Mr. Smith Goes to Romney

Matt Welch | January 3, 2008

The Volokh Conspiracy has an interesting roundup of presidential primary endorsements from "libertarianish" law profs. Biggest surprise for me was former FEC chair Brad Smith's full-throated libertarian case for ... Mitt Romney. The pro-Paul position is manned by David Beito and Scott Horton. And, humorously enough, the Volokh-in-Chief says: "We tried contacting someone we know who supports McCain, but didn't hear back from him, nor did we hear back from the campaign when we e-mailed them to ask whether they could recommend someone (though we'd then have to figure out whether that someone matches our criteria)."

This bit from Smith jumped out:

Libertarians must understand that the Democratic nominee is going to be committed to a substantial growth in government[.]

Has there been recent evidence I've missed that Republicans are demonstrably less likely to grow the federal government?

Smith's 2005 reason piece attacking McCain's "war on political speech" can be found here.