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
Moreover, most of these changes could be fixed without resorting to a 3rd party at all. It could all be done through vigrous primary campaigning.
Bad candidates are our own doing, not just Ken Mehlman's.
Primaries? :)
I'd want to see a numerical breakdown on that. Could it be that Republicans lost as many votes among traditional protectionist types and lunchbox conservatives as among free traders and enthusiastic free marketeers? That's probably true in the Midwest.
The problem may be that a lot of social conservatives weren't appeased by the administration's outreach to the evangelicals. Not everyone who's "socially conservative" is evangelical, just as not everyone who's "economically conservative" is a libertarian.
Those who deserted the party on the East Coast may have been "economic conservatives" or "fiscal conservatives" in some broad sense of the word, but far from libertarians.
remember the republican national commitee getting involved between chaffee and laffee for just one?
Don't think so. Lincoln, by winning the Civil War ended any argument that a state could secede. That premise was pretty much accepted from the Declaration of Independence up to the Civil War [Andy Jackson to the contrary]. Since the right to forcibly subdue a seceding state is not one of the enumerated Federal powers, it is logical to argue that the right of secession was reserved for the states by the 10th Amendment.
The 14th Amendment's due process clause made the states subject to proscriptions the Constitution placed on the Federal government. Another violation of the 10th.
I didn't say "a standing army." The point is whether liberals and Libertarians tend to be opposed to 1) the engagement of U.S. military might under almost any circumstances; 2) the masculine virtue of an effective army.
And the answer, much as I like many Libertarians, is yes.
I'm saying that my kids are to be politically and intellectually free not to be hassled by an undisciplined adult trying to exercise his freedom, if you see what I mean. Things like waving pornography at them, performing indecent acts in front of them, molesting them. (This is why entrepreneurs raise their families in Greenwich, rather than Greenwich Village.)
The purpose of the state enforcing certain moral laws is to spare fathers the inconvenience of eliminating offenders on the spot, which many are otherwise willing to do. It's just very time-consuming and discourages economic activity.
Not to turn this into a Civil War thread, but the power to put down domestic insurrection is in Article I, Sec. 8, and the States are forbidden to form a Confederacy under Article I, Sec. 10. The question as to whether the South could secede in an orderly, lawful manner never reached the courts before it resorted to armed insurrection. Following the unsuccessful attempt, secession was found to be unconstitutional by the USSC.
The 14th Amendment's due process clause made the states subject to proscriptions the Constitution placed on the Federal government. Another violation of the 10th.
This is where I was saying you were self contradictory. By definition, the 14th is PART of the Constitution. Since the 10th states, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." [emphasis mine], the 14th just further prohibits some powers to the States. A later amendment can supersede or modify an earlier section, but it cannot "violate" it.
The point is whether Libertarians tend to be opposed to 1) the engagement of U.S. military might under almost any circumstances; 2) the masculine virtue of an effective army.
And the answer, much as I like many Libertarians, is yes.
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Wrong answer..
Most libertarians on FR back the RLC position:
DEFENSE
11.1 U. S. military should be deployed only where there is a clear threat to vital U. S. interests and only with the consent of the U. S. Congress.
11.2 It is the duty of the federal government to provide a system to defend against missile attacks.
11.3 No branch of the military should be put in harm's way without a clear entrance and exit strategy and a goal, which when achieved, constitutes victory.
11.4 U. S military personnel should always be under U. S. command.
11.5 U. S. armed forces should be all-volunteer.
11.6 Military draft registration should be eliminated.
11.7 Foreign aid is often more harmful than helpful and should be curtailed.
REPUBLICAN LIBERTY CAUCUS POSITION STATEMENT
posted by Jim Robinson
Address:http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-rlc/721810/posts
. . . may not be the folks I'm referring to. I'm talking about Libertarians and liberals I've met and read generally.
Unsurprisingly, being a conservative, I agreed with the points on foreign policy you cited.
Yeah, right. My point is that if we had elected real conservatives, then maybe we'd have real border security. We had control, yet our worthless leadership let the dying MSM and the Dims define the issues.
Why? If this analysis is accurate, it just provides more evidence that the Republican "leadership" threw their support away by trying too hard to "move to the center". If they had had sense enough to remember what the election results looked like when Reagan was elected, and had any grasp of why, they would have done the sensible thing, and actually moved toward a more conservative platform. People who really value liberty would have had more reason to support them, and they would have had their traditional base of normal, sensible people supporting them wholeheartedly. This election result is solely the fault of the Republican politicians. The Libertarians and libertarians did what they usually do, and the conservatives did what they usually do. Anyone with one eye and bat's sense could have predicted that. Republican "leadership" has no one but themselves to blame for the losses.
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