[Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus]

Truely, I hope you are not making the case that the GOP candidate proposed economic libertarianism. His proposal to the the recession was to “get to the heart of the problem” and have the Federal Government buy up bad mortgages. Not a free markets idea.

I'm not making the case that he was OUR view of the ideal economic libertarian, but I would say that the rhetoric he was campaigning on was much more so than what Obama was churning out (which would be hard not to do, admittedly). We need to face it, however, that McCain's rhetoric about less spending/lower taxes - which are the heart and soul of the "soft" economic libertarianism of Reagan and the GOP for the past 30 years - didn't resonate with the voters.

[ellery]

We need to face it, however, that McCain's rhetoric about less spending/lower taxes - which are the heart and soul of the "soft" economic libertarianism of Reagan and the GOP for the past 30 years - didn't resonate with the voters.

I disagree. It's not that the message didn't resonate. The problem is that given the spending excesses of the GOP and McCain's own high-spending proposals, the less spending/lower taxes rhetoric was not believable.