Sunday, October 24, 2010

Libertarian v libertarian

Matt Welsh's report reveals that the Audacity of Hope may well be another example of the politics as usual and politics as usual tends to be a . . . rough and tumble game.

So, to the extent that this is an accurate representation of what transpired in the murky world of the beltway and this murk is not restricted to the incumbent party if we recall the days of Gordon Libby and Nixon or perhaps the master - FDR.

That said, it is a tad disappointing, if not surprising.

Should we be surprised that Austan Goolsbee has joined in the White House's campaign against the Kochs? Not at all. Outraged or disappointed, if you wanna be. But save some of that disappointment, if it applies, to yourself, for ever believing that smarts, elbow-rubbing, and surface integrity were enough for a single person to avoid or even overcome the awful, awful business of both politics and governance. This is as true in 2010 as it will be in 2012 and every thereafter.

Literally from his first day in office, Obama has been rejecting the "false choice" between "whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works." The results of such hollow post-ideological pragmatism have been as predictable as the president's political need, two years later, to identify as political enemy No. 1 the family that has donated the most money over the years to the limited-government cause. Left-libertarianism, it would appear, did not survive the collision with governing reality.

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