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Craig Pirrong in Streetwise Professor says if “libertarian” is what Ron Paul is, then maybe he’d like to find something else to call himself.
In 1960 Hayek wrote an essay titled “Why I Am Not a Conservative.” In it, Hayek pondered the conundrum that many Americans like me have struggled with since: What should we call ourselves? This is not a problem in Europe: I would be a liberal. Adam Smith is the quintessential liberal, in the European sense. But as Schumpeter noted, in the US, those who supported big government and wanted to limit and control the free market started calling themselves liberal: ”[a]s a supreme, if unintended, compliment, the enemies of private enterprise have thought it wise to appropriate its label.” So unhyphenated liberal means “progressive” or the like in the US, and that is definitely not an accurate label for a believer in a minimal state. Say “classical liberal” in the US and people just hear “liberal” and think “progressive”: confusion still reigns. ”Conservatives” in the European sense, as Hayek argued, are primarily traditionalists, and hostile to many economic, personal, and civil liberties.
So what is the alternative? By default, “libertarian”–a word that Hayek said “[f]or my taste . . . carries too much the flavor of a manufactured term and of a substitute”–is pretty much all that is left. Again quoting Hayek: “But I have racked my brain unsuccessfully to find a descriptive term which commends itself.” So libertarian has pretty much become the default term to describe someone in the US who is not a liberal/progressive, traditional conservative, socialist, communist, or what have you.
But the “libertarian” label has been claimed by myriad people whom Hayek, and Friedman, and Richard Epstein–and Adam Smith–would find repulsive and decidedly unliberal, in the classical sense. The most prominent of these today is presidential candidate Ron Paul. Another is Paul’s former chief of staff Lew Rockwell. Yet another is radio ranter Alex Jones. (Sort of working my way down the food chain here.)
As Paul has made a serious challenge in Iowa, he and these others, and his supporters, have attracted much more scrutiny. And what is revealed is not pretty. Actually, ugly would be the proper word. …
Mark Steyn in The Corner has Randy thoughts.
Like many chaps round these parts, my general line on Ron Paul was that, as much as I think he’s out of his gourd on Iran et al, he performs a useful role in the GOP line-up talking up the virtues of constitutional conservatism. But this Weekly Standard piece by John McCormack suggests Paul is a humbug even on his core domestic turf: The entitlement state is the single biggest deformation to the Founders’ republic, and it downgrades not only America’s finances but its citizenry. Yet Paul has no serious proposal for dealing with it, and indeed promises voters that we won’t have to as long as we cut “overseas spending”.
This is hooey. As I point out in my book, well before the end of this decade interest payments on the debt will consume more of the federal budget than military spending. …
Toby Harnden writes on the luck of Mitt Romney.
… Romney has certainly been fortunate with his opponents – and those who ducked the chance to take him on. On paper, Rick Perry should be the nominee. The longest-serving governor in Texas history, chief executive of a huge, job-creating state, an evangelical Christian with an easy charm and the looks of the Marlboro Man, Perry seemed to be everything a Republican nominee should be.
But Perry turned out to be an abysmal candidate. Whether handicapped by pain medicine for his bad back, a lack of fire in his belly or the fact that his luck finally ran out after a charmed political career in Texas, Perry was a dud – his “Oops” moment in a November debate a cruel epitaph for his candidacy.
Each time a new rival rose in the polls, they wilted under the fresh scrutiny and highlighted Romney’s strengths in the process. With Herman Cain gone and Michele Bachmann in the doldrums, in early December Romney found himself facing a resurgent Newt Gingrich.
If Romney could have invented a man he would like to duke it out for the nomination, he couldn’t have done better than Gingrich – a lobbyist in all but name, a creature of Washington, thrice-married and with no money or campaign structure. Gingrich’s policy apostasies, including an embrace of elements of Obamacare, innoculated Romney.
Throw into the mix the maverick libertarian Ron Paul – a man with no chance of winning the Republican nomination but a possible Iowa victor – and the scenarios got even better. A Paul win would do little to damage Romney but would stifle any chance of his rivals building momentum.
But the position Romney finds himself in is not accidental. He is a vastly improved candidate from the Romney of 2008. …
Peggy Noonan says Romney gets stronger in this years strange nomination process.
… The most memorable line of the first phase? There’s “9-9-9″ and “Oops,” but the best came from Mitt Romney when he was asked about the Gingrich campaign’s failure to qualify for the Virginia ballot. Mr. Gingrich had compared it to Pearl Harbor, a setback, but we’ll recover. Mr. Romney, breezily, to a reporter: “I think it’s more like Lucille Ball at the chocolate factory.”
It made people laugh. It made them want to repeat it, which is the best free media of all, the line people can’t resist saying in the office. And they laughed because it pinged off a truth: Gingrich is ad hoc, disorganized.
The put-down underscored Romney’s polite little zinger of a week before, that Mr. Gingrich was “zany.” And it was a multi-generationally effective: People who are 70-years-old remember “I Love Lucy,” but so do people who are 30 and grew up with its reruns. Mr. Romney’s known for being organized but not for being deft. This was deft. It’s an old commonplace in politics that if you’re explaining you’re losing, but it’s also true that if they’re laughing you’re losing. The campaign trail has been pretty much a wit-free zone. It’s odd that people who care so much about politics rarely use one of politics’ biggest tools, humor. Mr. Romney did and scored. More please, from everyone.
Newt Gingrich in the end will likely prove to be a gift to Mitt Romney. He was a heavyweight. This isn’t Herman Cain, this is a guy everyone on the ground in every primary state knows and has seen on TV and remembers from the past. But his emergence scared a lot of people—”Not him!’—and made some of them think, ‘OK, I guess I better get off the sidelines and make a decision. Compared to Newt, Romney looks pretty reasonable.”
Mr. Gingrich took some of the sting out of Romney-as-flip-flopper because he is a flip flopper too. He also, for a few weeks there, made Mr. Romney look like he might be over. He made Mr. Romney fight for it, not against an unknown businessman but against a serious political figure whose face and persona said: “I mean business.” In the end it will turn out he was a gift to the Romney campaign, a foe big enough that when you beat him it means something.
If it is Mitt, and if he wins, we’ll have our work cut out for us if he brings along advisors like John Sununu. Weekly Standard Blog has that thought.
As Jonathan Last pointed out, John H. Sununu, the former chief of staff for President George H.W. Bush and a top adviser for Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign, recently told the New Hampshire Union Leader that “Iowans pick corn and New Hampshire picks Presidents.”
A friend of THE WEEKLY STANDARD and proud Hawkeye responded succinctly: “Yes, and Sununus pick Souters.” And another friend notes, for the record, that the last three presidents, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton, all lost the New Hampshire primary. The last “first in the nation” primary winner to continue to the presidency was George H.W. Bush in 1988—whose presidency lasted only one term, thanks in part to…John H. Sununu. …
James Pethokoukis picks 2011′s Economic HEROS and zeros.
HEROS – 5. Erskine Bowles and Senator Alan Simpson. 4. Herman Cain. 3. Steve Jobs. 2. Scott Walker. 1. Paul Ryan.
zeros – 5. Lafe Solomon. 4. The Occupy movement. 3. Elizabeth Warren. 2. The White House. 1. Kim Jong-il.
Pethokoukis also blogs on the fact too many kids are going to college.
As I mentioned earlier, I am currently reading Real Education by Charles Murray. In the book, Murray makes four big points: a) Ability varies; b) half of the children are below average; c) too many people are going to college; and d) America’s future depends on how we educate the academically gifted. It’s the third point I am concerned about for the moment. Here is President Obama is his recent Osawatomie, Kansas, speech:
“But we need to meet the moment. We’ve got to up our game. We need to remember that we can only do that together. It starts by making education a national mission — a national mission. Government and businesses, parents and citizens. In this economy, a higher education is the surest route to the middle class. The unemployment rate for Americans with a college degree or more is about half the national average. And their incomes are twice as high as those who don’t have a high school diploma. Which means we shouldn’t be laying off good teachers right now — we should be hiring them. We shouldn’t be expecting less of our schools –- we should be demanding more. We shouldn’t be making it harder to afford college — we should be a country where everyone has a chance to go and doesn’t rack up $100,000 of debt just because they went.”
Obama’s words remind me of this passage in the book:
“The problem begins with the message sent to young people that they should aspire to college no matter what. Some politicians are among the most visible offenders, treating every failure to go to college as an injustice that can be remedied by increasing government help.”
Murray makes several points that dispute Obama: …