Libertarians
My prior post generated some followup when it was linked by Brad DeLong, including from David Boaz in the comments (and this post at a blog called Free Advice). This issue is important -- the Republican Party, broadly construed -- is going to have to get its fiscal policy straight if it wants to earn its way back into positions of power, rather than merely being there when the Democrats evenutally falter.
Reactions to the prior post suggest that the tea party participants were protesting not just high taxes but higher spending, particularly from the stimulus and bailout plans. I am still left wondering where the outrage was over all of the spending during the eight years of the Bush administration. The budget wasn't in balance even before the current downturn -- that's why the question, "Where were the Medicare Tea Parties?" is a good one. You get your credibility on this issue only by opposing higher spending even when the incumbents are giving you other things that you like, including conservative supreme court justices, lower taxes, looser regulations, and the like.
From David Boaz of the Cato Institute, who visited Dartmouth yesterday:
“Too many advocates of small government still have this lingering attachment to the Republican party,” Boaz said. “It’s like being a battered wife — how long do you wait to leave?”
Perhaps the more interesting part of the analogy is, Where do you go when you leave? Typically, it is not to another partner, but to a period in which you are not in a relationship until you can recover from what just happened and make the changes that are needed so it never happens again.
Are the Libertarians doing that? I'm not so sure. Consider more of what Boaz said:
Boaz described the recent Republican tea parties in protest of tax day as “the revival of a freedom movement.” He also referenced a recent advertisement run by the Cato Institute in several major U.S. newspapers, including The New York Times. The advertisement discussed perceived flaws in the economic stimulus package.
