LIBERTARIANS: STILL A TINY CONSTITUENCY. There are a couple implications for the data showing that "small government" conservatives are a small and shrinking minority while social conservatives remain the real core. First, if for some reason you still thought Giuliani was a serious candidate for the Republican nomination, this should disabuse you. Second, this should be another nail in the coffin of the silly "George Bush isn't an anti-staist and therefore he's a liberal or at least not a conservative" fallacy. Not only is statist conservatism banal, it's the only electorally viable form, even in the United States.
On a related note, my former advisor Mark Smithdid research and found that libertarian arguments for tax cuts were a failure; the argument only started working for Republicans when they rhetorically tied tax cuts to economic growth. His data is now available in convenient book format.
--Scott Lemieux
