Let’s be honest, Abe

The Lincoln’s Day Dinner is the end of spring training and the start of the regular season for Republican candidates in Washoe County. They come to work the room.

“It’s hard work,” one candidate admits ruefully to me.

Nevada in many ways is most libertarian of all the libertarian West, because we have, after all, legal gambling and prostitution, no state income tax, shall-issue concealed carry laws, medical marijuana, and a resurgent Sagebrush Rebellion.

Libertarians believe in the non-aggression principle (NAP). Unlike liberals and conservatives, we do not believe anyone, including the government, can morally initiate force to achieve goals. We believe in a state, if it exists at all, that is dedicated to preserving liberty by protecting private property. We hold a Lockean political philosophy, in which individuals have the right to acquire and dispose of property. Property, first of all, is in the self. It is fundamental to liberty that every individual enjoys the ownership of his/her body and self. Classical liberalism is centered around individuation, which is the striving of everyone to reach, through peaceful life experiences, their full flowering of personality and free will without arbitrary interference from the state.

The Republican Party professes belief in limited government. Buoyed by the Obamacare disaster, Republicans hope to take back the Senate in 2014 and full control of the federal government in 2016.

Because of the Paul family, Ron and Rand, Republicans are compelled to work with libertarians who have their own power base for the first time since William F. Buckley purged us for insufficient enthusiasm for the Cold War. Both the Republican and Democratic parties are bleeding membership to the Independent label. Republicans need libertarians to win elections in crucial races. Libertarians are an important swing vote, more powerful than soccer moms. We have demonstrated now that we can be elected to Congress on a liberty platform. The Libertarian Party is credited with spoiling Republican races. We have voted Democratic or just stayed home when the Republicans fail miserably to nominate candidates that have libertarian appeal.

Twenty percent of Americans identify as Libertarian in polls, about 10 percent very Libertarian. The business establishment, the military, police, legions of defense contractors, and the evangelical religious right hold sway in the Republican Party. The arch enemy of libertarians however, are the neocons. The neocons began as Trotskyite communists. The communists who call themselves conservatives have simply replaced an ideology of universal communist revolution with “benevolent American hegemony,” i.e. imposing compliant democracies at gunpoint. Put differently, Empire American style.

There are certain litmus tests for libertarians to remain Republicans. The War on the World and the War on Drugs have got to be open to reasonable debate regarding a cessation. We have to see a serious commitment to cutting government spending. Federalism should be consistently applied to social and economic problems. We have to see an honest effort to reform defense and buttress the Fourth Amendment. The criminal justice system is bloated and unfair. Immigration reforms should not lead to more big government. At least some Republicans should support legislation to repeal Nevada’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. Let’s get serious about privatization.

On the Saturday after the Lincoln Dinner, the Nevada Republican State Central Committee denied activist Pat Kerby the state party organization’s chairmanship, presumably because he helped Nevada cast its votes for Ron Paul at the 2012 National Convention. If Washoe County and Nevada are going to be red in 2014, the Nevada Republican Party must offer libertarians enough that will excite them to turn out and vote Republican, and do the same in 2016.