United Liberty

A few months ago, I sent Erick Erickson, editor of RedState, a link to a post from Stephen Gordon that explained why conservatives and Republicans need libertarians more than we needed them.

Erick had been holding on to the post for the right moment to post it and used it his endorsement of Nikki Haley for Governor of South Carolina:

[Gordon] has some merit to his argument, but I would say that libertarians and conservatives both need the GOP and need each other. They are not always going to agree. There will be fights over the drug war, marriage, etc. But at the end of the day, both conservatives and libertarians are, or at least must be, committed to smaller government.

I bring this up to point out Nikki Haley. She’s unapologetically pro-life, but she is first and foremost known as a fiscal conservative. She is the type of candidate conservatives claim they want. She is also the type of candidate libertarians claim to want.

While she won’t please everyone — the only candidate who ever tried is now in the White House making everyone mad — she gets checks in all the major boxes: life, tax cutting, government cutting, honesty, and uncompromising on the need to reform.

[…]

All the candidates at the RedState Gathering talked about the need for the GOP to re-embrace fiscal conservatism as a path back to the majority. Nikki Haley went so far as to say that without losing, the GOP would have never learned. The GOP needs to “learn through the burn” of defeat what it takes to govern, she told us.

She is not afraid, even as an elected official, to criticize her own party for losing its way. That’s the type of candidate the Republicans need.

And Nikki Haley puts her votes where her mouth is. Republicans in South Carolina punished her for daring to push for fiscal restraint and transparency in the state legislature by yanking a prime committee position in the State House, but she kept on pushing till she won. She got her start in state politics by challenging and beating the longest serving state representative in South Carolina — and she did it in a Republican primary.

I disagree that libertarians need the Republican Party. As has been noted here before, we tend not to view things through the typical “right vs. left” viewpoint that conservatives and Republicans use in their rhetoric. Our view is “the state vs. liberty” or “the state vs. the individual” and both Democrats and Republicans, progressives and conservatives have done much to increase the size of the state.

While I’m reluctant to endorse candidates for public office, Nikki Haley has a reputation as a strong fiscal conservative and is a believer in free-markets that would generally appeal to libertarians.

If the liberty movement is serious about advancing our beliefs in the mainstream, then we should get behind Nikki Haley’s candidacy, either through volunteering or becoming a contributor.

Electing liberty-minded candidates, like Haley, is the only way Republican Party can appeal to the liberty movement.