Is a More Libertarian GOP Really an Electoral Loser?

In a recent Red Maryland Radio show Greg Kline, reading from and riffing off of this RedState article by Erick Erickson, suggested that libertarians and others who want the Republican Party to put some distance between itself and the social conservatives in its coalition need to provide some evidence that this is actually in the Party’s interest.

It’s a good point, and he’s right, if we want the Party to shift then we need to offer evidence for the electoral necessity of doing so. To be clear, that is the purpose of this post, not to argue the question of whether libertarianism or social conservatism is the superior or more correct philosophy. That is a wholly more complex question and one deserving of its own post(s) devoted to it.

Back to the question of political calculus though, in pushing back against the idea of a more libertarian GOP, Greg highlights the case of Question 6 and the fact that it was the closest ballot item in MD for 2012.

That’s true, but looking at that simple fact obscures a lot of context.

First, Question 6 wasn’t the clear-cut matter of Democrats imposing preferences only desired by Democrats. While it was Republicans that fought same-sex marriage the hardest and Republican voices that spoke out against it the loudest in the public square, it is a clear fact that Question 6 only passed in Maryland due to Republican votes. The data for this has been excellently made clear by Walter Olson, both at a county level and a precinct level.

Second, in the show Greg (quoting from Erickson’s piece) makes a frequent claim made by social conservatives, namely that the only way we can ever win over minority voters is by pushing social conservative agenda items. More specifically this refers to Hispanic voters, but I think it’s also important to look at black voters, so I want to address both briefly.

-On the question of black voters, there simply isn’t any evidence to support the idea that a socially conservative Republican Party will win over any meaningful amount of black voters. Just look here at Maryland where we had the Party run as hard on social issues as I’ve ever seen it. What did that get us? Take a look at several of the districts including parts of the state heavily populated by African Americans.

• In District 7 Frank Mirabile ran against Elijah Cummings and lost by 56 points. That’s 4 points worse than in 2010 and in a district where Democrats made up 1% less of the electorate and Republicans 1% more than in 2010.
• In District 2 Nancy Jacobs, probably the strongest of the losing Congressional candidates, ran against Dutch Ruppersberger and lost by 35 points, once again 4 points worse than in 2010 when a much weaker candidate ran. This also couldn’t really be blamed on the redistricting; Democrat registrations went down 1% as part of the electorate.
• Finally in District 5 Tony O’Donnell campaigned against Steny Hoyer,  making his opposition to gay marriage a part of the campaign. He lost by 42 points, compared to the 30 that Charles Lollar lost by in 2010, while Republican registrations only went down by 1% as a portion of the electorate.

Some of these poorer performances can be attributed to it being a presidential year with Obama as a candidate. But not all of it. The numbers above certainly suggest that all Question 6 served to do was bring out black voters who overwhelmingly cast their ballot against same-sex marriage and then proceeded to vote for Democrats down the line.

-On the question Hispanic voters the story is a bit different. I will openly admit I don’t have the kind of hard data that I just put out above. I do have a few things I think worth noting though:

• If social conservatism was really the driving, make-or-break item for Hispanic voters, they wouldn’t be voting anywhere near so heavily Democrat, they’d either vote Republican or not vote.
• Immigrants are, on the whole, significantly more entrepreneurial than than native-born citizens. As such, they are likely to be more interested in what the Parties have to say about markets than they do about gay marriage.
• Finally, as both Joshua Culling of Americans for Tax Reform and Virginia Postrel, formerly of Reason, have noted, Hispanics in large part don’t vote for Republicans because they feel insulted and hated by Republicans. Even if they don’t list immigration as their number one issue, so long as Republican rhetoric on immigration is as nasty and hostile as it is, very few Hispanic voters are going to feel comfortable voting for Republicans, even if they like their stances on policy items.

Third, Greg (again quoting from Erickson) also brought up the argument that a move towards social libertarianism will both lead to a significant reduction in the current base and that said reduction will not be made up by new Republicans attracted to the newer stance on social issues.

As before, this is really two issues. On the first, there is the idea that a move away from strident social conservatism will lead to significant reductions in the current base of the Republican party. On this claim I’m pretty skeptical. In my experience, social conservatives are also among the most vocal in pushing the “We may not like (insert more socially moderate general election GOP candidate), but at least he’s better than the Democrat so we have to vote for him/her.” I don’t see much evidence to suggest that social conservative voters would be willing to set aside their economic concerns if the GOP moved away from vocally supporting the social conservative agenda. It seems much more probable that the vast majority would still vote Republican. There might be a bit less fervor but they’d still be there.

As for the second, I’ll openly concede that there is not likely to be an immediate boost in people registering Republican if the Party moves to a more libertarian tone and position. But that’s a short-term view and political parties ought to be concerning themselves with the long-term outlook. And that’s the one where a more libertarian stance will pay off.

Young people are substantially more likely to hold libertarian stances on social issues. Increasingly more often are polls finding a majority of people under 50 and near supermajorities of people under 30 support issues like marriage equality and legalizing marijuana. Furthermore, it increasingly seems to be the case that this isn’t simply a function of age, but that people are holding on to these views as they get older. This isn’t a big deal for the Party now, but if the trend holds it will cause issues as the older, more socially conservative voters, donors, & activists die off and younger people are not there to replace them due to distaste for the Party’s vocal support of social conservatism.

This seems to be holding up here in Maryland, at least based off of the percentage of the vote received by Libertarian candidates. Here’s a few data points:

• In 2012 Libertarian candidates gained a larger portion of the vote compared to 2010 in every Congressional district but CD-1 (where the total stayed constant at 3.8%).
• While those increases were small, they were still noteworthy. Two of the races saw increases of over 50% from 2010 and another 2 saw increases of 30% or more. And that’s not including CD-4, where no Libertarian ran in 2010 but the Libertarian candidate got 2% in 2012, almost twice what the Libertarian candidate in 2008 received.
• Finally looking at top of the ticket races there has been a steady improvement in performance by Libertarian candidates, with Gary Johnson more than tripling the Party’s share of the vote from 2004.

As I said, these are small numbers, but if the trends hold, they could quite well mean trouble down the road if the Republican Party sticks to its current approach on social issues.

Now, having covered all that, I want to make one last point, and it goes to something Greg also brought up on the show. I can’t speak for all libertarian Republicans and others who want a more socially tolerant GOP, I’m only speaking for myself, but I agree with Greg, the Republican Party is a coalition. That’s why I’m not calling for the ouster of social conservatives from the Party, I just want the Party to act like a coalition instead of a prayer group.

What exactly do I mean by that. Here’s a few things (and Greg, these aren’t aimed at you, they’re to the Party as a whole):

• Stop with the litmus tests on social issues.
• Parallel to that, and appropos of the latest episode of The Broadside, please stop calling people RINOs and liberals just because they don’t hold a social conservative viewpoint.
• Don’t pointlessly antagonize libertarians trying to work within the Party; it would have cost nothing for the RNC to read out the votes for Ron Paul at the convention or to send a letter to polling organizations insisting they include all candidates on the ballot in their presidential polls rather than just some.
• Consider dropping some of the particularly flagrant issues that I would think aren’t very high priority (I’m thinking of the platform plank opposing online gambling specifically here).
• Most importantly, the Party as an entity ought to focus on emphasizing the issues where we share commonality rather than continually focusing of those issues that divide us. Individual candidates and activists can obviously do what they want, but as an institution the Party should put its weight behind things the coalition as a whole stands for, not just a part of the coalition.

Those are a few things that would do a great deal to make the Party more attractive to libertarians and social moderates over the long-term, and I would think ought not to be all that off-putting to the social conservatives either.

The Things That Really Matter

My son Liam turned 1 last week. It’s probably cliché to say, but it does put things in perspective.

Obviously it makes me feel kind of old, even though I’m only 24. And it makes a lot of my other accomplishments feel a lot less important in comparison.

But what I want to focus on (unsurprisingly?) is how it related to my thoughts on politics, specifically how I prioritize issues.

If you look at my blog history you probably can see an evolution in my thought and what issues I focused on most.

For example I used to focus a lot on somewhat abstract philosophic issues and things like tax policy and have since shifted to immigration, along with the drug war and land use policy.

Thinking about Liam’s birthday has helped clarify in my mind why I’ve come to care about the issues I do.

While my concern in politics was, and remains to be, the defense and promotion of individual liberty, there’s a lot of room for varied priorities under that umbrella. What has come to concern me the most is what I think of as “experienced liberty and tyranny.”

What do I mean by this? Let’s go back to the evolution in thought over the course of this blog.

Taxes matter, I certainly won’t dispute that. However, given the current political realities, changes in our tax code will have minimal impact on the lived experiences of almost everyone.

On the other hand, things like our current immigration policy or the War on Drugs have a massive impact on people’s lives, one that is far more visceral and destructive than the tax code.

Marginal tax rate brackets creep up a few percentage points? That’s a negative change and one I’d just as soon Liam could avoid. But the War on Drugs? Statistically speaking it’s a pretty good bet he might end up trying marijuana some day and that choice could land him in jail, unalterably changing his life for the worse.

Given that kind of disparity, I think it is far more important to focus on working to change those areas where government is actively destroying people’s lives, or at least significantly harming or limiting their well-being.

As a young man still in college or just out of it, it’s easy and fun to spend time worrying about abstract questions of philosophy (actually it still is and I do think it’s important to engage in the exercise).

As a Republican, particularly one who holds office within the Party, it’s easy to go along and be vocal about the mainstream issues like taxes and spending.

But it’s not enough to do what’s easy and being a father has made that clearer than ever to me.

I want to work to make a world I can feel better about Liam and others his age growing up in. And that means focusing on the issues that are doing the most to limit individual liberty and harm people’s well-being, things like restrictive immigration policy, the War on Drugs, prohibitions on same-sex marriage, pointless military adventurism, and occupational licensing that helps incumbent businesses & stifles competition.

These aren’t sexy or high status issues and I don’t begrudge anyone their priorities. But I hope others will come to see things the way I have come to; positive changes in these fields can yield immediate and significant improvement in the lives of many and make the world a noticeably better place for those who will follow after us.

A False Claim in the MDGOP National Committeeman Race

Michael Swartz recently published a response MDGOP National Committeeman candidate Scott Shaffer sent him with regards to a previous post he (Michael) had written.

I wanted to write about Shaffer’s response, because something he says in it is completely false.

Louis was responsible for the Rule 11 waiver in 2010.  But this is only one example of a demonstrated pattern of behavior.  He has consistently used his position to sway the results in contested primary elections, by giving unfair advantages to one Republican candidate over another.  This year he served as state campaign chair to the Romney campaign, dismissing the other candidates

While I don’t challenge the note about Louis’s involvement with the Rule 11 waiver (although I do think it an exaggeration to imply he was solely responsible, which the sentence does as written, and don’t think it was ever a real problem), I do take significant issue with the claim that Louis attempted to sway the results of primary races, particularly during the most recent primary when he served as a co-chair to the Romney campaign in Maryland.

This past year I served as the Maryland State Director of Gov. Gary Johnson’s presidential campaign, until he stepped out of the Republican race and decided to seek the Libertarian nomination instead.

As you may or may not know, Gov. Johnson was driven to do this in large part because the media effectively locked him out of the race, not including him in their polls (in fact dropping him after he outpolled candidates like Gov. Huntsman and Sen. Santorum) and then denying him a place in the debates because he wasn’t on their polls.

Gov. Johnson fought hard against this and as part of that fight sought to get the RNC to step in and protest the media’s efforts to manipulate the Republican primary.

I spoke with all of our RNC representatives as part of that effort, and while I got positive responses from all three, I was particularly impressed by what Louis told me.

First, Louis was the first to respond to me.

Second, he told me that he agreed it wasn’t right that Gov. Johnson was being excluded from the debates and that even though he was working in support of Gov. Romney he would speak with RNC Chairman Priebus in support of the RNC doing what it could to stop the media exclusion of Gov. Johnson.

Third, he said this even as he conceded that even though he disagreed with Gov. Johnson on some policy issues he did respect his executive experience and acknowledged he had more of it than his own candidate.

These are not the actions of someone looking to sway the primary in favor of his candidate. Louis didn’t need to do anything to aid Gov. Johnson in his efforts to make it onto the debate stage – but he did.

And that’s really what has me convinced that Louis is the right man for the job. His actions when I spoke with him about Gov. Johnson were the actions of a man of integrity, one who is concerned about what is best for the Party, not for any individual candidate.

Who Needs Goldstein When You Have Libertarians?

I’m not entirely sure why this is the case, but there seems to be a marked increase in hostility to libertarians these days.

We saw it with Van Jones who strangely claimed:

“…they [libertarians] hate the people, the brown folk, the gays, the lesbians, the people with piercings, ya know ya’ll.”

And then, as reported by Radley Balko, there’s the case of the Cato Institute getting blasted by a liberal blog for having the temerity of wanting to support and take on a project documenting police misconduct.

Meanwhile Sen. Orrin Hatch is “doggone offended” by efforts of libertarians to prevent or at least hinder his re-election and is ready to “punch them in the mouth” for dumping on him. Interestingly enough, the Libertarian Party doesn’t appear to be fielding an opponent against Hatch.

And I’ve even had my own bit, with a recent op-ed I wrote at the Chestertown Spy encouraging civil liberties voters to not let Democrats take their votes for granted. It’s gotten fairly notable pushback, much of it along the lines of “I largely agree with what you’re saying, but since you’re a Republican Central Committee member I can’t consider it credible.”

What is it that is driving this kind of anti-libertarian vitriol? It’s not like there’s a ton of us out there winning elections and changing government to reflect our policy ideas.

But apparently we must be seen as a threat after all. And that’s something to take heart in, since it suggests more people are beginning to recognize the importance of individual liberty and are prepared to act on it.

Sorry Ann, but Anti-Immigration Groups are Radical Enviromentalist Groups

Ann Corcoran has been on a bit fixated on a recent study finding that ending birthright citizenship would constitute an effective tax on all new births in America and a reference Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, made to those findings.

While I didn’t find much worthy of response in her three articles on the subject, one thing did jump out at me:

He claims that those who want to slow immigration and close the borders are “environmentalists” who don’t want more people here.  I guess he has never heard about the hard Left Sierra Club’s OPEN BORDER views.

Hate to tell you this Ann, but it might be a good idea to actually look into the groups you routinely cite from before casting aspersions. From a quick search of her blog I found the following:

• 41 posts making use of NumbersUSA material, which openly states in its About section that it is motivated by “beliefs in environmental sustainability, economic justice, the rule of law, and individual liberty, and opposition to federal immigration policies that threaten these values by forcing massive U.S. population growth.”  NumbersUSA also complains about loss of open space due to population growth putting it squarely in line with the smart growth planners behind PlanMaryland that Corcoran is so rightly incensed about.
• 25 posts drawing from material by the Center for Immigration Studies, which has a whole section of its website devoted to enviromentalist, pro-zero-population-growth arguments for its anti-immigrant agenda.
• And at least 5 posts pertaining to the Federation for American Immigration Reform, another anti-immigration organization that proudly works to spread enviromentalist arguments in support of its agenda (due to their acronym being FAIR, it is a bit harder to tell which posts of hers are about the group and which just use the word “fair”).

And to just make the picture a bit clearer, all three groups are part of the network of anti-immigration organizations founded by John Tanton, a proponent of radical Malthusianism, population growth alarmism, and zero-population growth.

Also potentially interesting to Ann, besides his involvement with anti-immigrant organizations, he’s also been actively involved with a couple of groups she holds less than kind opinions of:

• The Sierra Club
• Planned Parenthood

Now personally I tend to try and avoid condemning an organization just because someone tied to it is tied to things I dislike. But in this case I do hope that this rather revealing information leads Ann to rethinking her openness to studies put out by anti-immigration groups and even moreso her commitment to the anti-immigration agenda.

Is Rick Santorum the Pro-Rape Presidential Candidate?

It’s quite a question to ask, but his statements do demonstrate he is committed to policies that have a strong possibility of increasing the rape rate.

From The Daily Caller:

Internet pornography could conceivably become a thing of the past if Rick Santorum is elected president.

The unapologetic social conservative, currently in second place behind Mitt Romney for the GOP nomination, has promised to crack down on the distribution of pornography if elected.

Santorum says in a statement posted to his website, “The Obama Administration has turned a blind eye to those who wish to preserve our culture from the scourge of pornography and has refused to enforce obscenity laws.”

If elected, he promises to “vigorously” enforce laws that “prohibit distribution of hardcore (obscene) pornography on the Internet, on cable/satellite TV, on hotel/motel TV, in retail shops and through the mail or by common carrier.”

What does this have to do with rape? Evidence suggests it might be quite a bit.

Todd Kendall, of the Clemson University Economics Department, wrote an excellent paper in 2006 on the relationship between internet pornography and rape.

After reviewing the data on rape and internet access, his findings all point to the same conclusion – internet pornography acts as a net substitute for rape and that as internet access increases, rape rates decrease.

• When the data was divided between states with quicker internet adoption rates vs slower internet adoption rates, the data showed that a 10% increase in internet access (and therefore access to internet pornography) correlated with a reduction in the rape rate by 11.7%.
• Taking the same data and breaking it into three groups based on the ratio of 15-24 year old males-to-females, the most at risk of rape age group, it is seen that in those states with the highest ratio of males-to-females, which would be the states where the substitution effect would be strongest, a 10% increase in internet access correlated with a 15% lower incidence of rape while the other groups experienced statistically insignificant effects, further reinforcing the hypothesis.
• Finally, after performing a sophisticated regression controlling for numerous factors that could also be influencing the reduction in rape incidence, the finding was that a 10% increase in home internet access correlates with a 7.3% decline in rape, which would mean 6,800 fewer rapes in 2003. Factor in non-reported rapes and Kendall estimates the number of avoided rapes could be higher by a factor of 2-3.

Now obviously this is only proof of correlation, not causation, but it still should make anyone have some serious alarm that a serious presidential candidate is calling for an end to internet pornography when there is strong reason to believe it may lead to more people being raped.

Factor in Santorum’s opposition to contraceptives, his (near?)total opposition to abortion though and one truly has to begin to wonder at what he does and doesn’t care about.

Or you could just listen to him saying that he thinks pregnancy is the silver lining to rape.

What to Make of the Mortgage Interest Deduction

In passing I’ve mentioned in previous posts that I’m a Realtor. As such, I was in Annapolis at the end of last month, tojoin with fellow Realtors and other activists to rally (in the cold and pouring rain) in support of the Mortgage Interest Deduction (MID) that Gov. O’Malley’s budget proposes to reduce for people earning more than $100,000 per year.

While I don’t disagree with many of the people there that removing the deduction, or even curtailing it for the people most likely to use it, will likely have a deleterious effect on the housing market, that wasn’t why I was there.

In fact, and this probably won’t make me popular with my colleagues in the industry, but as a matter of general policy, I support getting rid of the MID entirely. It distorts the housing market, encourages people to take on as much debt as possible, and by acting as an effective tax on renting has a potentially regressive impact.

Read the rest of the article at The Queen Anne’s Spy.