Everybody in the high-IQ sliver of the blogosphere is talking about Brink Lindsey of the Cato Institute's call for libertarians to dump their relationship with the Republicans and team up with the Democrats as "liberaltarians."
Funny how the libertarians waited until after the election to debate whether they should jump on the Democrat's bandwagon...
Do you imagine Stanley Greenberg and Ruy Teixara and the other serious Democratic pollsters and electoral strategists are sitting around clinking champagne glasses together over the possibility that the tiny fraction of the electorate that is libertarian might come over to the Democrats' side? Me, neither. As Stalin might ask, "How many divisions do the libertarians have?"
Libertarians are much more prevalent in the far right edge of the Web's Bell Curve than they are in the voting booth.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
December 9, 2006
Liberaltarian?
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2 comments:
Yes, one might imagine Stalin asking that. Although the original challenge was about the Pope.
The Pope is still here.
Stalin? Communism in the recently-departed Pope's homeland? Communism in the Soviet Union? The Soviet Union itself? Well...not such fabulous staying power, for them.
I won't blasphemously claim for my fellow libertarians the mandate accorded the successor of Peter by the Almighty, but I will take this opportunity to point out that Stalin wasn't exactly the best judge of the currents of history.
It's also worth pointing out that the argument over whether libertarians should switch to the Democrats is not limited to, and indeed not even principally about, the tiny minority of folks who pull the "L" lever in the voting booth. The fact that the debate is phrased in terms of abandoning an alliance with the Republicans (an alliance obviously not respected by people who don't, you know, VOTE FOR REPUBLICANS) ought to make that pretty clear. Instead it's about people whose political opinions are generally aligned with libertarianism, but who nevertheless tend to operate within the confines of the two major political parties.
An accurate census of such people is difficult, and every number ever proffered is subject to attack for one reason or another, but there's no debate at all over the fact that this is a much larger group than the membership or voting base of the Libertarian Party...and the most reliable numbers put it larger than the margin of victory in every presidential election of the past 20 years.
I understand there are quite a few socially moderate, economically conservative people in the mountain states who are swinging Democrat. The socially liberal, economically moderate people in the Northeastern suburbs went Democrat a long time ago. Hell, Lincoln Chafee claimed he wasn't going to vote for Bush and still got creamed, even though he had a *60 percent approval rating*!
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