Why libertarians hate romney

CATO is unusual in its consistent libertarianism, which means, however, that like Reason magazine , it is a creature of neither the right nor the left. A recent CATO report estimates that some 14 percent of Americans also qualify as libertarian, meaning that they're fiscally conservative and socially liberal although it's unclear if fiscal conservatives who believe "the less government the better" are willing to surrender their own government benefits, from Pell grants to Medicare.

Libertarians are labile voters, "torn between their aversion to the Republican's social conservatism and the Democrat's fiscal irresponsibility," CATO asserts; they shifted away from George Bush in and toward John McCain in ' McCain was an odd choice for libertarians considering his abysmal record on civil liberty. That libertarians preferred him to Obama suggests that fiscal conservativism or at least the image of it was more important to them than social liberalism, or civil liberty.

Before assuming the presidency and adopting key Bush-Cheney national security policies, Obama looked like a civil libertarian; indeed his claim to civil libertarianism was a lot stronger than the claims of Bush-era Republicans to fiscal conservatism. But libertarians focused on government spending are not likely to turn left. What if they focused on the increasingly powerful national security state?

West told CNN on Thursday that the continuing doubts are a problem for Romney in what will be a close race. Romney tried to burnish his conservative credentials during the grueling primary campaign, insisting that he had shifted to the right from past moderate positions on hot-button issues such as abortion and health care.

For example, he argues that the Massachusetts health care law -- which included a mandate for people to have health insurance, just like the federal provision most vehemently opposed by conservatives -- was designed for the state's specific needs, rather than a federal approach. Romney has repeatedly pledged to grant waivers for all 50 states to opt out of Obamacare provisions on his first day in office, and to work for a full repeal of the federal law that passed Congress with no Republican support.

However, Saul spoke positively of Romney's Massachusetts law when responding Wednesday to an attack ad by a pro-Obama super-PAC that sought to link Romney to the circumstances of a laid-off steelworker whose wife died five years after he lost his health insurance. Romney's health care plan, they would have had health care," Saul said on Fox News. This might just be the moment Mitt Romney lost the election.

In his blog post, Erickson wrote that conservative support for Romney was not secure. No one doubts Mitt Romney is the only vehicle with which we can beat Barack Obama," he wrote. If that truce gets shaken, Erickson continued, "there are some in the center-right coalition who lean toward the libertarian end of the spectrum who will just sit it out.

Why is this? Why is an essentially bland, scandal-free figure so unpopular? The main reason, I suspect, is that the Republican Party is extremely unpopular.

The Bush years deeply discredited the GOP , and while Republicans were able to make gains in by default, as the out party during an economic crisis, they did nothing to rehabilitate their image.

Indeed, they have embraced even more unpopular positions than the ones that George W. Bush advocated. What else? Romney has come to be defined by his wealth to some degree.

George W. Bush presented himself as a compassionate conservative. Bill Clinton was a New i. Romney has not done this at all. Finally, there may be a way in which the lack of enthusiasm even among his supporters creates a kind of general downdraft. Romney has been forced to reinvent his persona so many times that it has become impossible for almost anybody to buy into the idea that he is a consistent, principled figure.