United Liberty

The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder points out that the Republicans may be ignoring a very important constituency:

Economic libertarianism is the message du jour, and Pawlenty’s budget-cutting in Minnesota may get some attention. But really, neither he nor the other sober wing candidates have figured out exactly what the non-Palin wing of the party wants. There’s no way to court social conservatives with Palin or Mike Huckabee in the race. So who’s left to help you win primaries and caucuses?

Libertarians.

To the Republican Party, they are — they could be —  what the anti-war left was to Democrats in 2003: the out-of-the-establishment power center that can drive the narrative of the race. How do you get the attention of libertarians without losing conservatives? You could shift positions on the war in Afghanistan, or try to fashion a more realist foreign policy. That seems to be a non-starter; the consultants for these candidates are fairly covnentional and risk-averse.  Endorse medical marijuana? Legalize gambling? Something else?

The problem for the GOP is that they’ve never quite figured out what that “something else” is, and they’ve spent so much time supporting candidates, and backing policies, that are anathema to libertarians that it’s hard to beleive them when they say they’ve changed this time.

In my time, I’ve lived through two occasions when the GOP claimed to be the party of small government.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan came into office as the first serious small-government Republican since Calvin Coolidge. While he succeeded in some ways, and did manage to pull the nation out of a period of economic stagnation that stretched back to the Nixon Administration, he wasn’t able to make significant progress in dismantling the welfare state established by Franklin Roosevelt and perpetuated by Lyndon Johnson. For example, instead of eliminating the Department of Education, as he had promised during his Presidential campaign, Reagan ended up turning it into a bully pulpit and increasing the budget. Today, that Department is as secure in it’s existence as any other in the cabinet.

The second occasion came with the 1994 “Republican Revolution,” which gave the GOP full control of Congress for the first time in 50 years. While there are some things from the Gingrich years that can be looked on as positive developments, such as the intiial small reductions in spending in 1995 and welfare reform, by the time the Presidential election was over in 1996, the GOP had abandoned it’s efforts to even give lip service to the Contract With America, and had turned to investigating the Clinton Administration and engaging in a foolhardy impeachment effort. Then, when George Bush came to office and the GOP had more power than it had ever had in 75 years, Republicans stood by and did nothing while the Bush Administration spent money we didn’t have, increased federal control of education (so much for Reagan), and engaged in two wars without bothering to find a way to pay for them.

So now, here we stand in 2010 and the Republicans are asking fiscal conservatives and libertarians to trust them again.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three time ? No, you’re going to have to prove it this time before I trust you.