Big Lizards:Blog:Entry “Were-Liberals of Alaska”

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August 31, 2010

Were-Liberals of Alaska

Hatched by Dafydd

I've had a hypothesis for many years. Most libertarians are actually were-liberals: Every two years come November, they lurch to the left in the voting booth.

2010 is clearly no exception... for the Libertarian nominee in the Alaska U.S. Senate race, David Haase, has offered to "step down" and allow Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK, 68%) to take his place on the ballot as the "Libertarian" candidate -- if she will verbally embrace his plan to abolish the income tax and a couple of other things, which Haase dubs, with no hint that he understands the irony, the "People's Bailout":

Although Libertarian Party officials were dismissing the idea, Senate nominee David Haase said Monday that he would give Mrs. Murkowski his line on the ballot if the Republican senator would hoist his banner on behalf of nationalizing the Federal Reserve System, paying off the entire national debt with non-interest-bearing notes and abolishing the individual income tax.

"Would I step down for her? The right question is, first, will she take up my 'People's Bailout'?" Mr. Haase said, referring to a policy paper he has been circulating on how "to return to the banking system our Founders gave us."

"If she came out for my 'Peoples Bailout' plan, it would influence me a lot because the mission is more important than becoming a U.S. senator," he added.

I'm sure it is; but his comments beg the question, what exactly is the mission?

First, there is virtually no possibility that Murkowski could possibly be elected running as a Libertarian in a race with both a Democrat and a Republican; she would come in a distant and humiliating third.

Second, Haase must know that even if Murkowski mouthed the words, and even were she elected, she would never seriously push such a plan; she is not now and never has been a radical anti-income-taxer.

Too, even if she did, there is no possibility it would pass either House or Senate.

Fourth, even if it did pass by some deus ex machina, we would end up with a grotesque value-added tax (VAT) and a national sales tax... yet we would still have the Sixteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: You just can't get two-thirds of each chamber of Congress plus thirty-eight states to ratify a repeal of the amendment that allows an income tax. All of which means that in a couple of years time, we would have a VAT, a national sales tax, plus a brand new income tax as well!

Since I doubt that David "Schleppenwolf" Haase is an utter fool, he knows that getting Lisa Murkowski to "come out" for his "People's Bailout" would do nothing at all to implement it. Ergo, he has an ulterior motive, which I believe is threefold; in order of urgency:

Gaining notoriety for himself;

Positioning the Libertarian Party to receive a big batch of fundraising;

Splitting the Republican vote between Murkowski and "Average" Joe Miller, thus ensuring that Democratic nominee Scott McAdams wins the election.

When it comes down to it, most libertarians (and probably nearly all capital-L Libertarians) only pay lip service to free markets; in reality, they tend to be moochers who never grow up, live with their parents until they become fifty year old "orphans," and never really get past the "oral stage" of psychological development; they smoke too much tea and eat themselves into planetoid obesity.

They are really not libertarians at all; they are libertines. Their signature issue is far more likely to be legalizing marijuana than allowing us to succeed or fail by our own efforts (i.e., liberty). In fact, when the parental units finally kick the b., many self-described libertarians find a way to live on welfare! They substitute the Invisible Teat of Big Government for the nipple they never really let out of their mouths while Mommy still lived.

In the last election, vast numbers of these "libertinarians" voted for Barack H. Obama -- then concocted some Rube-Goldbergian verbal machination to explain why Obama was the most "free market" candidate running.

There are of course mature, adult libertarians worthy of the name -- think William F. Buckley, jr. or Milton and Rose Friedman -- who make their own way, support themselves and their families, interact in a mature way with real markets, and are less interested in oral fixations like dope smoking than they are in actual liberty issues. However, adult libertarians tend to vote Republican these days.

But back to the Final Frontier, the pending election of a Tea Partier as United States senator from Alaska.

Mind, this is the same election to which the National Republican Senatorial Committee sent its chief counsel, Sean Cairncross, to counsel Lisa Murkowski how to discover or manufacture sufficient votes in the absentee ballots to reverse her primary loss -- presumably by challenging as many Miller votes as possible, especially those from members of the military. Now the putative "Libertarian" candidate schemes to nullify the Republican vote by cleaving it in twain, hoping to install the minority Democrat in that seat. Democrats and establishment Republicans have merged, and their joint rebel yell is, "Anybody but 'Average' Joe Miller!"

More predictions:

Miller will win the Republican nomination.

Murkowski will not run as the Libertarian, nor the Independent (à la Charlie Crist in Florida), nor the write-in joke candidate.

Scott McAdams will remain the Democratic nominee.

Joe Miller will win the general election by at least ten points.

Remember Hugh Hewitt's aphorism: "If it's not close, they can't cheat." The Miller-Murkowski battle is close, but not close enough. And the subsequent general election won't even be close enough to tempt.

Cross-posted on Hot Air's rogues' gallery...

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, August 31, 2010, at the time of 1:04 PM