Archive for: December, 2006

The Forgotten (Or Ignored) Libertarian Vote

Dec 13 2006 Published by under Democrats, Elections, Pandering, Politics, Republicans

The Hotline’s Blogometer today notes an Andrew Sullivan post covering this piece on Tech Central Station from David Boaz (of CATO) and David Kirby (of America’s Future Foundation). (Hopefully that’s enough attribution to keep me in good standing as a blogger… dear lord…).

The general theme reflects (with actual evidence) what I have been saying since before the election (based solely on my beliefs as a libertarian voter). The swing in libertarian votes away from the GOP was much, much larger than the swing amongst so-cons, and likely cost the GOP congress.

This year we commissioned a nationwide post-election survey of 1013 voters from Zogby International. We again found that 15 percent of the voters held libertarian views. We also found a further swing of libertarians away from Republican candidates. In 2006, libertarians voted 59-36 for Republican congressional candidates—a 24-point swing from the 2002 mid-term election. (emphasis mine) To put this in perspective, front-page stories since the election have reported the dramatic 7-point shift of white conservative evangelicals away from the Republicans. The libertarian vote is about the same size as the religious right vote measured in exit polls, and it is subject to swings more than three times as large.

The media loves to make a big deal about the strength of the so-cons within the party, but the fact is it is the libertarian vote (the fiscally conservative, socially liberal wing) that turned away from the party.

As I have always said, the fiscal conservatives put up with the so-cons agenda for regulating personal issues as long as the fiscal house was kept in check. The so-con wing had traditionally kept the fiscal house in check as long as they were free to pursue the social issues. That held the coalition together.

Over the last six years, the so-cons abandoned the pretense of fiscal restraint while pursuing, unchecked, their social agenda. This year alone, the Congressional agenda focused on social issues at the expense of good government in a blatant attempt to mobilize the so-con base.

The libertarians fled rather than betray their principles. In many cases they voted Libertarian as a protest (Boaz and Kirby highlight a number of races where the Libertarian vote was greater than the margin of victory for the Dem).

The bloodletting of libertarian votes has been going on for some time, however.

Based on the turnout in 2004, Bush’s margin over Kerry dropped by 4.8 million votes among libertarians. Had he held his libertarian supporters, he would have won a smashing reelection rather than squeaking by in Ohio.

That’s right! Despite popular perception within the party that Bush improved his numbers dramatically in all sectors in 2004, he actually lost libertarian votes. He could have won a Reagan-esque landslide victory had he not abandoned fiscal conservatism in his first term. His three million vote margin could have been nearly eight million.

I, and many of my friends back home, have always maintained that we support the GOP because it was easier to push for limited government in your personal life with Republicans who otherwise supported fiscal discipline and small government than it was to support lower taxes and smaller government within a Democrat party that historically believes in a large fed.

It doesn’t appear that is universally true anymore. If the Democrats pursue an agenda of taxation and larger federal programs, the libertarians will likely return home. However, if Democrats understand they will not win the South on a values debate, they may begin to pursue more fiscal conservatism (balancing the budget, reining in spending, and actually implementing real pay-go rules).

If that happens, the GOP may become the permanent minority as more libertarians shun the party of the religious right. As Boaz and Kirby state:

If Republicans can’t win New Hampshire and the Mountain West, they can’t win a national majority. And they can’t win those states without libertarian votes. They’re going to need to stop scaring libertarian, centrist, and independent voters with their social-conservative obsessions and become once again the party of fiscal responsibility.

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A Note On Net Neutrality For Techies

Dec 13 2006 Published by under Congress, Government, Legislation, Net Neutrality, Technology, The Internet

Lately I’ve been talking to some friends in technology circles about net neutrality. It has become clear to me that there is a good deal of confusion on one particular aspect of net neutrality that has been festering. The confusion centers on your ability to host applications.

Cable companies have repeatedly stated that they will not prohibit cable modem users from visiting the sites they want and running applications on the web consistent with your terms of service. That caveat has led a lot of people to confuse the current terms of service with the intent of net neutrality.

As an example, at the Personal Democracy Forum last year, a debate was held featuring opponents and proponents of net neut (you can listen to the net neutrality debate here). In the background a big screen ran an open chat with audience members allowed to comment about the proceedings. Many of the comments were along the line of:

Why should I believe you will allow me to run applications given that I can’t currently run an SMTP server.

It’s a valid question, but one that confuses the issue. Net Neutrality is not about forcing cable companies to allow you to host your own HTTP, FTP, or SMTP server on their network. That is now, and even under the most strident net neut proposal, would still be regulated by the terms of service for your connection. If you think you will be allowed to run an SMTP server on your home connection under a net neutrality regime, you’re wrong.

Broadband connections are regulated first by the company’s policies – chief among which is not allowing applications that degrade the connection of someone else on the network or applications that would attract traffic that impedes on others.

(This is the same reason the companies want to control their networks and charge large corporate consumers based on their users’ consumption of network resources – to prevent one person’s consumption of bandwidth from degrading someone else’s ability to view content, but that argument is lost in the current debate.)

Most companies restrict the ability to serve content to their business connections. I, for instance, have a business connection in my home so I can maintain applications like this and to provide a static IP. It costs me about $20 more per month, but I have full rights to run what I want.

For those who support net neutrality thinking that they’re going to be allowed to run apps like this on a home connection, you should reframe your thinking. Instead of supporting a bad policy under the misguided pursuit of apps, you should look into a business connection through your cable or phone company. You can do what you want to do right now (albeit for a few bucks more per month) without involving government in the equation.

(Disclaimer: While I work for the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, this post should in no way be construed as an official position of the Association. Thoughts in this space are mine and mine alone and do not reflect the views of my employer.)

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When Pandering Goes Bad

Dec 13 2006 Published by under Congress, Craziness, Government, John McCain, Legislation, Pandering, Politics, Porn, The Law

Let me first reiterate that all comments on the blog reflect my personal opinion and not the view of my employer. That is very important to note when I feel compelled to make comments about something as stupid as the new McCain effort to pander to the electorate.

Social networking sites and message boards face the same regulatory burden as internet service providers (ISPs) in a new bill proposed by ex-US presidential candidate John McCain. McCain wants sites to report all child pornography to authorities.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all in favor of trying to eliminate kiddie porn. Those who are found to support it need to be punished extensively and a special place in hell should be reserved for them. Having said that, let me also point out why this is one of the dumbest public policy ideas ever floated by someone with an IQ higher than his shoe size.

Under this law, this web site, which routinely gets overrun by comment spam, would count as a message board. In the eighteen months I have maintained this blog, I have deleted nearly 10,000 spam comments – the overwhelming majority of which are labeled as some sort of porn.

How many of them are child porn? Honestly, I have no idea. I have yet to click through to one. It’s not that I have anything against porn, but I’m going to find my own if I want to partake, I’m not going to click some skeevy link in a post about Survivor’s season debut.

Under the McCain law, however, I am required to click through to every single one of them, determine whether it is kiddie porn (or, I assume, in violation of 18 U.S.C. 2257 requirements for secondary producers), and if I cannot verify the age of anyone present in the pictures, I am to report it, or face criminal charges myself.

The only other option is to report every single link. That would create 10,000 leads the investigative authorities must inspect – creating a massive backlog of investigation if those 10,000 porn spam links are multiplied across the tens of millions of blogs that allow comments. Does the FBI really have the manpower to inspect the 500 billion links that have to be reported by blogs alone?

This proposal clearly indicates two things. First, John McCain clearly knows nothing about technology, blogs, the web, and the practical implications of this asinine proposal. Second, this is nothing more than an attempt to pander for votes by inserting the heavy hand of the federal government.

Here’s a better idea, John. Implement the .xxx domain. Mandate instead that all porn be relegated to that domain, and any porn, of any kind, that is housed at another domain be punishable by fines and jail time. It will a) allow filters to block porn very quickly and easily by simply restricting access to any .xxx address and b) make regulating all porn (kiddie or otherwise) easier by providing stiffer criminal penalties for violations.

(Disclaimer: While I work for the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, this post should, in no way, be construed as an official position of the Association. Thoughts in this space are mine and mine alone and do not reflect the views of my employer.)

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Huckabee To Join Frat, Hopes To Do Keg Stands In White House

Dec 12 2006 Published by under Candidates, Craziness, Democrats, Drinking, Elections, Football, Politics, Republicans, Sports, The President

The Associated Press is reporting that Arkansas’ outgoing Governor, and potential POTUS candidate Mike Huckabee has decided to join the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity just in time to start his 2008 run.

Huckabee on Tuesday was tight-lipped about the fraternity membership and said he planned to answer questions after his initiation. Huckabee acknowledged joining a fraternity would be a new experience for him.

”I probably won’t move into the frat house, though,” Huckabee said.

I’m not sure that joining a frat as a 51 year old man is the best way to convince the country you are mature enough to lead the nation. Do we really want the President and Defense Secretary overseeing some bizarre Iraqi prisoner hazing ritual that involves making suspected terrorists try to drop the marshmallow squeezed between their ass cheeks into a martini glass?

Given the news today that Barack Obama is doing Monday Night Football and Huckabee is doing keg stands with the Tekes it is entirely possible this is some bizarro world run by beer company ad firms.

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Nancy Pelosi: Batting 0.000

Dec 11 2006 Published by under Congress, Democrats, Politics

Her choice of Murtha for House Majority leader was snubbed by her fellow Dems, she was roundly criticized for wanting to give top spots to Murtha and Mollohan (two of the dirtiest members of Congress) after she promised the cleanest House in history, and now her pick for the Intelligence Committee fails a quiz about basic knowledge of al-Qaeda.

I don’t know about you, but I am sleeping the sleep of angels knowing these guys are on the job. The upside to all of this is the steady “drip-drip-drip” of news like this over the next two years should make it much easier for us to reclaim the House in 2008.

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