I’ve been waiting for the new Democratic majority to remind me why I probably won’t like them all that much better than the Republicans—and presumably it’s still coming—but this is actually a shockingly heartening way to start. The GOP piled the pork high over 12 years of paying lip service to small government; the Dems […]

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The Libertarian Party turns 35 today.

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A week after “message received,” House Republicans decide to shake things up by handing a landslide victory to Rep. John Boehner in his bid for minority leader. What’s that famous old definition of insanity again?

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Riffing off Bryan Caplan’s excellent Cato Unbound piece on voter ignorance, Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias both suggest that this is not a terribly big problem, since policy is determined by elites anyway. In other words, political “slack”—one of Caplan’s proposed solution—is already ample, a situation which has plenty of its own drawbacks. There’s something […]

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I’d really love to believe the GOP-lost-but-conservatism-won meme that’s circulating, especially the version that stresses Republicans’ apostasy from the ’94 gospel of small government and fiscal responsibility, or the one that points to the power of libertarian spoiler candidates. Hell, I hope it sticks if it’ll dissuade a few of the remnants from tacking left—or […]

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So, like lots of people who favor limited government, I’m generally glad to see divided government and a near-even split in the Senate, even if the ideal would probably be Dem executive and GOP Congress rather than the reverse. But it’s worth bearing in mind that a healthy bit of gridlock isn’t the only option. […]

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My first instinct upon reading National Review Online‘s “libertarian” defense of Rick Santorum was that it had to be, at best, a “modest proposal” sort of put-on, and at worst an act of disingenuous desperation that even its own author couldn’t possibly believe sincerely. But then I noted that the author, in this case, was […]

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I was mildly surprised this ridiculous Kerry-gaffe story made news at all—I’m kind of blown away it’s actually stretched into a second day. And I’m into triple-takes at stories like this on how Democrats are joining the pile-on: Whatever the intent, Senator Kerry was wrong to say what he said,” said Democratic Rep. Harold Ford […]

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I hope I’m not giving voters too much credit if I predict that George Allen’s attempt to use scenes from Jim Webb’s novels against him will backfire pretty seriously. When the National Review crew are claiming to be embarrassed by one of their own’s tactics, it can’t bode well, and the polls since this tactic […]

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Reed Hundt at TPMCafe offers a rather odd complaint about gerrymandering: Here’s another idea: you could discuss the outrage that the Supreme Court has endorsed gerrymandering that denies the principle of one person-one vote. Amazing fact: a Democratic margin of more than 10% in the House elections on an aggregate basis isn’t sure to change […]

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