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Cato... for Kerry?!?

Just a short tidbit today. Via Dan Drezner and The Shrill Blog (which, by the way, was co-founded by a former SFBayBlogger, Faisal Jawdat), Clay Risen of The New Republic writes on how the Cato Institute, a prominent libertarian think tank, hates what Dubya has done to the country (subscription required):

Cato is on the outs with the administration. From its deficit spending to its regulatory record to the Iraq war, the Institute charges that the administration has betrayed conservative values, bankrupted the government, expanded federal programs, and made the world less safe. … In fact, Cato staffers and scholars are so fed up with Bush that many say they will sit out the election — or even vote for John Kerry. “Most people at the Institute have no plans to vote for the president this time,” said one member of the Cato policy staff who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “There will be some votes for Kerry inside the Cato Institute this year.”

…its antipathy is indicative of a growing belief among the GOP’s fiscally conservative constituencies — not just libertarian ideologues, but big-business executives, small-business owners, virtually any voting bloc concerned with fiscal restraint — that Bush has been an abject failure. And, in a close election, that could make a difference.

I actually predicted this. Well, somewhat.

Recall the FMA (the constitutional amendment to prevent gay marriages)? Dubya at first opposed it on the grounds of states rights, then flip-flopped to supporting it in what most people viewed as a tossing of a bone towards social conservatives — placating the base, as it were. I saw it differently:

The false assumption…is that Dubya’s conservative base is homogenous. It isn’t. It’s made up of social conservatives … and fiscal conservatives…. To be sure, there is an overlap, but my impression is that this is relatively small.

While the social conservatives have been grumbling, they always grumble. They will always be positioned to the right of anybody who wins the White House because the winner always has to at least appeal to the center. But when election time comes, they will vote for Dubya over Kerry…because he is the closest choice available to them. And as long as the outcome is in doubt, their turnout will be relatively high, so talk of “energizing” them is little more than just talk. Really, presidential candidates only need to placate them during a Republican primary, where their support is more in question.

The real grumblers as of late have been the fiscal conservatives who abhor deficits, tariffs, and expensive government programs. Supporting something that goes against libertarian ideals, increases federal power at the expense of states’ rights, and furthermore, mucks with the Constitution? This is only going to piss them off. Trying to satisfy the base by throwing a bone to the half he could count on and pissing off the half he couldn’t count on? This is not good politics.

Really, Dubya is not very libertarian at all. Patriot Act, anybody? So this should not be all that surprising. And as I noted earlier, other prominent libertarian-leaning bloggers have also indicated they probably won’t be voting for Dubya, including Jacob Levy of the Volokh Conspiracy and Dan Drezner (although he’s yet to make a final decision). I recall there are other examples, but I don’t have the time right now to track them down.

As for me, I already told you — I’m voting for Tyler Cowen!

Of course, I can’t really claim to be a master prognosticator, since I also said about the jobless recovery that, “…as growth continues, hiring will eventually pick up. And betting that it won’t happen before November is not one that I would make.” I said that in late June. And, of course, the employment report for July was surprisingly weak, indicating that only 32,000 jobs were created that month (you need to create 150,000 jobs a month to keep pace with population growth — and Dubya’s own forecast predicted 300,000 a month), and August, while better, was still lackluster (144,000 jobs).

To be sure, Dubya has little to do with it. As I explained then, it has more to do with unusually high productivity (and our next President, Tyler Cowen, points out various other theories, noting that it’s really still a “continuing mystery”). But as The Economist concludes:

The short-term vagaries of the business cycle are beyond the reach of any president. That is why claiming otherwise when the news was good was a foolish risk for the Bush team to have taken. They gambled on the economy, and for the moment at least they appear to have lost.

Recall that Dubya often tried to credit his tax cuts for every single bit of economic good news and thus seems to have been the foolish one to gamble on the economy, not Kerry. So I was wrong. And for that matter, I also thought the Giants would be out of contention this year.

So maybe I’m just one of those stopped clocks that happens to be right twice a day. <sigh>

Just FYI, I probably won’t have time to blog again until next weekend, since I’ll be out of town till Tuesday, and then I have my economics class on Wednesday, and then a Giants game on Thursday (and hopefully Barry won’t hit his 700th until then — fingers crossed!). Talk amongst yourselves until then!