globally with aggressive (“preventative”) war. Expand spending. Balance the budget at some point in the distant future. None of that sounds libertarian because none of that is libertarian.
The GOP has to have libertarians before it can have a libertarian problem.
In the Senate, they’ve got Rand Paul. Mike Lee isn’t so bad, either. In the House, there are a handful of decent members, but only 1 that I’d trust to make the right stand, no matter what. (I’m looking at you, Justin Amash.) That’s not much of a libertarian presence in Congress.
In the presidential race, there were two libertarians. One, the Good Doctor, was mocked and ridiculed. Ironically, that was still a better than his treatment in the 2008 campaign. The other candidate, Gary Johnson, wasn’t just pushed to the side; he was shoved all the way into the Libertarian Party. He was a two-term Republican governor with a history of cutting government, balancing budgets, and vetoing stupid bills. And the GOP wanted nothing to do with him.
Truly, before they can have a libertarian problem, the GOP needs to have libertarians. Maybe they’ll come around for 2014 and 2016. Should we hold our breath while we wait?
The shift in the Republican Party towards more libertarian ideals has already begun, in large part because of the people you just mentioned. It only takes a few people to start a movement; we don’t need the entire party to be libertarian; we just need libertarians in leadership and the rest of the party to follow along in lockstep with them as they do with their leaders now. Co-opting the GOP is entirely possible as most of them are not ideologues but pragmatists whose main objective is simply to win elections, nothing more. If they see an opportunity to advance their political interests by promoting and enacting libertarian ideas into law, that is exactly what they will do. The winds are changing, and after two consecutive electoral defeats all but the most out-of-touch Republicans are now finally seeing that.
“…stand fast in this liberty wherewith ye have been made free, and…trust no man to be a king over you.” —Mosiah 23:13
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