New alliance?
A lot of Libertarians wondering should they shift their support to the Democratic party and replace the alliance with the conservative movement with a new alliance, this time with the Liberals. Accepting the reality that small government is only an ideal that cannot be achieved the Libertarian should form alliance with the party that will create the least damage and that will limit the growth of government and its intrusion on individual freedom.
Theoretically this is not a bad idea for Libertarian to become a swing power between the two parties and effect the national agenda by forming ad-hoc alliances with candidates that will commit to preserve individual freedom. However Libertarian voters have to be vigilant and make sure they are not being fooled to support a party, instead of specific candidates. Supporting someone a party my imply support to a candidate that still promote socialistic agenda of nationalize health care and other measures, under the slogan ” It takes a village…”. It is not different than supporting a party which choose as its candidate a compassionate conservative.
At the end of the day Libertarian should choose the better candidate not the lesser evil. And if both parties cannot nominate one that is a better Libertarian candidate there is always a third option.
Technorati Tags: Libertarianism - Swing votes - Clinton - Bush - Compassionate Conservatism
No tag for this post.Related posts
Rogel @ December 18, 2006
Didn’t the John Birch Society just publish in their magazine the most recent Conservatism Index showing that the average democratic U.S. Senator is actually more conservative than the average republican one? It all reminds me of the plain belly and star belly Sneechws (Seuss).
I’m unfamiliar with this article and be happy for a link. I wonder what is their definition for conservative. I suspect it is more the social conservative combine with left leaning economic which scares me twice
My pleasure. You can read the most recent of several articles published by The New American.
Not surprisingly the article differentiates between traditional and so called “Neo” conservatives which for the index is an important distinction. Bush-era conservatives tend to be big government and anti-privacy and it may be largely on these and similar points where the tables seem to be turning.
Thanks. I have some things to say about the many brands of conservatives. Sagar did a good job mapping most of them in his book “the elephant in the room”
Found an additional reference (actually the one that I first found) at the JBS Blog http://www.jbs.org/node/345
There is an ancient haiku I love that says:
Four gates
Under one moon
Four temples
It’s the one moon part that impresses me. We’re all, most of us, after the same thing. We all love our freedom. I’m the last person in the world the I would have thought would read a JB publication and while it hasn’t changed my party affiliation it has made me more open to being cooperative with the right.
Cheers.
Thanks for the link Chris. I think that the main measure we should use is how observant of the constitution are the candidates are. The only problem with this measure is, I’m afraid, that we will have nobody to vote for
On serious note, the CI measure suggested in the post you provided is a very good measure to examine how much our representative are devoted to protect our liberties. It is crossing the parties lines, as both parties are devoted for their own political power and not for the protection of the constitution.
[…] In my very simple litmus test of the 2008 presidential candidates John Edwards come as definite NO. His ideas about further involvement of the state in the practice of wealth distributation raising a big red flag. If the democrats will push candidated like Edwards they aren’t going to win the Libertarian votes, which might cost them a very good chance of taking the white house. […]
[…] And as last remark: I’m still waiting for the Democratic candidate that will try to appeal to the independent and Libertarian leaning votes and I didn’t see one yet. It is an historical chance for the Democrats to break the historical alliance between the Libertarian and the conservatives, which seems right now as something the democrats insist to miss. […]