United Liberty

Over at NolanChart, one writer suggests that the Libertarian Party might want to look at a certain former Alaska Governor:

After decades of being forced to choose between voting for the lesser of two evils or wasting our votes on someone whose chance of winning was considerably less than that of the proverbial snowball in Hell, we libertarians — at long last — may have found in former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin a Presidential candidate who is both acceptable and electable.

(…)

Earlier today Palin gave her long-awaited speech to a group of investors, analysts, bankers and fund-managers attending a Hong Kong conference sponsored by CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets (the “CLSA” stands for “Credit Lyonnais Securities Asia”). By all accounts — even The New York Times‘ — her speech was a huge hit. And, according to people in attendance, she clearly knew what she was talking about.

“A number of people who heard the speech in a packed hotel ballroom, which was closed to the media, said Mrs. Palin spoke from notes for 90 minutes and that she was articulate, well-prepared and even compelling,” said the Times report.

“She didn’t sound at all like a far-right-wing conservative,”, Doug A. Coulter of LGT Capital Partners told the Times. “She seemed to be positioning herself as a libertarian or a small-c conservative.”

The author seemed to be especially impressed with this portion of Palin’s speech in Hong Kong:

Lack of government wasn’t the problem, government policies were the problem. The marketplace didn’t fail. It became exactly as common sense would expect it to. The government ordered the loosening of lending standards. The Federal Reserve kept interest rates low. The government forced lending institutions to give loans to people who, as I say, couldn’t afford them. Speculators spotted new investment vehicles, jumped on board and rating agencies underestimated risks. So many to be blamed on so many different levels, but the fact remains that these people were responding to a market situation created by government policies that ran contrary to common sense.

“Ron Paul could not have said it better,” he claims. What goes unmentioned, though, is that Palin was striking a very different tone when she was running for Vice-President last year:

Now, assuming you can get anything coherent out of that, it’s pretty clear that Palin supported the bailouts back when it actually mattered. And, up until she quit, she was the Governor of a state that received more federal funds per capita than anyone else in the Union and in which citizens received an annual check from the state government for their share of “commonly owned” oil and gas royalties.

She ain’t no libertarian.