Alina Stefanescu is in the middle of a crisis. The Romanian-born, Alabama-raised 25-year-old has been a libertarian since the 10th grade. A hardcore one. An activist. An academic. A brainiac foot soldier in the broad conservative movement so committed to the cause, she used to wear an Ollie North T-shirt to class in her Tuscaloosa high school. So when there's been a choice between a Democrat and a Republican, Stefanescu has gone with the GOP just about every time.
But all that seems to be changing. The Bush White House's heavy-handed approach to the war on terrorism, its spendthrift fiscal plan and its adventures overseas have soured Stefanescu on the GOP. And she's not the only one.
Libertarians across the country are slowly beginning to question their Republican loyalties. And if they break with the GOP -- or even decide to sit out the 2004 election -- it could be as bad for George W. Bush as the alienation of the religious right was for his dad in 1992.
"When Bush won, I was very hopeful," says Stefanescu, who runs fellowship programs at the Institute for Humane Studies, a libertarian foundation. "He sounded like he was going to do some very libertarian things: a less interventionist approach [overseas], school choice, free trade. He says all the right things. He just didn't do them.
"Normally, I wouldn't consider it," she adds, "but if I had to vote today, I'd vote for [Howard] Dean."
Libertarians have long been advocates of having the smallest government and fewest possible restraints on individual rights. Traditionally that's led them to talk mostly about domestic issues, such as gun rights and congressional spending. But it's the iron foot of the Bush foreign policy that's really pissed off people like Stefanescu and Jim Henley, an influential libertarian blogger.
"What I've come to despise from this administration is that they are trying to convince the American people to live in fear," Henley says. "They tried to use this tin-pot tyrant of a third-rate country on the other side of the world to make America quake in its boots."
John Ashcroft gets a big chunk of the blame for libertarian alienation, too. The attorney general's disregard for constitutional niceties and his push for a network of civilian informants ticks off those whose whole philosophy is based on the unfettered right of the individual to do whatever he or she wants. Pentagon programs such as Total Information Awareness, the ultra-invasive database, haven't exactly made Henley or Stefanescu feel any better.
There are other flash points as well. The president advocated free trade during the 2000 election and then increased tariffs on foreign steel. That's a big libertarian no-no. And the Bush economic plan -- cutting taxes for the rich while sending spending through the roof -- doesn't exactly warm the hearts of those who really believe in smaller government.
"One party's become tax-and-spend. The other's become borrow-from-your-kids-and-spend. It's not altogether obvious to me that one is better than the other," says Gene Healy, a senior editor at the Cato Institute, the best-known hub of libertarian thought. In recent months, the group has been increasingly acidic in its critique of Bush's management of both foreign and domestic affairs.
It wasn't always like this. For years, libertarian think tanks like Cato and the Independence Institute were some of the conservative movement's most powerful ideological engines. Milton Friedman and his fellow libertarians at the University of Chicago helped fuel Republican economic theory -- shrink government, cut taxes and let people keep their own money instead of giving it to Washington.
It's a mantra Republicans have been repeating for decades to get themselves into office. But these days the words are sounding more and more hollow. While the Clinton administration showed some fiscal restraint, federal spending has ballooned on Bush's watch. A $230 billion surplus under Clinton has turned into a $480 billion a year debt.
"The conservatives have proven that they never favored limited government. They only opposed big government that promoted liberal ideas," says Radley Balko, a well-known libertarian blogger who also writes for FOXNews.com.
"Neolibertarians are to the Republican Party what African Americans are to the Democratic Party -- taken for granted because they have nowhere else to go," wrote Henley on his blog last year.
"There's more restlessness about Republicans," adds David Boaz, Cato's executive vice president. Referring to the proposed prescription-drug benefit for seniors, he asks, "What's the point of electing a Republican if he's overseeing the greatest expansion of the welfare state since the Great Society?"
But a lot of Democrats are in favor of subsidizing grandma's drugs, too. That's one of many reasons why it won't be easy for a Democrat to pick up libertarian votes in the presidential race.
Healy (full disclosure: he and I went to Georgetown University at the same time) says libertarians have been willing to cut Bush some slack on their traditional issues because of September 11, and "because he does not cut a power-hungry figure." Healy also sees little difference between Bush and Democratic candidates like John Kerry and Joe Lieberman, both of whom have radiated positive vibes, at one point or another, about invading Iraq. Wesley Clark's leadership of the "senseless, unjustified" Kosovo war doesn't win him any gold stars in Healy's book, either.
While some libertarians like Clark's chances against Bush, only Howard Dean -- with an "A" rating from the National Rifle Association and a vocal throat against the recent Iraq War -- has a shot at broad libertarian support, many in the movement say.
"If Howard Dean got the Democratic nod, I'd vote for him in a heartbeat," says Julian Sanchez, a former Cato employee now with Reason magazine.
"I have run for Congress 3 times as a Libertarian . . . [but I'm] supporting Howard Dean for President, and I have recruited other Libertarians to join me," writes Gene Berkman on a pro-Dean Web site. "I don't agree with Dean on everything, especially his opposition to tax cuts, but stopping the warmongers is more important."
All of this may be interesting in the fall of 2003. But holding on to libertarian true believers until the fall of 2004 (if Dean makes it that far) could be tough for the former governor's campaign. Healy, for example, was feeling fairly warm and fuzzy about the doctor -- until Dean came out in favor of sending American troops to Liberia.
Other issues -- extending health insurance or privatizing Social Security, for example -- could derail a potential alliance with Dean as well, especially if he keeps up the left-wing boilerplate he's been spilling on some of his Democratic primary audiences.
But if Dean doesn't get the nomination, Healy, Stefanescu and company won't be going back to their easy association with mainstream conservatives anytime soon.
"I find myself agreeing with The New York Times editorial page more than I ever thought I would be," Healy says. "And I'm aggravated by FOX News more than I ever thought I would be."
Maybe none of this will matter. After all, even Pat Buchanan got more votes in the 2000 presidential race than Harry Browne, the libertarian presidential candidate. And, like Jim Henley, many libertarians see themselves as "currently a fringe part of the American polity."
But the blogger may be underestimating his movement's influence.
In 2000, 1.7 million people voted for Libertarian Party candidates for the U.S. House. That's the first time a third party has ever pulled more than a million votes in congressional contests, according to Richard Winger, editor of Ballot Access News, which tracks such things. It was the best showing, percentage-wise, for a minor party since Henry Wallace's Progressive Party in 1948.
Libertarians got similar numbers during the 2002 House races. Overall, more than 3.4 million people cast at least one Libertarian Party vote last election day, says party spokesman George Getz.
In a post-election analysis in The New York Times, conservative pundit John Miller blamed the libertarian vote for Republicans' failure to capture Sen. Tim Johnson's (D-S.D.) seat. He also accused the group of tipping the Wisconsin and Oregon gubernatorial races to the Democrats.
But libertarian ideas remain far more popular than any libertarian candidate. One of the few polls conducted in this area -- a 2000 survey by Rasmussen Research -- showed that 16 percent of Americans agreed with libertarian positions on issues like taxes, government subsidies and enforcement of drug laws.
The extreme view on civil liberties -- shared for a while by only libertarians and a few privacy nuts, it seemed -- has come roaring back, thanks to Ashcroft and friends. That's why the attorney general recently had to spend a month begging voters and lawmakers not to repeal the USA PATRIOT Act.
Such concerns may only produce minor shifts in the American electorate next year. But with the country just about evenly divided over whether or not to re-elect W., minor shifts could help decide the election.
Just look at the last presidential race, says Mark Mellman, the Democratic pollster. "The election of 2000," he says, "taught us that every single vote could make a huge difference."
Noah Shachtman writes about technology, defense, politics and culture for The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Salon and Wired News. He is the author of Defense Tech, a Web log.
