New at Reason

Julian Sanchez | August 8, 2005

Matt Welch asks: What hath Newt wrought?

Comments

|8.8.05 @ 4:47PM|#

Libertarians who support Republicans are like liberals who support liberal judges. They don't seem to recognize what they're really getting - ref. Kelo, Raich.

Kevin Carson|8.8.05 @ 6:08PM|#

Shit, Newt wasn't really for smaller government even ten years ago. He was a National Greatness/Big Government Conservative. Like George Will, he was all for government activism in areas where "government did things well," like the Interstates and big dams and TR-style conservationism, and crap like that. And all his "new federalist" ideas really amounted to giving the states a little more autonomy in spending federal money--but with actual increases in the federal strings attached, in some cases, for the sake of "conservative" social engineering. His alleged "small government conservatism" was never anything but a neo-con job.

|8.8.05 @ 6:20PM|#

The entire story is too depressing, if not unsurprising, for words. If one wants to identify some positive aspect, it should be noted that a few people from the class of '94 had the integrity to term-limit themsleves, after failing to get the measure enacted into law.

|8.8.05 @ 7:36PM|#

The Economist had a similar editorial in its "Lexington" column. Basically, the current GOP establishment exists only to hand out goodies and maintain power.

|8.8.05 @ 7:38PM|#

And if anybody finds this surprising, well, maybe you'd be interested in this beach front lot I have in Nebraska.

|8.8.05 @ 7:48PM|#

He was a National Greatness/Big Government Conservative.

Can't we just call it "Glory to the Fatherland Conservatism" and be done with the euphemisms?

|8.8.05 @ 10:56PM|#

Yeah..I remember the Republican "Contract with America"...of course when it came to the term limits clause they all bailed so quickly my head was spinning... As long as uneducated voters keep voting the incumbents back in what do you expect?

|8.9.05 @ 2:53AM|#

As long as uneducated voters keep voting the incumbents back in what do you expect?

The voters are only partly at fault. If the candidates that the major parties are putting on the streets aren't worth voting for, what do you expect the voters to do?

It's hard to "blame" voters for re-electing Bush, when the alternative was Kerry.

It would have been hard to blame the voters for electing Kerry, when the alternative was Bush.

Blame the idiot voters all you want, but third parties rarely stand a fighting chance in this country.

|8.9.05 @ 7:52AM|#

I think libertarians are doomed to be dissatisfied with whoever is in power.

In any case, there is probably no one out there who could keep themselves from going soft at one point or another when it comes to handing out money. We all have screwy ideas or pet projects we would want to fund. But the decay of Gingrich's promises is especially disappointing, and only goes to prove that typical politicians enjoy nothing more than to be corrupted by power.

|8.9.05 @ 8:08AM|#

Oh, come now, people! Stop fretting so much! All this big government and social engineering is temporary. We have to take complete control of every aspect of everyone's life so that we can free everyone. There has been no betrayal of priciples. Dictatorship is just a short stage of development on the road to liberty.

Hmmm....wait a minute....I've heard that before. Oh yes, I remember now, from Comrade Lenin.

|8.9.05 @ 9:40AM|#

I think libertarians are doomed to be dissatisfied with whoever is in power.

Yes, I think more immature people always will be dissatisfied, but mature thinkers realize "you can't always get what you want" and look to see what general direction society is moving in.

It often boils down to choosing which party or candidate at the time is less damaging to constitutional rights and freedoms, and in advancing statism, than whether or not they really embrace libertarian ideas.

A lot of individual libertarian dissatisfaction probably stems from the very nature of party psychology and groupthink. The total institution mentality that you have to choose to identify with one party or another.

For example, I tried to help one candidate, a Democrat, where I live because I personally liked him and his legal philosophy which was more libertarian than traditional welfare state liberalism. I designed some campaign materials for him.

The Democratic Party Godfathers, however, found out that I was a "registered Republican", .i.e, I voted for Bush ONCE TIME five years ago so they told him to keep his distance from me. (I didn't vote in 2004 because I was in Iraq)

I find that it is harder to be an independent that tries to support candidates from both parties of one's liking, because of the stupid assed, puerile "school football team" mentality of most organized political parties, including the LP.

I also think that party groupthink mentality tends to destroy whatever pretense there originally was for change at the outset of a campaign or movement. By the end of the 1990s, Gingrich was back to welfare state Republicanism, just as Clinton and Gore abandoned any pretense to sustaining "New Democrat" ideas by the 2000 election.

|8.9.05 @ 2:20PM|#

I seem to remember a bit in one of the later Hitchhiker books in which AD comes back to the Dolphin rebuilt earth, and he can "hear" everything on earth. What he mainly hears are things like sheep being scared. Sheep being so dumb, are terrified of everything. Each morning the sun comes up, and because they can't remember it ever happening before, they are terrified.

That reminds me of Cato. Here is a group of folks that really are surprised when the sun comes up each morning. Maybe this might mean something if it was written 10 year ago (I mean Cato's book, not Matt's article). I mean really, these guys need to read some history. This has to have been one of the most predictable outcomes in a historical sense. Anyone, and I mean anyone who believed Newt's crew when they babbled about "small government" was a fool. (and I mean that in the biblical sense of moral deficiency)

You have to wonder what it is that folks at Cato really think about. Because it is not reality.

I knew someone who wanted to work at Cato once, and if I remember right, an offer was made...but she didn't take it. Something else I remember about her....she didn't know who Machiavelli was (I had used Machiavellian in a sentence), even though she was an Ivy League Poli-Sci major.

I think she would have been a good fit over there.

|8.9.05 @ 2:30PM|#

Skeptikos-

I don't know any Cato folks personally, but from my perusal of the news and the internet there are a lot of folks who believe that the GOP is committed to small government (or was until recently). The best way to reach out to them is not by publishing a book that says "We were smarter than you! We never believed it!" It's better to simply observe that great promises were made and then broken.

Sure, I sometimes make posts like that on this forum, but I'm addressing an audience somewhat different from your typical GOP supporter.