A Marriage Of Conservatism And Libertarianism

Being a Republican doesn’t necessarily mean being a supporter of Bush and approving of the ways his administration has run the country during his presidency.

I know personally many people that vote for the republican mainly because they see it as the least of two evils trying to prevent the democrat expanding the welfare state to a European standard but if you are a republican and you are against the Gulf war you can only hope that the price of staying in Iraq would be less heavy politically and otherwise than the price we’ll pay in an economy and foreign policy that the Democrat would run from the White house.

In fact McCain is hardly the candidate that a libertarian would choose because he has a very similar vibe to Bush. I read an interesting survey of a book by Scott McClellan at Below The Beltway showing some of the problems and rigidity in Bush administration decision making regarding Iraq and other issues.

Can McCain be a reasonable conservative or would he be prone to all the rigidity that characterized the current administration. What I’m basically asking is how open minded can a conservative be? How fast can he change his decisions in response to changes in the information that he gets, how open he would be to take the state out of few things that are better left alone.

As far as I know someone can hardly be preserving things and changing them at the same time unless he has the right personality meaning that he acts in accordance to what is needed and not to what he needs emotionally or mentally.

Are we taking the Libertarian votes for granted? Better not as hey might vote by not voting or in other ways that would harm our cause.