On The Apex of Fake Libertarianism

Actual libertarians Julian Sanchez and Dave Weigel have some fun with Jennifer Roback Morse’s…er, contrarian claim that Rick Santorum is a good choice for libertarians based on his fealty to the policy positions of…the Family Research Council. The most obvious question is why NRO would publish it; not only is the article utterly worthless on its own merits, but is directed at 1)a relatively small part of the population that 2)has no chance whatsoever of being persuaded by its idiotic claims. (Most boilerplate at least serves some function of reassurance.) Roy’s speculation that “many National Review articles are written on a bet — you know: Hey, Lowry, two large says you can’t write a thousand words on how a billion-and-a-half dollars for marriage lessons is “conservative”!” seems as good as any.

Sanchez also runs at the significance of Santorum’s support for tax cuts from another angle than mine:

The extent of Santorum’s actual demonstrated commitment to “fiscal conservatism” appears to consist of his support for tax cuts, which in the current political climate ought to count for pretty close to nothing with libertarians. Tax cuts are not smaller government; smaller government is smaller government, and the evidence that tax cuts tend to produce it is quite thin. If anything, there’s good reason to think that tax cuts without commensurate spending reduction just delink the provision of government goodies from the pain of paying from them, making it easier for government to grow. Something that, again, Santorum seems to have no problem with provided the well-intentioned programs it funds are his.

Am I being unfair to Santorum for lumping him in with “Miss America conservatives,” then? I don’t think so. Sanchez is certainly right that “starve the beast” fiscal policies will be a highly ineffective means of getting rid of programs supported by powerful constituencies, and since these–especially middle class entitlements and defense–make up the vast majority of the federal government’s non-interest outlays, they will fail to make government significantly smaller. The Bush era’s fiscal strategies will, however, very likely undermine programs for constituencies that aren’t politically powerful, with the programs for the third world poor on which Santorum’s reputation for compassionate conservatism rests especially vulnerable. Anyway, whether you’re a libertarian or left-liberal, you can agree that Rick Santorum is a very bad Senator and his imminent rejection by the fine citizens of Pennsylvania most welcome.

I am looking forward, however, to NRO giving Glenn Reynolds space to explain how he can simulatenously call himself a “libertarian,” “Whig,” and “Jacksonian.”