I guess he's right, although completely irrelevant. The Republicans don't care about libertarians, they're not worried about their votes, and they're doing just fine with their own conservative version of big, intrusive government.

Many Libertarians seem to have convinced themselves that republicans are really libertarians at heart, but just a little misguided and needing some help to return to wisdom. However, that's simply not true, as the briefest perusal of their records and proposals would show.

Republicans will adopt libertarian positions at approximately the same time the Dems pick up on Ralph Nader and the Greens' talking points. And right after that, a centrist party would come into being and trounce both of them.

Libertarians are NOT Republicans. They are isolationist, anti-government, and very close to anarchists.

They oppose the war on terror, they'd oppose all civil rights legislation, they'd allow the current business scandals to be solved by "the market" and so on.

They cannot win. They are all very bright and offer very good suggestions and I'm a subscriber to CATO, The Standard, and so on. I'd never seriously vote for any of them.

Howard, that's the big-L Libertarian ideologues. Yes, they're close to being anarchists and yes, most of their policies wouldn't work.

But most Libertarian-voters don't REALLY agree with the whole big-L platform any more than most Republicans REALLY agree with the whole of any given state GOP platform. Randy Barnett's talking about small-l libertarians like me. We typically vote Republican, but when a Republican veers off into theocracy or authoritarianism, we vote Libertarian as a protest.

A protest big-L vote firstly registers to both parties that I don't support the policies of either clown they entered - Cornyn and Kirk in my state - and secondly registers the direction whither I want the parties to go.

(Also, how much good is "civil rights legislation" really doing these days?)

Barnett's got my vote, too.

One of the most heart stopping sentences I have recently heard belongs on a sign at the Republican Convention.

"Give no power to George Bush that you cannot trust to Hillary Clinton."

Yikes.

Back in the 90s pundits had identified a political creature who was "socially liberal and fiscally conservative." It seems to me that a large percentage of the blogging and hi-tech communities fit this profile. These folks may not be totally libertarian (because they are not ideologues in general) but they vote for whoever is going to at least pay lip service to respecting their privacy (in the bank, internet, and bedroom), whoever will - if taxing a large portion of their income - at least spend it wisely, and whoever shows some savvy about market economics and international political strategy. Few of these people care about party affiliation - they look at promises and performance.

Right now the Republicans get this, but if they let abortion, religious favoritism, and social conformity get back on their agenda they will lose some of this group to the Dems, who appeal to the "socially liberal" part.