It’s good to see Frank back posting at NFLL, and it’s interesting to see that he’s calling himself a libertarian now, but I don’t entirely endorse his position in the linked post. Frank says:
Libertarians who continue to vote Republican slavishly, and I claim voting in this election is voting slavishly, face a very real threat of disenfranchisement. The starkest example of the counter productivity of this behavior is the black vote. As voters black people tend to fall to the right on cultural issues, yet the Democratic Party is clearly far left on cultural issues, why doesn’t such a large constituency have more sway? Because the black community has not held them accountable by abandoning Democratic candidates (at least not yet). Mostly because of an instinctive reaction against Republicanism. The same is true of libertarians; having grown accustomed to voting red, they are loath to change tack. They shoyuldn’t [sic] be, this is a recipe for marginalization. If libertarians don’t flex their muscle they’ll lose it, which would be a shame for American politics.
I hate to break it to him, I do, but simply moving to the Democratic Party isn’t going to get we of the classically liberal mindset any more attention. The problem isn’t specifically with the Republican party, although I would certainly agree that they’ve been busilly ignoring their libertarian quasi-supporters since about 2000, but rather with the entire two-party system. The problems are endemic, and make total sense in a public choice framework, but I’m not convinced simply rooting for the other team will help us out any. Especially given how small a minority libertarians already are.
I’ve felt, at least for the last couple of years, that the best possible outcomes for the libertarian among us is complete partisan dead-lock. That’s usually best achieved by a slim majority by one party in Congress and the opposite party in the Whitehouse. That seems to guarantee that the least will happen, and when nothing happens nothing bad happens. Remember when Newt shut down the government? That was awesome. But if one party is allowed to control both elected branches of government at the same time, you end up with The Great Society or the current mess.
Which is why my proposal for a libertarian voting strategy makes use of partisanship rather than trying to take over one of the parties or give one in particular our support. It’s a pretty simple strategy, really: vote for gridlock, vote against the incumbent except where it interferes with #1. That is, if you think Congress is held in majority by the same party that holds the Presidency, vote for the opposing party across the board. I’m guess that the optimal outcome is a moderate Democrat in the Whitehouse and a Republican Congress, but the opposite would be fine as well. By playing both sides against each other, we can keep them from doing anything too egregious, and I think that’s the best we can hope for at this point. Would a Republican President have signed the Medicare Drug Benefit if it came from a bunch of Democrats? Doubtful.
