Newt Over Obama?

My GOP friend (you know, the allegedly small-government guy who supports summary executions of American citizens based on nothing more than the say-so of a secret American Star Chamber) sent me an e-mail yesterday. In it he asked,

“I know you libertarians hate Newt, but will you vote for him over 0bama?” (He spells Obama with a zero to represent the number of jobs created in the US during the Obama administration).

I responded, “No.”

“So you're voting for another 4 years of 0bama?”

“No,” I replied. “Just wouldn’t be voting.”

“What’s the difference?” he asked.

I said, “When you vote, you're indicating (in a completely anonymous and meaningless way) that you support a particular candidate - or at least that's how it's interpreted. When you don't vote, you're not indicating that you support a candidate (though I grant that one's non-support is equally anonymous and meaningless).”

Since then I have given some more thought to the question of voting in general, and a potential Newt Gingrich nomination in particular:

Some general reasons to skip Election Day:

1. My vote (or lack thereof) is irrelevant. It will make no difference whatsoever to the outcome. I boldly predict (and you heard it here first) that Obama will win the state of California by more than one vote. Voting may be cathartic for some people, but they shouldn’t expect their vote to have any more impact on the fate of the Republic than a rain dance has on a drought.

2. Whereas the Democrats are overtly statist, the GOP goes to great lengths to be equally statist while trying to maintain a façade of limited-government principles (a façade that is quickly crumbling around their feet). The last thing the GOP will do is nominate a pro-liberty candidate - the one they’ve got is treated like a leper. Instead, they will nominate yet another neo-con. So regardless of which party wins the White House, the result will be the same. Federal spending, the regulatory burden, and the national debt will all increase. Civil liberties will continue to deteriorate, and the US government’s foreign policy will continue as it has. Bailouts, reckless monetary policy, and inflation will continue unabated.

3. I completely agree with my friend that, as predicted, Obama has been an unmitigated disaster. Then again, so was his predecessor, and his predecessor, etc. And although I hate the idea of another four years of this nimrod (and I really hate the idea of how the press will crow about an Obama re-election), I don’t see how replacing him with a different big-government guy would be an improvement just because he puts an “R” after his name. The Republican would just become the next unmitigated disaster. Even if I could distinguish which of the candidates would be marginally less awful, the lesser of two evils is still evil.

The specific reasons why I will not be voting for Newt Gingrich include (but are not limited to) the following:

1. In his own words, he’s “a Theodore Roosevelt Republican…I believe government can lean in the regulatory leaning [sic] is okay.” As any self-proclaimed genius historian should know, Teddy Roosevelt was a big-government Progressive who didn’t respect limited, constitutional government or the free market any more than his half-witted cousin, FDR (to whom Gingrich referred as "the greatest figure of the 20th century").

2. If his Wall Street Journal piece titled, “Lincoln and Bush” is any indication, his foreign policy views are downright frightening. (Check out Thomas DiLorenzo’s analysis on LewRockwell.com).

3. Gingrich supports escalating the war on drugs.

4. He supports socialized medicine.

5. He supports increased gun control.

6. He supports ethanol subsidies.

7. He supports government action on climate change. Whatever one’s position on climate change science, it is simply ludicrous to believe that governments – the world’s worst polluters by many orders of magnitude – can or will change global temperatures through taxation. (And as an aside, when Romney stated he believed the AGW theory, Rush Limbaugh said that position would cost him the nomination. I didn’t hear Rush’s explanation as to why Gingrich shouldn’t also be eliminated from contention after he sat on a couch with Nancy Pelosi to push the government to fight global warming).

8. Despite Limbaugh’s assertion that Gingrich was the last person “to actually cut government,” I can’t find any evidence to indicate that government actually shrank during his tenure as Speaker of the House. According to the Historical Tables provided by the Office of Management and Budget, total federal outlays (on- and off-budget) in 1994 were $1.46T. In 1995, that number grew to $1.51T. In 1996, $1.56T. In 1997, $1.6T. 1998, $1.65T. 1999, $1.7T, and so on. At no point do I see total expenditures decrease from the previous year. So much for the vaunted “Republican Revolution.”

9. He took millions from the pharmaceutical industry to push Bush’s expansion of the Medicare drug plan.

10. He took millions more from Freddie and Fannie to lobby for additional favorable treatment from the government in the lead-up to the mortgage crisis. (Of course, he doesn’t call it lobbying – the money was for “strategic advice”).

These positions all indicate that Gingrich is just as hostile to small-government, free-market principles as John McCain was (and is). And I suspect he will fare no better against Obama than McCain did for that very reason.

So on the night of November 5, 2012, turn off my alarm clock – looks like I’ll be sleeping in.