Now, the response to any talk about problems in the conservative-libertarian alliance is typically — at least on the conservative side — that we’ve been here before and the libertarians ain’t going anywhere.
This was, at the risk of simplifying it too much, Mitchell’s point. And it’s a fair one. I think the burden is on those who see a crisis coming to articulate it — and to articulate why it’s different from past “crises.”
What I’d say is that while libertarians stuck with conservatives through the Cold War and through the Clinton War — and then to take back the White House in 2000 — the forces that have existed in the past to push the two sides together have disappeared.
The War on Terror, more than the Cold War, pushes conservatives and libertarians apart. Partly this is because conservatives have decided that civil rights are meaningless in time of “war” — however ill-defined a concept that may be when it comes to terrorism. And partly its because libertarians suffer from Vietnam syndrome in the extreme and haven’t had a serious response to the question of how you fight a war against a non-state entity without some form of preemption.
What’s more, the old argument that libertarians would never vote for Democrats over Republicans because Democrats are automatically worse on size-of-government issues than Republicans is…well, it’s wearing pretty thin.
To say the least.
On the other hand, never underestimate the power of inertia. I would argue that most business types are not necessarily libertarian - true libertarians make up a vanishingly small part of the electorate.
Most people are not particularly consistent on their politics, and neither are political parties (this is not necessarily a bad thing: hobgoblins, little minds, etc.).
I think most of Republicans on the more libertarian side of things feel most strongly about deregulation, not about government spending. They don’t want to pay too much in taxes, and they don’t like regulations, and the combination makes a libertarian label convenient. This does not mean that they don’t also agree, at least mildly, with the “moral” issues that the Republicans also champion, without feeling the contradiction too strongly.
I would never vote for most Dems, just because they in positive rights. They do not believe in civil liberties in the same way that libertarians do.