It's Not Your Party

The libertarian wing of the Republican Party is large, well-heeled, and more knowledgeable than most groups of American voters on day-to-day policy and historic trends in governance. But is the libertarian GOP really in the wrong party these days? Does the Democratic Party represent a more libertarian view towards policy? Blogger Stephen Gordon, who helped to run Libertarian nominee Michael Badnarik's campaign for President in '04, thinks so - and he's got some exhaustive research to prove it. Gordon used two different libertarian voting charts (one on pure economic issues, the other on social issues) to give all members of Congress a libertarian rating, based on how they voted on legislation. Shockingly, Democrats in the House far out-stripped Republicans in voting libertarian issues like privacy, regulation, civil rights, etc. JD Lasica, who tipped me to this study, sums it up very well:

Given that Libertarians have traditionally voted Republican, you'd expect Republicans to dominate the top slots, right? But Republicans take only 1 of the top 20 slots in the Liberty index. In fact, Democrats occupy 160 of the top 168 spots. The Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, comes in dead last.

I've told my Libertarian friends in recent years that they're voting against their beliefs; now here's documentation to back it up.

The chart at the top shows political leanings of the mass media in the '04 election (judged by what issues they covered) side by side with numbers on self-identification of political leaning between Kerry and Bush voters. Guess what: there's a huge gap between what the media (left, right, and center) cover and how many libetarians there are. And there's also far more blue in the libertarian box. Part of this is the Democrats being out of power - it's easy to both vote for civil liberties when you're not writing the legislation, and to call for increased civil liberties when you're not running policy. But part of it is clearly the Republican Party's swing to greater government control over dailylife and commerce, led by this administration and keyed by its panicky response to 9/11.

Frequent commenter Tom K. is a libertarian Republican if ever there was one. In reaction to my post on Attorney General Gonzales' rather weak defense of the non-FISA executive domestic spying scandal he explicitly took issue with his party's incredible swing. In doing so he may well have put his finger on why libertarians don't try and take back their party - or switch:

The libertarian right is outspoken enough. The problem is, it barely exists, demographically -- most are seduced by some promise or other from the Nanny state.

I have said I find the President's claims to power execessive and dangerous. (I think I said dangerous; if I didn't, I've said it now.)

Nanny state. Police state. Mary Poppins versus flights in the night on unregistered aircaft to Gitmo or Syria. Should libertarian Republicans switch? Hell, we Democrats elected Howard Dean our national chairman - if you guys came over, with your fancy Ivy League degrees and your think tanks, you'd have a field day. And unlike in your own political home on over the Bush Plantation, in these precincts you're welcome to try.

Comments

[Tom K]

The oppression is part-and-parcel of the nanny state. Don't let Mary Poppins' PR machine fool you. The government that is big enough to give you what you would like to have is big enough to take away what is most dear to you. The Dems. are absolutely, positively no better than the Republicans on this. I sympathize with the feds' position at Ruby Ridge and Waco, but you put the excessive force there together with the FBI files on repub. donors kept by Clinton's former-bouncer friends, and you should get a sample, limited but I think representative, of what the Dem. party's commitment to civil liberties is: if possible, don't let the Repubs. get away with consolidating their power, or interfere with us consolidating ours.

[Andrea Batista Schlesinger]

Tom Watson - I appreciate this analysis, strategically, but I don't think organizing libertarians to vote Democratic is really the point. Progressives believe that government has a positive role to play in people's lives, that effective partnerships between government and the private sector can create opportunity and strengthen the middle class. Creating a Democrat/libertarian coalition is meaningless unless the impact is better public policy, not better rants (I don't direct that to any of my fellow writers of comments, in particular. Not exactly anyways).

[brendog]

"Big Government" is not the province of liberals anymore, and neither is the big government we now find ourselves shackled with, the kind that any liberal policymaker ever envisioned. So it's not surprising that a philosophical alignment of libertarians and progressives is occurring. Progressives have always espoused civil liberty and social permissiveness while holding business to high standards of social responsibility. Libertarians have similarly sought small government's limited role in the lives of the people, but free markets for business.
To Tom K: a nanny is one whose role is in nurturing and raising children. A "liberal welfare state" would be considered a "nanny" government in my mind.
What we have is a "police state". One where the expansion of government has been almost exclusively in areas of security and law enforcement. The government keeps a sharp eye on everyone, and imprisons (or kills) those it considers to be a threat to the safety of the population. We have not expanded the nurturing side of government at all, rather we've drastically reduced governments' role as support system for the people.
Mary Poppins gave medicine with a spoonful of suger, while the constable was the one who fetched the stray kids from the park.
We have a constable, not a Poppins for government.

[brendog]

make that "sugar"

[Tom K]

I understand your point, Brendan, but cannot agree. One example of the spoonful of sugar that makes the current big-government medicine go down is the Medicare Prescription Drug bill. (I guess it's both the spoonful of sugar and the medicine, in that case). Another example is "protecting the homeland": not, in itself, a function inconsistent with nurturing.

What you describe as two different kinds of government are really one, I think. It has been described as the "welfare/warfare" state. While some who advance this argument take it a little far, I think there's a good deal to it. Check out LewRockwell.com (if you're interested and haven't already), and hope you get it on a good day (by which I mean one not devoted to bashing Abe Lincoln).

[brendog]

Tom - that concept is an oversimplification, like saying cancer and a cyst are the same disease because they share the common symptom of forming lumps. The preamble separates the purposes of government nicely by naming "general welfare" and "common defense". To cite any Bush administration undertaking as an institutional act of kindness directed to furthering the well-being of the citizenry is quite a stretch.
The single question/answer that will always clarify the ultimate, true aim of any government undertaking is "who's paying for it?".
When it's a welfate initiative, business is paying for it - ie the Maryland Fair Share Health Act. When it's constructed to benefit business, like the Medicare act you refer to (or the Iraq war), the taxpaying public foots the bill.
Thanks for the Lew Rockwell tip. I suppose even Honest Abe must be held to account for his radical Republicanism.