"Repeal" is Not Enough

FF Symposium: The GOP may rally conservative independents by pushing "repeal", but to win the broader public, they need real solutions.

Policies that fit into a small "l" libertarian framework can be popular--even broadly so--and help deal with the problems Austin Bramwell describes in his response to Jonathan Rauch’s article “The Tea Party Paradox”.  But, these policies must both packaged right AND actually do something about the problems they are intended to solve.

Packaging has gotten a fair amount of intellectual attention but has caught on to a surprisingly small extent in practice. You can rally the troops by saying "repeal Obamacare," or "abolish Social Security/Medicare" but these proposals will almost never actually resonate with broad sections of the public. Even when they do (as repealing Obamacare might have a few months ago), they are nearly impossible to implement since they involve very diffuse benefits and very concentrated costs. Instead, solutions need to be stated in positive language. It's important for people with libertarian leanings to say what they favor: "free choice in healthcare," "a public-private retirement system" rather than what they oppose. This is a simple lesson that most people anywhere in the libertarian movement know intellectually but, to a large extent, it's not followed in practice.

But packaging isn't enough. People have to be convinced that libertarian solutions will work and do something about the problem. And simply saying "well, the free market or private charity will solve the problem" is NOT a solution. Instead, libertarian solutions often have to involve the rejiggering of the public sector rather than unrealistic and probably inadvisable ideas of abolishing it altogether. For example, giving cash to the working poor via the Earned Income Tax Credit or some other negative income tax is a much better way to provide every working person with a minimum standard of living than a bureaucratic welfare state. Vastly increased efforts to support meals and wheels and other support for shut-ins could reduce Medicaid long-term care costs a great deal. A system that scaled back Social Security--higher retirement age, means tested benefits—would make most people better off if it were combined with flexible, easy-to-use private accounts. And details matter, libertarian-minded people also have to care about how these things are run. In addition, simply saying that one wants to shrink government isn't a substitute for trying to run it well.

So Rauch's basic ideas can work. But they need better packaging and, just as importantly, need to BE solutions to problems rather than simple efforts to abolish programs.