Libertarian Lite: New at Reason

Some libertarians say libertarians can win if they surrender some of their ideas. John Stossel writes:

In this year’s Republican presidential primaries, Sen. Rand Paul got little traction. In 2012, his father failed. That year, the Libertarian Party candidate, former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, got just 1 percent of the vote.We libertarians must be doing something wrong. Maybe our anti-government message is too radical, says Jerry Taylor. Maybe we should soften our approach.

“Libertarians need to be more realistic,” Taylor told 500 young people at a taping of my TV show at last week’s International Students for Liberty conference. In electoral politics, he said, finding libertarians is “like trying to find a daisy in Hiroshima” after the nuclear blast.

Taylor, a smart libertarian who runs a think tank called the Niskanen Center, says to become more popular, we libertarians ought to change our views.

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