As long as Democrats demagogue against business, support highly progressive taxes, embrace interventionist economic policies, trade tariffs, and a bigger regulatory state, they will never get the support of libertarians.
Libertarians oppose the Patriot Act and the religious right, but the fact is that those policies have limited effect on most people. But high taxes and regulations affect everyone. And since many libertarians are small business owners or at least highly sympathetic to small business, policies which burden small businesses with new rules and regulations tend to hit them where they live.
And on paper the Democrats may be for more social freedoms, but then on paper the Republicans are for smaller government. The reality in both cases is quite different.
The Democrats have controlled congress for years. They’ve controlled the White House for almost two years. Just what have they done in that time that Libertarians like? Let’s see…
- Gitmo’s still there
- Gay Marriage hasn’t been legalized
- Pot hasn’t been legalized
- The Patriot act is still there
- Warrantless Wiretapping is still there
- The Presidency is still clamoring for more power and being secretive
- The promise of transparent government turned into even less transparency than Bush
- Afghanistan is being ramped up
Not a single thing that caused libertarians to dislike Bush has been reversed. And in the meantime, Democrats have used the stimulus to funnel money to government union employees and cronies. They promise increased regulation over the economy. They want higher taxes on the rich and on business. They’re trying to push through cap and trade and card check despite both programs being overwhelmingly unpopular. They stopped holding town hall meetings once they found out their policies weren’t very popular. They’re passing laws at midnight and slipping in amendments from lobbyists just like the Republicans did.
Just what exactly have the Democrats done that would make any libertarian remotely consider voting for them? What steps have they taken to expand personal liberty and reduce the impact of government on the lives of the people?
And defining ‘fiscal conservative’ as being simply about deficits is rhetorical sleight of hand. To the extent that libertarians are fiscally conservative, it means they want a balanced budget in the context of smaller government. No fiscal conservative I’ve ever met would be happy with doubling the size of government so long as taxes doubled to match.
From the standpoint of libertarians and libertarian-leaning independents, the Democrats really blew it in this election cycle. After the big government, big spending Bush years, Libertarians were actually ready to accept an alternative. There was talk of ‘liberaltarianism’ in libertarian circles. A lot of them voted for Obama, on his promise of smaller deficits, smaller but smarter government, an end to race demagoguery, more transparent government, legalized gay marriage, and his generally moderate and calm persona.
Had Democrats acted more like Bill Clinton’s neo-liberal Democrats (you know, the guy who declared “The era of big government is over”, and who reformed welfare and signed NAFTA), Obama would have a 65% approval rating right now, and you guys would be maintaining your big majorities in the next election.
But no, Obama’s promises turned out to be a smoke screen. The Democrats that were elected turned out to be old school lefties, driven by issues of inequality, race, big labor, antipathy to business and markets, a belief that governments should manage business and markets, antipathy to free trade, and in general pushing policies that would result in a more statist America.
Very few Americans literally describe themselves as ‘libertarian’. That may be because of the fringe views of some prominent libertarians, or because people generally identify with the two party system and don’t embrace third parties. But when you actually poll their views, you find a large percentage of Americans generally fall on the libertarian axis in the sense that they prefer smaller government to larger government, fewer regulations to more regulations, balanced budgets to deficits, lower taxes to high taxes, etc.
The Democrats had a chance to capture those people. They blew it. That’s why Obama’s popularity is down in the mid 40’s, and congress much lower. Two years ago, libertarian blogs and forums were full of debates over whether a good libertarian should vote Democrat or Republican. Today, not so much. In fact, a lot of commentary consists of Obama-voting libertarians apologizing for their vote, and other libertarians screaming, “I told you so!” at them. It’s quite tedious, actually.
In any event, the short window of opportunity for Democrats to court the libertarians has passed. You’ll find approximately zero libertarian support for Democrats in the next election, which is the main reason they’re going to get hammered.