Libertarians, the GOP, Iraq, and more

Bruce Bartlett discusses how libertarians have moved from supporting Democrats to Republicans, and how that's now in doubt. I can't imagine libertarians ever supporting Democrats. At least since FDR, Democrats have been socialists, and that's completely at odds with libertarian beliefs. Democrats do not support legalizing drugs - they controlled congress for nearly a century, and we didn't get drug legalization. That's like saying Republicans support smaller government. The historical facts belie lip-service of both parties.

As for the war in Iraq, we had to go to Iraq to disarm Saddam Hussein. He was weeks away from exporting biological and chemical weapons in aerosol form. He was within a year of developing a nuclear weapon. All the documentation we've discovered showed how important and timely our toppling of Saddam was, but once this information was discovered, people started running from their support of the war. Bush badly mishandled the reconstruction of Iraq, which I discuss here every day, but we could never allow Saddam Hussein to possess the weapons he was developing.

From the NYT:
Among the dozens of documents in English were Iraqi reports written in the 1990s and in 2002 for United Nations inspectors in charge of making sure Iraq had abandoned its unconventional arms programs after the Persian Gulf war. Experts say that at the time, Mr. Hussein’s scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away.

Not only do we know Saddam's development of WMD was imminent, we know the Russians and the French were supporting him. The evidence that Saddam was on the verge of developing and being able to deliver WMD to the United States is overwhelming. There is also a tremendous amount of documentation showing not only links between Saddam and al Qaeda, but a direct link to 9/11 planning.

If all this evidence was presented to the American people, libertarians as well as conservatives and many liberals would agree that removing Saddam Hussein from power was a good idea. I think most libertarians already know we had to remove Saddam, because libertarians are forced to work hard to be informed. We don't have a libertarian media like the liberal mainstream media and the conservative talk radio. Libertarians have to search for honest news, and in that search, Saddam's capabilities would be found.

I don't think libertarians are abandoning anything. Republicans have abandoned libertarians as well as conservatives. Republicans have exposed their own Big Lie of supporting smaller government. Republicans have exposed their own Big Lie of supporting government reform. Republicans are not Democrats yet, but they are what Democrats were a decade ago.

Like Democrats, Republicans support titanic government and restricting freedom. They think government is the answer instead of the problem. They refuse to defend our borders. They have to ask permission of the U.N. before we sneeze. They hamper our troops so we can't win the wars we fight.

Republicans fund our enemies China, Russia, and through them North Korea, Iran, Venesuela and Cuba in the name of "free trade." There's nothing free about empowering our enemies to kill Americans. They fund our enemies the Taliban, Mexican drug cartels, American drug gangs like MS13 all the while getting Americans murdered and imprisoned in the name of the puritanical war on drugs.

I also disagree that libertarians are about 10% of voters. Americans who support smaller government, government reform like the FairTax, defending our borders, and a muscular foreign policy that means never empowering our enemies and unfettering our troops to win any wars we fight are libertarians, and these libertarians outnumber Democrats and Republicans combined.

If either party taps into this vast, unrepresented mainstream of America by adopting the positions I've described, America will once again become the shining city on the hill we all love so much.