From Prof. Brad Smith — please see here for more on this feature:
For politically oriented libertarians, politics is the art of picking the most libertarian candidate who has a chance of winning.
Bill Richardson has no chance of winning, and the other Democratic hopefuls offer nothing to supporters of limited government. On the Republican side, we can safely skip the Ron Paul debate — he is not going to be the next president of the United States. John McCain sometimes blunders into support of limited government, but his usual reaction to his personal whim of the day is that government should do something about it. And, his honorable service to his country notwithstanding, his unstable personality and temper make him uniquely unqualified for the presidency.
That leaves three electable candidates who can offer some legitimate claim to libertarian sympathies — Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, and Fred Thompson. Romney is an easy choice.
Governor Romney’s tax policy should make a libertarian’s mouth water. It begins with the no-brainers — make the Bush tax cuts permanent, eliminate the estate tax, and nix any increase in social security taxes. In addition, Romney has proposed substantial reductions in the corporate tax rate, where the United States rate is now one of the highest among the Western democracies, and in individual income tax rates, across the board. He has proposed eliminating all taxes on dividends and interest for those earning less than $200,000. One of Governor Romney’s most important yet overlooked proposals is to make all spending on health care premiums and medical expenses tax deductible, an initiative that will do much to rationalize health care markets by putting individual coverage on the same plane as employer-provided health plans.
Romney is a talented businessman with an understanding of how start-up enterprises and a dynamic, growth oriented economy work. He understands how Sarbanes-Oxley is costing the U.S. is predominant place in world capital markets, and will take an ax to the Washington regulatory machine. As the Club for Growth says, Governor Romney has