Libertarian Think Tank

I got wind that there was an effort to draft Alaska’s Governor, Sarah Palin to serve as John “Washington Changed Me” McCain’s Vice President. I didn’t realize the scope of the movement until I learned that Newt Gingrich is pushing the idea as well.

I’ll make this quick:

Why would any real conservative want to see that disaster? Sarah Palin is a faithful conservative. She spanked incumbent, Republican governor Frank Murkowski in the last election precisely because he prostituted his conservative principles for personal gain and she regularly, retroactively embarrasses his administration for the same reason.

Why would she sell her soul to serve under an even bigger sellout -an admitted sellout, no less? I’m all for a Sarah Palin presidency, especially considering that she’s one of the few standup conservatives left in the party. Heck, I’ll run her campaign in 2012 or 2016. But I couldn’t stomach the spectacle of her nodding along as McCain spews his interventionist, neocon agenda, which she would be required to do, no doubt. I couldn’t watch the Republican Party’s Richard Perle/William Kristol/David Frum faction close in on her like a pack of infectious zombies whose only relief from the pain of being undead is to breach the integrity of the conservative soul, turn it inside out, and thusly make more neocon zealots. Worse, I bristle at the idea of a woman, who is immensely more qualified to be a Republican President than John McCain, doing his bidding.

No Ma’am. If Sarah Palin gives McCain anything, it ought to be her Murkowski treatment.

I’ve read Andrew Sullivan being right before, but his statement about William F. Buckley takes the cake:

 So the most influential conservative of his generation endorsed both the Vietnam and the 2003 Iraq wars, and came to regret doing both. I think one of the great divides within conservatism today is between those conservatives who think war can solve problems and that government needs to be “heroic” and those who are skeptical of both arguments. These past few years have persuaded me that war is in fact the natural enemy of conservatism - because it enlarges government and destroys freedom and fans those emotions that most cloud judgment. Pre-emptive war, without any plans for the aftermath, may perhaps be the antithesis of every conservative impulse known to history. Pre-emptive war to seize non-existent WMDs is almost a text-book example of conservatism repealing itself.

I plead guilty in retrospect, but am reassured that changing one’s mind in the wake of new facts is not a crime or a sin. It is a conservative virtue - and one that Buckley, alas, didn’t share with most of his successors. Can you imagine Hugh Hewitt ever conceding that he was once mistaken?

So do many of us, Big Sully.  The sad fact is that many Republicans won’t plead at all out of sheer pride. They could be helping to push this country in a Classical Liberal direction but no one has opened the door to that ethos. I don’t think Republicans really care about what their demagogue leaders do. I mean…they do, but only because those demagogues keep reminding them to. They need new demagogues. Libertarian demagogues. Someone who can use Bush’s cowboy attitude to promote devolution and self-governance. You would think that would go over.

Anyone who knows my politics knows the esteem I have for Boaz, the Cato Institute, and most other classically liberal names or institutions you can chuck up. So, it is with an especially heavy heart that I weave this critical narrative. The title alludes that David Boaz did nothing for the last installment of the liberty movement ala “Ron Paul Revolution”, but that isn’t exactly true. Instead, I think Boaz smacked liberty back a notch with this strange post on the CATO Institutes’s blog. But first, a primer:

Congressman Ronald Paul came to the 2008 Presidential elections with no money, no campaign infrastructure, and no name recognition. He arrived with only an idea, but his idea compelled hundreds of thousands of Americans to donate over $32 million and create the largest grassroots movement in history. College students gave up their entire Christmas breaks to sleep in cold New Hampshire cabins and canvas for 16-hour days. Quick-witted Texas judges held signs at conventions and out-smarted the likes of Hugh Hewitt. People like me spent hours trying to explain the more esoteric aspects of a Paul presidency for the masses.

Paul’s largest support base was not students, potheads, or southern militia members, though. It was the Unites States military. In fact, Paul received more donations from the Army alone than from any other single group. The military, as a whole, donated more to the Paul campaign than to all the other presidential campaigns combined, for two fiscal quarters in a row. Since military members are not afforded the right to free speech while in uniform, we can pretty much count on their checkbooks to do the talking. The experts on Iraqi progress had spoken. Along with so many other Paul supporters, many of them had spoken for the first time.

The more intellectual media took notice. Andrew Sullivan outright endorsed Paul. Glen Greenwald came close, but I suspect his more hysterical readers scared him off (see the final updates). Judge Andrew Napolitano did everything that his Fox News employer would let him get away with. Buchanan shilled for him all over the pundit circuit. John McLaughlin became a Paul supporter’s hero. Then, came the rest of the media: Tuck Carlson, Lou Dobbs, George Will, even Chris Mathews and Bill Maher gave Paul his propers. Then came some respectable endorsements: the highest ranking governmental libertarian, Governor Gary Johnson took up the charge and Barry Goldwater Jr. hit the campaign trail with Paul.

Professional scathers refused to scathe him. John Stewart was cordial and Colbert rose to his defense in satire, “that kind of crazy…sticks a little”.

Despite what could seem like momentum in retrospect, however, these positive mentions were notably isolated. In reality, there was a serious dearth of Ron Paul coverage. In fact, most coverage was rather negative with Fox News leading the charge. Almost every article posted on the web proceeded with “Paul can’t win, but…”. Some simply called him nuts off the bat. Fox was undeniably evil to Paul. They excluded him from some debates and mocked him in the rest. (Below is the clip that was just so putrid, even Fox couldn’t stomach rebroadcasting it). In the CNN/Youtube debate, CNN’s Anderson Cooper didn’t even bother to pick substantive questions for Paul (What are you going to do when you lose? Why are your supporters into conspiracies?) . Finally, MSNBC’s David Shuster (who was recently suspended for being an idiot) took cracks at Paul for saying the same stuff Judge Napolitano says all the time.

It wasn’t just ugly and gut-wrenching, it was stupid- stupider than I thought the press could ever get. While it was obvious that Paul’s political opponents (Giuliani) could earn some clout by attacking him for saying the same things an unguarded Cheney, Wolfowitz, and the 9/11 commission report already said, it was a complete surprise that the media would pick up on this attack-the-last-sane-guy-for-being-crazy attitude. They focused on his suggestion to maybe-possibly-sort-of remove the capital gains taxes on gold and other esoterica that Paul already promised would never work. But let us be clear about something: there was never a debate on the merits. No one could ever claim Paul was wrong. They just claimed he was crazy.

Supporters reacted in different ways. Some hounded journalists. Some took to canvassing. I wrote articles. Our candidate’s acceptability hung in the balance like Reagan in 1976. If only there were a major libertarian organization to concretize Paul’s candidacy…

The Cato Institute was supposed to set everything and everyone straight. They could out-argue everyone on economics. They could fill in the nuances between Paul’s 30-second soundbites. They could bring the old guard of limited government Republicans back into the fold. They would legitimize a helluva lot. David Boaz to Ron Paul could be like Bill Kristol to George W. Bush, except accurate in his predictions and not so deserving of a proper beating by the entire United States Military. And it was sure to come…I mean…if Bill Maher could say something nice about Paul, God knows the biggest libertarian think tank would bring it home. But nothing was happening. They just acted like he didn’t exist.

I had already read about the Ron Paul newsletters and had gotten over them, so I didn’t expect the hysteria surrounding them. When I read them, I had a moment of panic. “Jesus”, I thought “what if I’ve been supporting a closet white supremacist all this time?” Then I looked at his record on torture, habeas corpus, battlefield commissions, extraordinary renditions…extraordinary renditions for God’s sake! It would take a strange sort of xenophobe to grant habeas corpus to enemy combatants, but what kind of klansman cares about giving Afghanis due process? I was back on track with Paul. I was even proud of him again.

But then we had the fortune/misfortune of beating the snot out of Giuliani in Iowa, where (for the record) Giuliani made more visits than Ron Paul. Determined not to let that happen again in New Hampshire, someone made the call to skunk the election with these newsletters, again…except this time, with hype!

The fallout was to be marveled at. Andrew Sullivan still has not recovered. His endorsee for president rarely gets mentioned on his blog. The Reason Magazine guys tried to compensate by investigating every detail and then avoiding Ron Paul altogether. David Frum was as giddy as a schoolgirl. I suspect he won’t reach the same dopamine levels until McCain declares war on the entire Middle East. And then finally…David Boaz of the Cato Institute broke his peace, but just to slap us in the face:

And so it’s understandable that over the past few months a lot of people have been asking why writers at the Cato Institute seemed to display a lack of interest in or enthusiasm for the Paul campaign. Well, now you know. We had never seen the newsletters that have recently come to light, and I for one was surprised at just how vile they turned out to be. But we knew the company Ron Paul had been keeping, and we feared that they would have tied him to some reprehensible ideas far from the principles we hold.

Really? I mean…really? Boaz left the entire liberty movement twisting in the wind, not because of the newsletters, but because he knew Paul had friends who were capable of less-vile newsletters?

In hindsight, I wasn’t nearly as bothered by Boaz’s heretofore neglect of the rEVOLution, as I was offended that had the audacity to hurt it. It’s one thing to remain silent, but it’s another to construct a defensive posture by attacking Paul. He exaggerated Paul’s connection to the newsletters, and even criticized Paul directly: “That’s an odd claim on which to run for president: I didn’t know what my closest associates were doing over my signature, so give me responsibility for the federal government.” Apparently for Boaz, Paul’s platform consists solely of denying his connection to the newsletters. I suppose then, that Al Gore ran on a platform of having smoked weed as a teenager.

Really, the absurdity of this reasoning is incredible. Obama’s days of snorting smack are over. George Bush’s too. McCain thinks that we should have stuck out VietNam beyond the point where the public demanded withdrawal. But Ron Paul should be punished for something some provocateur wrote during the inception of the politically correct era. The guy who refuses the congressional pension program because he won’t enrich himself on taxpayer money, the guy who treated his patients for free because he refused Medicare, the guy who refused to spend the Social Security Trust…he’s not good enough because he didn’t guard his publication closely enough, 20 years ago. Way to demonstrate the courage of your convictions.

But I suspect the stink was motivated by something even stupider. Boaz admits what anyone who pays attention already knows, that Dr. Sweetheart just isn’t capable of writing that garbage. He didn’t edit it or even live in proximity to the newsletters’ place of publication. That is why this is especially unfair to the liberty movement- it alludes to something wholly unrelated to Ron Paul: a beef between Boaz and Lew Rockwell. Like two feudal lords who are more content to allow their people to be conquered than to reconcile old qualms, Boaz obstinately refuses to show up on the battlefield because he doesn’t want to help Rockwell win.

I should be charitable to Cato and Boaz, though. Even though, amazingly, Boaz mentions the newsletters as his foremost reason for keeping quiet and then attacking Paul, I suspect the auxiliary factor was a prevailing attitude at Cato that Paul doesn’t have a chance. So why bother? Cato’s Michael Tanner wrote an article that handicaps Paul several times. Perhaps if they saw Paul as more viable, they would have gotten onboard and looked past the hysteria. It’s just…well one would expect the libertarian support structure to make the effort before the GOP voters.

More importantly, we were never fighting this thing for the odds. We fought it for the stakes. With the specter of universal health care looming, there is no doubt that the U.S. is headed toward a socialist, populist trend that may very well be irreversible. Just try taking heath care away from little old ladies once it’s in place- no matter how ineffective it is. Worse, what does Boaz propose for the the Americans who will die in Iraq over the next four years? “Sorry kid, but your candidate just wasn’t wartless enough”? And how can Cato allow an entire generation of newly minted libertarians to slip back into an apathy-induced coma, when we could be building an infrastructure for the next libertarian candidate? I recently had a conversation with one of them. It went like this:

College Kid: “Ron Paul is the man! I totally agree with him about reducing the size of government, elimninating the income tax, and practicing social tolerance” (paraphrased)

Me: “Well, stay tuned because we need to be ready for the next libertarian candidate”

Kid: “yeah. I don’t know much about that party”.

Get it? He didn’t know libertarian from Libertarian. He agrees with the policy proposals, but he couldn’t explain the core tenets from which they issue. I am sure Obama will find him a replacement ideology, though. I know, because he told me Obama was his second choice.

The tragedy of all this is that so many libertarians who are content to mentally masturbate in perpetua ignore the very real social aspect in play. People will be robbed of their possessions by the federal government over the next four years. Innovation will be stymied. And not just a few military families will be wearing all black. Sure, Ron Paul might have lost anyway. But I would rather he lost without having a huge “what if?” hanging over our heads.

A few final points about how Boaz is dead wrong:

First, I disagree about whether it’s worthy to criticize Kirchick:

Mutterings about the past mistakes of the New Republic or the ideological agenda of author James Kirchick are beside the point. Maybe Bob Woodward didn’t like Quakers; the corruption he uncovered in the Nixon administration was still a fact, and that’s all that mattered. Ron Paul’s most visible defenders have denounced Kirchick as a “pimply-faced youth”.

Nonsense. Paul’s newsletters should be judged on their own merits, yes, but Cato and everyone else let Kirchick frame this issue for them. The day before he published his article, Kirchick was on national television claiming that Ron Paul speaks to white supremacists in a secret code that only they can decipher. He titled the article “Angry White Man” knowing damned well that Paul probably didn’t write them, but also knowing that he would plant the seed that Paul did. Meanwhile, the newsletters themselves…sorry, they weren’t all horrible. One or two were especially bad. The rest were just provocative. I listened to Johnny Carson say worse back then. The fact is that that this could have been spun either way. If Boaz bought into the gravity of this thing, he simply bought the Kirchick version. And he allowed Kirchick to gloss over the comparative immorality of Paul’s opponents.

Second, I think it’s foolish to fracture libertarians like this. Boaz somehow thinks Paul, an adherent of Rand, Friedman, Jefferson, Locke…etc isn’t a real libertarian. He puts “libertarian” in quotes when he’s describing Paul and he even refers to Paul as a conservative. It’s getting a little tiring watching libertarians line in a circular firing squad. Especially since their differences are so boringly nuanced. Maybe we should wait until we actually obtain a public office before we stab each other over intellectual property, or abortion…or whatever Boaz’s line of distinction is.

Finally, if Cato couldn’t overcome their beef with Paul or Rockwell, or us crazed supporters, they should have kept quiet. Now that the newsletter-thing has blown over, it is clear that there was never a risk of damage to the liberty movement at all. If anything, Boaz did more damage to it. He could have been content to acquiesce in the destruction of liberties, but he went even farther.

You see, I was never one of the Paul supporters who needed to believe Paul *would* win in order to keep going. I knew that we needed Cato or Greenspan or someone to say, “yeah, the Fed is a problem”, “yeah, gold makes good tender”. Greenspan ignored us. I know, because I wrote him a letter asking him not to. But Cato left us wishing they has ignored us. I know this took the wind out a lot of sails because I was on the front lines. So when I say to Cato, “thanks for nothing”, I’m being charitable.

In conclusion, I will still respect Cato and Boaz and I’m sure I will go to them for advice if I am ever in public office. I know that, like Ron Paul, Boaz adheres to the tenet of self-governance that inspired the Declaration of Independence. It’s just that, out of Paul and Boaz, I will stick with the guy who would have enough gumption to actually sign it.

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Judge Andrew Napolitano waxes libertarian all over history. Turns out, the Constitution was intended to limit the powers of government. For God’s sake, get this man back into public office.

The Washington State GOP stopped counting caucus results after only 87% of the counties reported in, just as John McCain edged past Mike Huckabee. Bradblog reports that this decision was made unilaterally by Washington State GOP chairman Luke Esser, or as Brad of Bradblog.com calls him, “Esser the Suppressor”. Brad also claimed that Luke Esser has a history of devising measures to suppress votes. He cites a UW Daily article written by Esser in 1986:

Now your average leftist loudmouth is a committed individual and can almost never be persuaded to ignore his constitutional rights. The deadbeats, however, are a different matter entirely. Years of interminable welfare checks and free government services have made these modern-day sloths even more lazy. They will vote on election day, if it isn’t much of a bother. But even the slightest inconvenience can keep them from the polling place.

That’s nothing. When I signed up to be a Precinct Committee Officer for my precinct in Seattle, I received a barrage of strange calls. Two of them came from the GOP district chair. In the first call, he asked how committed I was to the Republican Party. I truthfully said that I grew up in a Reagan household, served in the military, supported Rossi for Governor in 2004, and have voted only for Republican presidential nominees.

This loosened him up enough to talk some smack about Ron Paul. He said the problem with Paul is that he makes great, impassioned speeches in Congress, but refuses to “get anyone to go along with his ideas”. Whatever. “By the way”, he asked, “are you supporting anyone?” I said that I liked the whole field but I want to keep my preferences to myself. He said that was no problem.

After his first call, I got a call from another district chair. She outright asked me if I was a Paul supporter. I said the same thing. She shilled for Huckabee’s morality for some minutes before I told her that I was more interested in economic issues. “Yeah, but you don’t support gay marriage and those things do you?” I explained that, really, I don’t care.

She talked a little about being a PCO. She told me that I would run the precinct’s caucus, but “if a bunch of Paul supporters show up, you could loose the vote” I couldn’t understand what that meant. Anything but Paul is a win? Fortunately, my district chair called back to explain.

He said that he was encouraged by all of the new PCO applications, but that he would have to deny any applications from people who weren’t forthright about being Ron Paul supporters. He said that he had found us on a Ron Paul meetup group and that our PCO applications were denied. He didn’t say whether he did this with other candidates’ supporters.

I reminded him that I never lied to him. He acted like that mattered, “Oh. I didn’t really think about that. Most people just lied to me, but I guess you didn’t”. He promised to think about it and get back to me the next day. He did not. Nor did he return the email that I sent the following week. Rather than take a dangerous chance on a homeowner/law student/father of two, like me, our precinct went without a PCO.

So what the heck is going on that the Washington GOP’s representatives distinguish between Paul and a Republican win? A couple of months ago a Washington GOP official was quoted in a fury stating that he did not want a big turnout of Paul supporters because Paul is not even a real Republican (I think it was the Everett Herald, but I couldn’t find the article again after a 2 hour search) Apparently, strict Constitutionalists are personae non gratae around these ‘real’ Republicans.

So there you have it. If the Party stopped the vote after only 87%, my instinct tells me it’s not Huckabee that they’re worried about. Paul came in right behind those two with 21% of the vote, plus the vote stopped in Everett. But I suppose that invoking wrongdoing against Paul makes it a conspiracy theory.

Those “uncommitted” delegates might go for Paul too, considering that a large chunk of Paul supporters ran as incognito delegates, for precisely these reasons. This isn’t much of a secret, so this may be someone’s attempt to mitigate that effect. After all, Esser denied trying to get over on Huckabee, “I would have done the same for Gov. Huckabee if he had the same margin and the same underlying dynamics as Sen. McCain.” I believe that. Would he do it for Paul?

Incidentally, that district chair is a delegate for McCain now. He ran the caucus, so I approached him to make nice afterward. I told him it was a good thing that so many young voters were interested in politics. I also told him I became a delegate for Paul. Flustered, he said that we have only one candidate who can beat the Democrats and that we should be united.

Of course, I disagree. First, predicting McCain’s viability before he runs a national campaign is like calling Giuliani a front-runner before he looses to Ron Paul in the primaries. More importantly, I think that we will have the most statist, authoritarian Republican nominee since Nixon. I think we should send him a message to remind him where he came from.

Credits to Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall and Paul Kiel, Bradblog.com, and Goldy at Horsesass.org.

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