Exhibit A- Small government conservatives and libertarians are fed up with the Republican Party.
Conservatism itself has changed markedly in recent years, forsaking the old fusionist synthesis in favor of a new and altogether unattractive species of populism. The old formulation defined conservatism as the desire to protect traditional values from the intrusion of big government; the new one seeks to promote traditional values through the intrusion of big government. Just look at the causes that have been generating the real energy in the conservative movement of late: building walls to keep out immigrants, amending the Constitution to keep gays from marrying, and imposing sectarian beliefs on medical researchers and families struggling with end-of-life decisions.
As a string of recent books attests, the conservative embrace of a right-wing Leviathan has left libertarian-minded intellectuals feeling left out in the cold. Bruce Bartlett, a Treasury Department official in the Reagan and Bush I administrations, blasted Bush II in Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy (and got fired from his conservative think tank for his efforts). Cato Institute scholar Stephen Slivinski followed up with Buck Wild, an exposé of GOP fiscal incontinence. In The Elephant in the Room, New York Post columnist Ryan Sager bemoaned the rise of big-government conservatism and warned that excessive pandering to evangelicals would rupture the movement. And, most recently, The New Republic's own Andrew Sullivan denounced the right's fundamentalist turn in The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, How to Get It Back.
Lindsey is particularly correct in arguing that this is not a by-product of the Republican Party not being true to its conservative roots, but rather a by-product of what "conservatism" means in this country. The right-wing activists who define the conservative movement have shifted in their views toward a greater toleration of big government, as long as the big government is advancing their own xenophobic agenda. This is putting tremendous pressure on libertarian-leaning voters who previously were uncomfortable with the Religious Right, but voted Republican out of opposition to big government and a belief that the theocons just wanted to be left alone. Now the intentions are clear, the theocons want to wield the power of the government, they don't want to be left alone.
Exhibit B- Libertarians are trending Democratic.
Libertarian-leaning voters started drifting away from the GOP even before Katrina, civil war in Iraq, and Mark Foley launched the general stampede. In their recent Cato-published study "The Libertarian Vote," David Boaz and David Kirby analyzed polling data from Gallup, the American National Election Studies, and the Pew Research Center and concluded that 13 percent of the population, or 28 million voting-age Americans, can be fairly classified as libertarian-leaning. Back in 2000, this group voted overwhelmingly for Bush, supporting him over Al Gore by a 72-20 margin. By 2004, however, John Kerry--whose only discernible libertarian credential was that he wasn't George W. Bush--got 38 percent of the libertarian vote, while Bush's support fell to 59 percent. Congressional races showed a similar trend. In 2002, libertarians favored Republican House candidates by a 70-23 spread and Republican Senate candidates by a 74-15 margin. Things tightened up considerably in 2004, though, as the GOP edge fell to 53-44 in House races and 54-43 in Senate contests.
Most of the trend toward the Democratic Party has been because we are the only major alternative to the Republican Party. John Kerry was not a Democratic who appealed to libertarians. Flip-flopping on the War in Iraq, I think he also failed to deliver a message that would resonant with people angry about the Patriot Act, No Child Left Behind, the growing deficit, and other signs that the Republican Party was drunk on an orgy of power. I believe that someone like Howard Dean would have appealed to many more libertarians.
Exhibit C- Liberals and libertarians share a common ground, Part I.
First off, we'll focus on the issues where there is a clear common ground that liberals and libertarians can work together on.
Liberals and libertarians already share considerable common ground, if they could just see past their differences to recognize it. Both generally support a more open immigration policy. Both reject the religious right's homophobia and blastocystophilia. Both are open to rethinking the country's draconian drug policies. Both seek to protect the United States from terrorism without gratuitous encroachments on civil liberties or extensions of executive power. And underlying all these policy positions is a shared philosophical commitment to individual autonomy as a core political value.
The more that Democrats run candidates that are strong on issues of social rights and civil liberties, the better off they will be in appealing to liberals. Protecting science from theocratic restrictions, for example, is a clear winning issue for Democrats.
Exhibit D- Liberals and libertarians share a common ground, Part II.
There's no doubt that economic issues may seem to be a wedge between liberals and libertarians, but Lindsey offers some specific proposals where there is common ground that can be pushed forward as an agenda. Here are a few he provides, with emphasis added.
The basic outlines of a viable compromise are clear enough. On the one hand, restrictions on competition and burdens on private initiative would be lifted to encourage vigorous economic growth and development. At the same time, some of the resulting wealth-creation would be used to improve safety-net policies that help those at the bottom and ameliorate the hardships inflicted by economic change. Translating such abstractions into workable policy doubtlessly would be contentious. But the most difficult thing here is not working out details--it is agreeing to try. And, as part of that, agreeing on how to make the attempt: namely, by treating economic policy issues as technical, empirical questions about what does and doesn't work, rather than as tests of ideological commitment.
Allow me to hazard a few more specific suggestions about what a liberal-libertarian entente on economics might look like. Let's start with the comparatively easy stuff: farm subsidies and other corporate welfare. Progressive organizations like Oxfam and the Environmental Working Group have already joined with free-market groups in pushing for ag-policy reform. And it's no wonder, since the current subsidy programs act as a regressive tax on low-income families here at home while depressing prices for exporters in poor countries abroad--and, to top it off, the lion's share of the loot goes to big agribusiness, not family farmers. Meanwhile, the president of Cato and the executive director of the Sierra Club have come out together in favor of a zero-subsidy energy policy. A nascent fusionism on these issues already exists; it merely needs encouragement and emphasis.
Tax reform also offers the possibility of win-win bargains. The basic idea is simple: Shift taxes away from things we want more of and onto things we want less of. Specifically, cut taxes on savings and investment, cut payroll taxes on labor, and make up the shortfall with increased taxation of consumption. Go ahead, tax the rich, but don't do it when they're being productive. Tax them instead when they're splurging--by capping the deductibility of home-mortgage interest and tax incentives for purchasing health insurance. And tax everybody's energy consumption. All taxes impose costs on the economy, but at least energy taxes carry the silver lining of encouraging conservation--plus, because such taxes exert downward pressure on world oil prices, foreign oil monopolies would wind up getting stuck with part of the bill. Here again, fusionism is already in the air. Gore has proposed a straight-up swap of payroll taxes for carbon taxes, while Harvard economist (and former chairman of George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers) Greg Mankiw has been pushing for an increase in the gasoline tax.
Exhibit E- Capitalism fuels social liberalism.
The alliance between liberals and libertarians also makes sense when you consider that the economic dynamism of capitalism has fueled the social liberalism of the past century. While the fusionist alliance works to ensure that the wealth provided by economic growth reaches everyone, it also ensures that people continue to have the freedom of social rights and civil liberties.
Furthermore, it has become increasingly clear that capitalism's relentless dynamism and wealth-creation--the institutional safeguarding of which lies at the heart of libertarian concerns--have been pushing U.S. society in a decidedly progressive direction. The civil rights movement was made possible by the mechanization of agriculture, which pushed blacks off the farm and out of the South with immense consequences. Likewise, feminism was encouraged by the mechanization of housework. Greater sexual openness, as well as heightened interest in the natural environment, are among the luxury goods that mass affluence has purchased. So, too, are secularization and the general decline in reverence for authority, as rising education levels (prompted by the economy's growing demand for knowledge workers) have promoted increasing independence of mind.
Conclusion
Libertarians are a large swing group that are fed up with the Republicans and open to the Democratic Party. Largely agreeing with liberals on social issues, they are natural allies in the political fight against the xenophobic right. Finding ways to build a common economic agenda, as outlined above, would solidify the appeal the Democratic Party has to libertarian voters.
