Libertarians for Obama?

Ook aardig wat libertariërs kiezen de kant van Barack Obama in de presidentsverkiezingen omdat ze zich niet kunnen vinden in de keuze van de Libertarian Party om de twee conservatieven Bob Barr en Wayne Allyn Root als kandidaten te nomineren. Ook de traditionele alternatieven zijn ditmaal niet voor handen. De Republikeinen sturen met John McCain een “big government, big spenditure” demagoog het strijdperk in, en de Constitution Party kiest met Chuck Baldwin voor een nationaal-conservatieve radicaal die niets meer van doen heeft met het paleoconservatisme van een Pat Buchanan of een Jim Gilchrist in het verleden. De objectieve libertarische bondgenoten van weleer zijn één voor één ten prooi gevallen aan de machtspolitiek en het consensusmodel. De libertariërs zijn andermaal politiek dakloos.

Via de sociale netwerkingsite “Facebook” kreeg ik vorige week het volgende bericht van de groep “Libertarians for Obama”.

At its best, the Obama candidacy is about ending a war - not so much the war in Iraq, which now has a momentum that will propel the occupation into the next decade - but the war within America that has prevailed since Vietnam and that shows dangerous signs of intensifying, a nonviolent civil war that has crippled America at the very time the world needs it most. It is a war about war - and about culture and about religion and about race. And in that war, Obama - and Obama alone - offers the possibility of a truce.

Whereas, you know you cannot abide a McCain presidency any more than you can stomach a Ron Paul one; Whereas, Republicans need a clear signal that anything approximating the last eight years will not be tolerated; Whereas, how much harm can four years do, especially since a Democratic executive coupled with what will likely be a Democratic legislative branch will push the national agenda so far left as to cause a reactionary shift to the right in 2012; Whereas, two years in the executive coupled with a legislative majority will give Democrats the time they need to reverse the worst of the Bush legacy in spying, torture, and foreign policy; Whereas, McCain and Paul might die in office; And whereas, Obama is not an ideologue and is open to discussion and, therefore, persuasion.

Whereas, McCain would be no better for tax policy than Obama; Whereas, Obama's health plan is at least not worse than Hillary's; Whereas, four years is all Republicans need to rehabilitate and prioritize, which is just the time Obama will buy us; Whereas, libertarians voting for Obama will really, really, really piss off the Huckabible branch of the fusionist clusterfuck; Whereas, remember when McCain told this joke? "Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno." Mean and tasteless! Would you really want this nasty, nasty man near your children? Iduntinkso; And whereas, don't you just want to throw it all to hell anyway?

Ook het Britse libertarisch-conservatieve Europees Parlementslid Daniel Hannan maakt reclame voor Obama op zijn weblog, onder de title “A good election for the Republicans to lose”.

I have been fisked by the great Tom Montgomerie, whose blog, ConservativeHome, is one of the great internet phenomena of our age, now attracting a million readers a month. He takes issue, as I rather thought he might, with my support for Barack Obama. Actually, being a pro-Obama Tory isn’t quite as lonely as I had expected. A surprising number of conservatives registered their backing for the Illinois senator, both on the comment thread to my blog and on ConHome. And Tim tells me that his survey of selected Conservative candidates suggests a 3–1 lead for McCain which, while healthy, is hardly the unanimous backing you’d expect from a sister party.

I’ve rehearsed the conservative case for Obama often enough before. Since none of my arguments have convinced Tim, let me try a new one on him. This is a pretty good election for the Republicans to lose. Rather as the Tories would have been better off losing in 1992, and revivifying themselves while Labour struggled with Maastricht and the ERM, so the GOP might usefully sit this one out, let the Dems deal with the downturn, and rediscover what once made their party electable.

What made them electable is easily enough defined: it was their conversion to localism. In their seminal work The Right Nation, John Micklethwaite and Adrian Wooldridge chart the evolution of the Republican Party over the past half century – from an elite, New England, preppy party that kept losing to an anti-government, Sun Belt, populist party that kept winning. Critical to this transformation was the Republicans’ conversion to states’ rights and the decentralisation of power. Now, though, they are in danger of turning their backs on the formula that took them back to power. Once again, as in pre-Goldwater days, they are becoming the party of external protectionism and crony capitalism, of federal spending and of foreign adventurism. Think of the absurd attempt to make the question of same-sex marriage a federal rather than state issue. Think of the budget deficit. Think of the readiness to maintain a permanent garrison in Iraq. Think of the steel tariff.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m a committed Republican and, if I had a vote in the US, I would cast it for GOP congressional candidates. But I don’t think John McCain is the man to lead the party back to small-r republican virtue. The Democrats have got to have their turn some time and, if they’re going to have it, it might as well be under a candidate who has never once missed an opportunity to be obliging about Right-wingers: a candidate whose entire purpose, from the moment he came to national notice in 2004, has been to bridge the gap between America’s two tribes. I’d love the Republicans to lead their country and the world. But they have a bit of thinking to do first.

Zie ook: http://www.libertariansforobama.org/