Posted on 11/08/2006 8:08:12 AM PST by Matchett-PI
Has Our Time Come? http://www.hereticalideas.com/
A **new study from the Cato Institute [see link below] suggests that libertarians might be the new swing vote.
The libertarian vote is in play. At some 13 percent of the electorate, it is sizable enough to swing elections. Pollsters, political strategists, candidates, and the media should take note of it.
After examining the relevant polling data, Cato concludes that libertarians and libertarian sympathizers constitute somewhere between 10 and 20% of the American population. Some explanations are offered as to why libertarians constitute such a bigger constituency than one might expect. First is that libertarians tend not to be as well-organized as other interest groups. Most groups that organize and try to exert political influence want some sort of government action: unions want favorable labor laws passed, the Christian Coalition wants abortion outlawed and anti-homosexual laws passed, environmentalists want pollution restricted and ecosystems protected, businesses want favorable tax and commercial laws. Libertarians generally dont want government to take action, and are therefore less likely to organize into a pressure group because of that. It also argues that the difficulty people have in breaking out of the left-right liberal-conservative paradigm of politics keeps populists (authoritarians) and libertarians underrepresented. While most political scholarship accepts the inadequacy of a simple one-dimensional view of politics, it hasnt sunk down into popular culture as strongly. Often talk shows and debate programs on television and radio will feature someone from the left and someone from the right, squeezing libertarians out of the picture.
An unexplored reason that might contribute is the higher prevalence of libertarianism among younger people than older people. The Cato paper notes this statistic but doesnt explore its relationship to voter turnout. It explains the phenomenon this way. Younger people were more influenced by 2 of the most significant individualist movements of the 20th century: the 60s counter culture and the 80s Reagan Revolution. As a result, younger generations have seen both the socially liberal and the economically conservative side of individualism and turn to libertarianism as a way to emulate both ideals. The downside is that since younger people in general are less likely to vote, libertarians wind up underrepresented at the polls.
But dont libertarian have to swing their votes to become a swing vote? Well, more and more frequently libertarian-minded people are losing the loyalty to the party they usually vote for (mostly the GOP), which puts their vote as a bloc in play.
Many commentators noted the high turnout in the 2004 election. Nationally, voter turnout increased 6.1 percent. That might help explain some of the swing in 2004. According to ANES data, libertarians reported turning out to vote at higher percentages than total respondents in 2000 and even higher in 2004.
This libertarian swing trend is particularly pronounced by age. Libertarians aged 1829 many of whom were new voters in 2004 voted 7142 for Kerry. Libertarians aged 3049 voted almost completely the reverse, 7221 for Bush.
Going back to the generational argument, I imagine that older individuals who can remember a time when the religious Right wasnt nearly as omnipresent of a force in the Republican Party and therefore dont automatically associate it with tirades about the moral dangers of homosexuality and feticide. So I can understand younger libertarians leaning more democratic than older ones who might remember the time of more Goldwater-like or even maybe Reagan-like Republicans.
What does all this mean in practical terms? What will we see coming out of the major political parties Conservatives resist cultural change and personal liberation; liberals resist economic dynamism and globalization. Libertarians embrace both. The political party that comes to terms with that can win the next generation.
It would really be great to see both political parties converge to a libertarian center. But as the article points out, the nature of libertarians makes them much harder to corral than other groups, which makes attracting us to their political parties a far more expensive and riskier proposition than going after churchgoers and soccer moms. Perhaps in time it will happen. But I doubt it will happen very soon.
** http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1718392/posts
LOL! And your question was typical BS. You asked who was more conservative, then gave two names...a Republican who was running for office and a Democrat who wasn't...and they weren't even from the same state.
Yeah, that worked out real well yesterday.
The Cato institute and libertarianism is not represented by the Libertarian party. It is clear that you do not understand liberty and libertarianism which is the theory that describes liberty and justifies it. Libertarianism is the foundation of conservatism, because liberty is what is to be conserved.
The turnout in this last election was around 35%. Of those voting straight R, at least 23-25% adhere to libertarian philosophy and they are raitonal, effective thinkers. They believe in liberty, they voted and they voted straight R. In your ignorance, you've confused libertarianism with the Liberttarian party, which does not get most of their votes from those that would otherwise vote R.
The Rs lost, because of high dem turnout for reasons of raiding the public treasury and a failure of the Rs to effectively convince the public that the war in Iraq was needed and justified. The blame goes to the R party for their failure to get out the vote. It is simply a shirking of responsibility to attemp to blame others, a good 23-25% of those who did vote and voted R, for the R party's failure to make and put forward convincing arguements to move a good portion of the population that didn't vote.
Your contention that authoritarianism would fly is rubbish, because only around 10-12% of the R voters hold to that philosophy. It is arbitrary and the only effect it has on those that didn't show up to vote is to annoy them. Amongst those that voted for some Ds, that annoyance was their principle motivation for voting D. Also, for your information, many of the Libertarian Party voters are otherwise Ds. The connection is simply stupidity and most often, simply to attempt legalized drug use. Those who know and understand what libertarianism is are not stupid, and they are 23-25% of the regular R turnout.
http://wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52857
Rush Limbaugh's opinion is dead on. Don't blame the Libertarians. The Republicans are to blame.
Fixed it for you.
Well, then, obviously the GOP needs to get cracking on a libertarian platform that will win those voters back in 2008.
You get the real intent behind the second amendment.It's being nickel and dimed away by both parties. kudos
Quite a few here do. Others, part of the "reasonable restrictions" socialist crowd whether they admit it or not.
The word free still existed in Newspeak, but it could only be used in such statements as "This dog is free from lice" or "This field is free from weeds". It could not be used in its old sense of "politically free" or "intellectually free" since political and intellectual freedom no longer existed even as concepts.
--George Orwell, Nineteeen Eighty-Four
LOL -- shifting gears to Orwell's other well-known book, I propose that our resident libertarian-bashers replace the word "Libertarian" with the word "Snowball": it's shorter, easier to spell, and conveys exactly the same miniscule cargo of intellectual content.
BWAAAAHAHAHAHA!!!! I've seen drunks living on heat grates who exhibit less disconnection from reality than this statement.
Foley was out the day it was found out.
Foley was out back when Hastert was first warned about him? What was that guy in his seat up until last month? A clone? A hologram? An android?
Getting rid of a bunch of whinny, fickle, cut and run isolationists, perpetually unhappy loosertarians would help the Republican party immensely.
Yep, we don't need any of them pesky voters. Why, look at how well we've done by chasing a bunch of them off just yesterday!
Ramesh Ponnuru has a cover story in the new National Review about Cato's view of things: according to him, there are fewer libertarians or "economic conservatives" in the country than traditionalists or social conservatives, so however you slice it, the libertarians aren't going to play the leading role in the Republican party.
Yeah, that worked so well yesterday....
just where did you get this pearl of wisdom you so freely dispense? You seem to be locked into the enshrined two party mentality that infects so many. Your breed wants status quo no matter if both parties have identical aims that are no good for the country. The only reason a viable third party has yet to rise up is both parties have a lock on the electoral mechanisms. And btw the 'throwing away your vote' on a third rings hollow if one gets the 5% needed to be part of the debates.
LOL, no. :p
Whine whine whine....
btt
Bookmark.
That, and most 3rd party people are too lazy to try to build an organization from the ground up. How often do you get your door knocked on by libertarian candidates, and how often do you see them passing out flyers, posting signs, or setting up local party hqs?
Also, they want to go straight to the big leagues instead of winning local, county, and state level seats where they might actually have a chance.
As long as these two things hold true, they'll never go anywhere except in their own imaginations.
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