There’s a great piece on Polipundit about Libertarian swing voters.

Does the libertarian vote make the difference? Yes.

Not because of the 3% the Libertarian Party candidates get. Because of the 15% libertarian-minded swing voters, who used to be loyal Republican voters, but got turned off by big-government Republicans:

The post goes on with a quote from TSC Daily.

In the past, our research shows, most libertarians voted Republican—72 percent for George W. Bush in 2000, for instance, with only 20 percent for Al Gore, and 70 percent for Republican congressional candidates in 2002. But in 2004, presumably turned off by war, wiretapping, and welfare-state spending sprees, they shifted sharply toward the Democrats. John F. Kerry got 38 percent of the libertarian vote. That was a dramatic swing that Republican strategists should have noticed. But somehow the libertarian vote has remained hidden in plain sight.

Now, I don’t see how wiretapping is even an issue, as that came up after the 2004 election, and Libertarians are dead wrong on the issue, or at least we would all be dead wrong if they get their way. In matters of national defense, Government does have to be able to do some things, and tracking threats is one of them. I do not subscribe to the people who feel ’tis better to have a government blind to everything, than to have it able to see all.

On that issue and the war, I feel Libertarians are wrong, but on big government they couldn’t be more right. The piece is likely to be operating from the bias of someone simply against the war, and like most good journalists, they throw that crap into the mix. But I honestly believe that the biggest factor in the 06 elections was not Iraq, but rather DC. On all the issues, Republicans offered more government as the solution. They just kept throwing money and government at everything, seeming to try to bury the problems in actual dollars.

Its a Democrat tactic to buy votes or bury corruption in a cloak of bureaucracy. The Republicans got caught red handed. Now the Democrats have already screwed the pooch, before they even officially took office. But that should not let the Republicans lose sight of how the lost in 2006.

It started years before 2006. It happened when the Bush Republicans in DC saw it more important to win elections, than convert people to conservatism. Maybe that is Rove’s fatal flaw. Maybe an electionist like him is not cut out to be a policy advisor, because you just try to win demographics by saying whatever you have to.

But regardless, Republicans have got to forget all about their agenda for the last few years that lead to the destruction of the bond between limited government voters and the GOP. When Democrats can successfully and legitimately say that they are for more limited government, Republicans ought to hang their head in shame.

Which brings me back to one of the first things I said following the election, Democrats didn’t win it, Republicans beat themselves. We’ve got to get back to something, not do more of what got us into this mess. Now is not the time for Republican leaders to go looking for answers outside of the party. Everything that is needed to repair this party and return it to majority, are right inside of it.

There is no need for the party to change what it stands for, it just needs to stand for it. Big tents are fine and dandy. You can fit a lot of elephants under big tents, but if you let too many RINOs help build the tent, their horns are going to rip big holes in the tent, and too many elephants will wander out, and they won’t help keep the tent from collapsing.

Huh, that may explain the low voter turnout, “donor apathy”, and “volunteer fatigue” that the Republican party leadership blame for the catastrophic losses in 06.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 13th, 2006 at 11:52 am and is filed under 2008, A.R.O.R.A., MN Campaigns, MNGOP Reform, National, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.