There is another interesting article in the Washington Post about why it is a bad idea for conservatives to always support the Republican Party regardless of what it does. This closely echoes what I have been saying about conservatives in Britain supporting David Cameron’s Blairite Tory Party. The WaPo article does not take the pro-liberty stance on this I would (it is an article by a conservative for conservatives) but the underlying political calculus and logic behind it is hard to argue with: if your votes can always be taken for granted, do not be surprised if your views do not count for anything with the person you voted for.
The differences between the two main parties in both Britain and the United State has been largely an illusion for quite some time. In the US at least the Republicans and Democrats use very different cultural references and language to make themselves appear meaningfully different, but in Britain the utterances of David Cameron and Tony Blair are so similar that I would be willing to bet that if shown to a person out of context, most would be hard pressed to tell which of the men said what.
What makes the tribal loyalties of conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic so foolish is that time and again, year after year, those loyalties are not reciprocated. Tory policy towards the EU, where the parliamentary party has never reflected the views of the Tory rank and file, is perhaps the most extreme example but by no means the only one. Similarly it has long amazed me how conservatives who excoriated Clinton for trade protectionism and hugely costly ‘social’ programmes (a misnomer if ever there was) remained silent when G.W. Bush did the same in spades.
If conservatives are not willing to punish their leaders for fear of the Other Tribe getting elected, they have only themselves to blame if they get the same corrupting policies the Other Tribe’s leaders would have enacted anyway.
Good points. Bear in mind, however, that the American parties are not nearly as monolithic or disciplined as the English ones, or at least that is the impression of this outside observer. The separation of the executive and legislative branches together with many powers being devolved to the states makes the parties more alliances of interests than I think is encouraged by the parliamentary system. For instance, the Roosevelt Democrats included southern populists, southern racists, academic socialists, labor unions, and so on. Reagan got the vote of many union members as well a splitting off the religious and patriotic south from the Democrats. So the parties are not so much ideological in nature as they are confederations.
I have long wanted to ask this: who can UK Libertarians vote for?
I mean proper libertarians, not conservatives, who can find a comfortable home with the UKIP.
A strange aspect of government (on both sides of the Atlantic) is that governments have enormous freedom to behave against “type”. Hence NuLab introduced university tuition fees without more than a muted groan against. Similarly, Dubya’s Republicans have managed to jack-up public borrowing. Both are behaving against the way they’re expected to. Both are getting away with it.
Voters are cuckolds.
While the Libertarian Party here in the U.S. could make hay of the situation, it seems more likely that they will squander the opportunity.
Does anyone stand for the Libertarian Alliance candidate in local or national elections anywhere? And if not, should they/we be thinking about it?
nic, the Libertarian Alliance’s objective is to change people’s thinking rather than their voting. It is not a political party. The last thing the UK needs is yet another irrelevent minor party.
The Libertarian Alliance has ruled out trying to establish a political party because it wants to focus on the longer-term project of spreading ideas, and regards politicking as a waste of energy. That remains the position even after the death of the LA’s founder Chris Tame. The present organisers, Sean Gabb and Tim Evans, remain committed to the long-termist, intellectual efforts established by Chris.
I may be wrong but I did read somewhere that under Bush the average government tax ‘take’ as a percentage of GDP is lower than it was under Reagan. Likewise the average spending expressed the same way.
Part of the problem in the US is that both Republican and Democratic ‘activists’ have taken a page from the UK’s fabian socialists and refuse to ever, ever be satisfied. The Dems will never rest until every American is taxed 110% of his income and the GOP likewise will never rest until taxes are 0% or less.
The GOP faithful demand that everyone be both armed and Godly and the Democrats want only the thought police to carry guns (non-violent ones) etc etc.
Both side believe in keeping their politicos on a short leash. They can do this due to the fact that representatives are elected every two years. While the incumbents do tend to be massively reelected they keep their jobs by paying acreful attention to what their voters want. NOT what their parties want.
Its a mess, but what the hell, I don’t want an unmessy government that works efficiently.
The problem is that political parties are a bit like ice cream vendors on a beach. If each of them wants to grab the largest share of the sales and deprive the other of sales, they will both set up their stalls next to each other in the middle of the beach. One will then get the business from one side of the beach and the other from the other side. If one moves further over to ‘his’ side, then he will be closer to some of his customers, but he was their closest option anyway, and in moving to one side, he forfeits some of his customers to the other vendor who is now their closest option.
If the two vendors wanted to maximise sales and provide the best customer service, they would each position themselves one third of the way from each end of the beach, so customers have, on average, less far to walk and so would be more inclined to buy. This would be a win:win situation. But if the aim is simply to make sure that the other doesn’t sell more ice cream, the only choice for both of them is to be in the centre.
There is an exact analogy with the current Labour-Conservative situation. Neither minds whether they get fewer votes, provided they get more than their competitor – this is why attracting votes positively is less important than ensuring that you don’t lose them to the other lot.
It’s a very unfortunate situation. I don’t have a solution other to observe that the electoral system needs to positively incentivise parties to maximise votes overall as well as their individual share.
That is quite correct, which is WHY it is so foolish of so many conservatives to have continued to remain loyal to parties which take them for granted.
Perry,
That’s all well and good. The problem is that you’re already being governed by the Evil Party (UK Division) whereas we’re being governed by the Stupid Party.
The problem which faces us conservatives Over Here is that the differences between the party are not as minor as you’d think: sure, the Republicans have moved more and more towards statism, but that’s only been as a result of the Democrats drifting more and more towards outright socialism, as their
>Howling MoonbatMcGovernite Wing becomes louder and louder.In fact, the Democrats are not only the worse of the two options, they’re an unbelievably, indescribably worse option.
Whereas the Stupid Party screws up because, well, they’re the Stupid Party, the Evil Party screws up as policy.
And that is the big difference between the two. I don’t even know if the “serious” Democrats believe all their class warfare twaddle; the problem is that when they come to power, they have to enact legislation and government which supports it.
So while conservatives (myself included) are outraged that the Republicans are causing us to drift into statism, the Democrats would not only accelerate the process, they’d don their seven-league boots to get there.
That’s the rack we find ourselves one: allowing the Evil Party to assume the reins of power really does mean more gun control, higher taxes, more idiotic PC legislation and regulation, and all the rest of their little game plan to institute the Welfare State from sea to shining sea.
And forget about foreign policy: they have NO CLUE.
Well said Kim. My phrasing is that Republicans promise more freedom and usually fail, Democrats promise less freedom and usually succeed.
To achieve plurality requires some unholy alliances. I posted (Link) about A Pew poll which called 9% of the US electorate “libertarian,” 15% “conservative”, &c. The GOP has achieved plurality through inclusion of “populists” who differ with me on wanting less government and don’t see the benefits of immigration. But without them, I’d be at the mercy of “Speaker Pelosi.”
The current republican admin is indistinguishable from the 1960’s Kennedy admin in terms of broad policy and militarism.
In that sense, the entire political spectrum is experiencing a form of “red shift”, as the liberal end moves ever further toward socialism domestically, and unilateral disarmament coupled with multicultural political correctness in foriegn policy.
Meanwhile, the conservative faction of the Republican coalition is wondering what happened to the supposedly conservative administration, now repeatedly enacting statist legislation, talking like traditional liberals about spending and immigration, and seemingly disinterested in any movement towards the conservative goals of shrinking state revenue, power, or even slowing the expansion of governmental intrusions.
There are, of course, “yellow dog” Republicans as well as Dems, but, increasingly, the various groups most solidly identified with either party are beginning to question the efficacy of always being so reliable a voting bloc when their major policy objectives are simply not being pursued with any vigor.
I am becoming more and more convinced that the US is moving toward a political realignment similar to the creation of the Republican party prior to the Civil War, and the demise of the ineffectual Whig party, as the chasm between the factions in our culture widens much as the gap between the abolitionist/slave factions widened in that period.
It is already very clear that there is no natural home for any realistic and thoughtful libertarian voter, as the Dems become more and more committed to European socialist programs, the Repubs move increasingly away from a small state philosophy, and the various fringe parties are increasingly meaningless in any national sense.
The next decade will find the world situation more chaotic, even as the global economy advances, and the internal politics of the country more and more volatile as old coalitions crack and new partnerships form.
My entirely untrustworthy predictions are:
A merger of the left Dems and Greens into a new very leftist alliance,
The emergence of a conservative/libertarian party similar to the Reform Party put together by Perot but which is now moribund and fragmented,
A shifting coalition of current centrist dems and repubs which will court the increasingly “independent” voting blocs by combining policy with media friendly candidates in an attempt to generate a combination of charisma with situational voting. Tickets will be put together specifically to win elections, but without the long term loyalties that traditionally characterized a voter as a lifelong Dem or Repub.
If that makes sense to anyone, then god help you, you’re probably just as delusional as I am.
The reason it’s wrong for [British] Conservatives to support the Republicans unthinkingly is because [British] Conservatives are on the left of American politics. They believe in: nationalized health care; absolute gun control; abortion on demand; most of them believe in hate crimes; they’re split on national security; they’re interested in the tax burden coming down to about where the democrats want it to go up to; they’re not generally in favour of leaving the EU, making them protectionist and leaving them as quiet supporters of enhanced social and commercial regulation. Their right wing positions (opposition to ASBOs et. al., a belief that hunting should be permissible) are not to the right of any Democrat in high office. They’re more like Feinstein than, say, George Allen. Indeed, although I’ve fundraised for the Republicans out here (well, in Texas), I’d vote for almost any Democrat from a contested seat in the US, if they were to stand for office in the UK. Kerry would be massively better than any of the choices facing us at the next general election.
On Bush the “protectionist”:
With the softwood lumber dispute resolved, the money returned, I’m not sure why you would say that Bush was a protectionist. There was a brief (8 month) flirtation with some stupid steel tariffs early in his administration, but that’s about the list of it. He was strongly in favour of Dubai World Ports being treated decently. He came into office with three countries in free trade agreements with the US and looks likely to leave with dozens, hopefully including South Korea as well as much of the Middle East, Pacific Rim, and Latin America. Much of this is unreported in the MSM, the BBC even directly lying about the critical BIT with Uruguay, heading their story “No Trade Deal at Americas Summit”. Rob Portman’s done a stellar job with these agreements, and has regularly made deeper and stronger offers in the Doha negotiations than any other major party. There are a lot of criticisms to be made of Bush, but “protectionist” is a very unfair one.
Du Toit’s post is right out of the Frustrated Republican Voter Talking Points. However, those points aren’t true.
The Republican Party never cared about shrinking government. It was a rhetorical tactic to get votes. The Republican Party was founded on a platform of corporate welfare and classist taxation, and 150 years later, that’s exactly what they’re doing.
The Democratic Party is not moving toward outright socialism and has been running away from it for decades. Rather, the Democratic Party has embraced the same sort of totalitarian corporate statism that the Republicans have endorsed their whole 150 years of existence, and that the Labour Party is installing faster than anyone can stop them. The real Left in the Democratic Party is as flabbergasted with the Democratic Party as libertarians are with the Republicans.
And if we’re talking about parties that don’t have a clue in foreign policy, for God’s sake, look at Bush’s messanic view of military action. Iraq is Yugoslavia managed by colossal idiots.
– Josh, if voting could change things it would be illegal
Malarkey. Somebody has a wild hair up his pegasus.
A merger of the left Dems and Greens into a new very leftist alliance,
might look good on paper, but they often hate each other on the ground in my experience, perhaps partly as a result of fighting for some of the same segments of the vote. UKIP/Tory alliance seems more likely.
Oh, Guy, it doesn’t look like anything but trouble to me. I just think some kind of leftist alliance is in the offing, especially if they lose in 2008. The tensions between the factions, in both parties, is much too severe to continue this way indefinitely.