Below The Beltway

Shortly before the 2006 elections, the Cato Institute published a study that argued that libertarian-oriented voters were abandoning the Republican Party due in large part to the war in Iraq, the Bush Administration’s reckless fiscal policies, and a War on Terror policy that showed little regard for civil liberties. That hypothesis seemed to be confirmed during the 2008 Presidential Election when several polls show that fiscally-conservative/socially-liberal  voters were favoring Barack Obama over John McCain.

Now, it seems, those same voters are drifting back toward the Republican Party:

President Obama is exceeding all their fears on fiscal and economic issues. After promising a “net spending cut” during the campaign and denouncing “the most fiscally irresponsible administration in history,” he has sent federal spending and the deficit soaring into the stratosphere.

Meanwhile, he’s not delivering what some of his voters hoped for on social issues. No gay marriage, even as Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney, conservative superlawyer Ted Olson, and the legislature of crusty New Hampshire sign on.

No end to the drug war, even though he’s the third president in a row to have acknowledged using drugs. He even mocked a question about drug legalization at his online town hall. (“Dude, we elected that guy, what’s up with that?” is Reason editor Matt Welch’s summary of the blogosphere’s reaction.) No pullout from Iraq.
So once again fiscally conservative, socially liberal voters are starting to wonder if they made a bad bargain.

Independents who turned against the Republicans are likely to become equally disillusioned with Obama, and there’s already some evidence of that in the polls. Support for “smaller government with fewer services” has risen in the ABC News/Washington Post poll, and independents prefer it by 61 to 35 percent, a margin three times as large as a year ago. The number of people who see Obama as an “old-style tax and spend Democrat” has risen by 11 percentage points.

In a USA Today poll, a majority oppose Obama’s health care efforts and 59 percent say he’s spending too much. In another ABC/Washington Post poll, only 25 percent “strongly approve” of his health care plans, and 33 percent strongly disapprove. His honeymoon may turn out to be as passionate, yet brief, as Britney Spears’ Las Vegas marriage.

It’s hard out here for a fiscally conservative, socially liberal voter. But at least there’s always the other party to try again.

The problem with that is that there’s little, if any, reason to believe that the Republican Party will be any better than the Democrats, in the end. Twenty years after Ronald Reagan, most of what comprised the Reagan Revolution, modest as it was in retrospect, has been dismantled. At the same time, the twin monuments to statism — Social Security and Medicare — remain standing. And Medicare even managed to get expanded during a time when Republicans controlled both the Legislative and Executive branches of government.

What reason should anyone have to believe that the GOP of 2009 is really any different from the GOP of 2001-08 ?

None that I can see.

So, yes, libertarian voters are drifting back to the GOP, once again. And, once again, they will find themselves disappointed.

H/T: United Liberty