David Boaz

In the Wall Street Journal, Dan Henninger writes admiringly of Sen. Joe Lieberman and the Republicans who are flocking to Connecticut to campaign for him, notably Jack Kemp. The Boston Globe adds that many Republican donors close to the White House are donating to Lieberman: former Bush campaign manager Joe Allbaugh, former ambassador Mel Sembler, former Sen. Don Nickles, “and the heads of several Texas-based corporations.” Republican strategists tell the Globe that Karl Rove’s publicized phone call to Lieberman was a signal to Republican donors and politicians.

What are these Republicans doing? They’re subordinating every tenet of the Republican philosophy to the war in Iraq. That’s the only issue on which Lieberman is in line with Republican or conservative principles. Lieberman has a lifetime rating of 17 from the American Conservative Union. But maybe he’s getting better? No, his rating was 8 in 2005. On government spending, the National Taxpayers Union rates him 9, slightly worse than Dodd, Feinstein, or Boxer.

Lieberman votes against tax cuts and spending cuts. He’s coauthor of a bill to implement the Kyoto Protocol. He votes for gun control and mandatory seat-belt laws, and against tort reform. He votes to restrict political speech (the McCain-Feingold act) and to punish people for “hate crimes.”

It’s understandable that Republicans don’t want Ned Lamont in the Senate. But to campaign for a lifelong big-government liberal simply because he supports President Bush’s increasingly unsupportable war in Iraq is to declare limited government across a wide range of issues less important than this failing war.

Suddenly, a week after David Kirby and I published our study “The Libertarian Vote,” journalists and politicos are taking note of libertarian voters, along with disgruntled economic conservatives and social conservatives. In a story on our study, The Economist writes:
AMERICA may be the land of the free, but Americans who favour …

Suddenly, a week after David Kirby and I published our study “The Libertarian Vote,” journalists and politicos are taking note of libertarian voters, along with disgruntled economic conservatives and social conservatives. In a story on our study, The Economist writes:

AMERICA may be the land of the free, but Americans who favour both economic and social freedom have no political home. The Republican Party espouses economic freedom — ie, low taxes and minimal regulation — but is less keen on sexual liberation. The Democratic Party champions the right of homosexuals to do their thing without government interference, but not businesspeople. Libertarian voters have an unhappy choice. Assuming they opt for one of the two main parties, they can vote to kick the state out of the bedroom, or the boardroom, but not both.

And that, of course, is why our study found that the 15 percent of American voters who are libertarian swung sharply toward the Democrats in 2004. Although they usually vote Republican, they’re not committed to the GOP. And they realized that the Bush Republicans have not been delivering fiscal responsibility, federalism, or any of the other policies that libertarians and other voters expect from Republicans.

If you think I have a starry-eyed view of some halcyon past when the Republican Party actually believed in small government, check out this Washington Post article that says that gays “hold a tenuous, complicated spot within the ranks of the GOP, whose earlier libertarian, live-and-let-live values have been ground down by the wedge issue of opposition to gay rights.”

Read more…

In his writings about “libertarian Democrats,” Markos “Kos” Moulitsas always cites Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer as Exhibit A. In the current Cato Unbound symposium, he writes:
Mountain West Democrats are leading the charge. At the vanguard is Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer, who won his governorship the same day George Bush was …

Oh, somewhere in this favoured land the sun is shining bright,
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light;
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout,
But there is no joy in Gotham � mighty Beltran has struck out.

Hat tip: Ernest Lawrence Thayer.

In his writings about “libertarian Democrats,” Markos “Kos” Moulitsas always cites Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer as Exhibit A. In the current Cato Unbound symposium, he writes:

Mountain West Democrats are leading the charge. At the vanguard is Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer, who won his governorship the same day George Bush was winning Montana 58 to 38 percent. While the theme of Republican corruption played a big role in Schweitzer’s victory, he also ran on a decidedly libertarian Democrat message.

Hope springs eternal. But alas, in Cato’s “Fiscal Policy Report Card on America’s Governors,” released Thursday, Schweitzer gets an F for his taxing and spending policies. Author Stephen Slivinski writes, “Spending in his first proposed budget exploded.” Plus he reinstated an expiring tax.

We’re still waiting for a libertarian Democrat. Really. We’d love to find one.

Oh, somewhere in this favoured land the sun is shining bright,
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light;
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout,
But there is no joy in Gotham — mighty Beltran has struck out.

Hat tip: Ernest Lawrence Thayer.

Washington Post headlines Thursday read “Poll Shows Support for Tax Increase” (front page) and “In N.Va., Open to More Taxes” (jump page). And on the website “Poll Shows Support for Tax Increase.” Well . . . sort of.

It’s true that voters in Northern Virginia (the Washington suburbs), though not the rest …

Washington Post headlines Thursday read “Poll Shows Support for Tax Increase” (front page) and “In N.Va., Open to More Taxes” (jump page). And on the website “Poll Shows Support for Tax Increase.” Well . . . sort of.

It’s true that voters in Northern Virginia (the Washington suburbs), though not the rest of Virginia, want to spend more money on roads. And they support allowing voters to approve local tax increases for roads. But if you read down to the 19th paragraph, on the second jump page, you’ll find that they don’t actually like the idea of raising taxes. Even in Northern Virginia, only 21 percent of respondents said that raising taxes was a good way to pay for increased transportation spending. Twenty-nine percent preferred tolls, and 22 percent said other spending should be reduced. In the rest of Virginia, tolls were more popular and tax increases even less popular.

Sometimes it just seems that journalists like taxes. Which is their right as Americans. But they should be careful about how they present voters’ opinions. In this case, even though voters would like to spend more on transportation, they believe either that users should pay through tolls or that less-essential spending could be found somewhere in the state’s $37 billion annual budget. Seventeen percent statewide seems like fairly minimal “Support for Tax Increase.”

Colleges often have to decide what their rules are about language that offends people. Is a professor’s criticism of affirmative action offensive to black students Is a gay-rights group’s advocacy offensive to Christian or morally conservative students And people can debate how to weigh free speech versus a nurturing atmosphere …