FREEDOM-HATING, NOW MORE THAN EVER. Cato�s David Boaz is none too happy that even Hillary Clinton and the moderate DLC proposed some new government programs that involve spending money to help people. Nor would he be much of a libertarian if he thought otherwise. But then he offers this pearl of political advice: "There are millions of libertarian-leaning voters disgruntled with the Republicans� social conservatism, soaring spending, and ill-fated war. And Democrats are doing everything they can to discourage those voters from switching parties."
Eh. The thing of it is that there are millions more voters who have a favorable attitude toward progressive economics but like social conservatism. An "American Dream Initiative" just might be the thing to convince them to switch parties. Meanwhile, in the short term at least, a libertarian disgruntled with Republican policies has no serious choice but to back the Democrats anyway -- divided government would produce a certain amount of gridlock, congressional oversight, and checking-and-balancing that one would have to regard as superior to unified GOP control from a limited government perspective. Now from where I sit, what they've put together is a pretty decent program for increasing the number of college graduates, though I'm not at all sure which national problem is supposed to be seriously ameliorated by "produc[ing] one million more college and community college graduates a year by 2015."
--Matthew Yglesias