The 24 Types of Libertarian

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@Sam_Stone

Back up a minute here. The original issue was whether libertarians could be attracted to the Democratic party.

Most can’t because they are actually Republicans.

They moved to the left and passed a huge stimulus package that was primarily a giveaway to Democratic constituencies.

As opposed to the Republican stimulus package that was half accelerated depreciation. The Democratic package was only 1/3 tax cuts but they were tax cuts for people who make less than $250K. Teh rest of the stilumus went to things like medicaid, unemployment, and education and some mythical shovel ready projects.

They rammed through a health care plan that was unpopular. They then lost all those libertarians and independents who decided that the Democrats were worse than the Republicans in terms of promoting the overall goals of libertarians.

The health care plan looked a lot like the health care plan that was advertised during teh debates. It was unpopular amongst Republicans and perhaps the timing was off it shouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone.

Your argument is that they didn’t have the votes to do everything. But that’s precisely because they abandoned the center. Had they been more moderate, and done things that appealed to libertarians, they would have had those votes.

The problem wasn’t that they weren’t moderate enough, the problem was that the economy stank. If we were having a V shaped recovery, the Democrats would have been able to msuter the courage to vote for health care.

It wasn’t an inevitability that the Republicans would close ranks and refuse to play ball…

Because that what Republicans do

• there were plenty of Republicans willing to give Obama the benefit of the doubt.

Not on capital hill there weren’t. Some were resigned to hugeDemocratic majorities and what that meant but the crappy economy gave them teh courage to be onstructionists.

[quote]
It wasn’t inevitable that the blue dogs would jump ship and make it impossible to find a filibuster-proof majority…[/wuote]

because of the economy.

For example, a health care plan that would have included Tort Reform and a catastrophic insurance component instead of the bureaucracy-heavy health exchanges and mandatory insurance provisions would have gotten at least 10-15 votes from Republicans,

So if the Democrats adopted a Republican helath care bill, the Republicans would have been OK with it? To be fair teh Republicans could have proposed that tort reform,/catastrophic insurance plan in 2005 and the Democrats would probably have gone along with it… And then fixed it in 2009.

and would have had majority support from the public.

Public support hinged entirely on the economy, don’t fool yourself. The public knew that Obama wanted the type of health care reform that we have today (it was the centerpeice of several debates) and they still voted for him in overwhelming numbers. They are expressing disatisfaction with teh economy.

A stimulus that was targeted more towards small business could have gotten much more support.

Perhaps from Libertarians but it wouldn’t have worked. The first stimulus package (remember that one?) was 50% accelerated depreciation and that sort of thing has ZERO stimulative effect. Economist can actually predict whether food stamps or accelerated depreciation has more stimulative effect. The stimulus bill got broad bi-partisan support and to be fair it wasn’t big enough by half.

The financial reform bill could have included reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to show the Democrats were operating fairly, and it would have more support.

I’m not adverse to GSE reform but lets be very very clear. Its one thing to listen to Limbaugh and Beck talk about how the housing crisis was created by the GSEs and teh CRA its another thing to expect to get away with implying that it was their fault on a board debvoted to fighting ignorance. If every mortgage was a conforming mortgage or a mortgaghe under the CRA program, we wouldn’t have a problem today. Would we? (sure tehre were a lot of other factors including Greenspan teh Ayn rand disciple’s monetary policies but the GSE were not a but for cause of the recession excpet in a very historical context).

The Democrats could calm frayed nerves and frazzled markets by announcing that cap and trade and card check were ill-advised during a recessing and agree to table discussion of either until at least 2012. Obama could have ratched down his divisive rhetoric like he did before the election.

I agree taht cap and trade is stupid and that the CEO of Duke has better ideas but the opposition to cardcheck is a lot of conservative handwaving.

There are a lot of places where the Democrats could have found common ground with ‘liberaltarians’. They chose not to. Now they’ve lost them, and probably won’t have another chance to get them for a generation. The level of disillusionment among libertarians is extremely high right now.

yeah until teh Republicans screw things up even worse (but they;ll probably get tax cuts so maybe they will stick with the Repubnlicans.

On the other hand, you could make the argument that this whole ‘re-alignment’ was folly, because libertarians and democrats really have very little common ground. That’s what I believe.

Because you’re a Republican at heart.

I think Democrats are fundamentally statists, and libertarians are fundamentally individualists. I think libertarians are naturally much closer to the Republican party, at least in terms of what both groups claim to believe in, if not how they actually govern.

Republicans without teh tax breaks would be of no use to the Libertarians

[Derleth]

@Rand_Rover

Republicans may spend money on wars you disagree with, but they don’t enact new long-term entitlements that entail spiraling amounts of spending forever into the future.

Yes, they do: Look at the military, our fully-Socialized welfare force. The American Armed Forces don’t march on their stomachs, they march on the dole. Everything from the clothes they (the enlisted) wear to the education they receive is tax-funded. I’ve certainly never heard of someone dropping out of Basic because they couldn’t make tuition. I’ve never heard of someone having to take out a loan to put themselves through another hitch in Afghanistan, either. Hell, they even have Socialized Medicine!

So, why aren’t the small-government no-deficit Republicans working to reduce the debt load we take on by acting as momma, poppa, shoulder to cry on, and healthcare provider to all of the uniforms on welfare?

[Sam_Stone]

It’s not true that Republicans don’t establish long-term entitlements. Bush is responsible for the prescription drug entitlement. Bush senior advocated for more entitlements. Medicare and Social Security were both bipartisan programs.

Republicans pay lip service to reforming entitlements when they’re out of power, but when they’re in power they generally do nothing, or even join the Democrats in expanding them.

The new health care plan is the only entitlement that can really be said to belong to the Democrats alone.

[Steve_MB]

The 24 Types Of Authoritarian

“No fair making fun of our strawman arguments!”