CATO Strikes Mitch Daniels

The rise of the partisan think tank has an interesting irony to it. Premised on the idea of rigorous scientific research, the partisan think tank always seems to arrive at it's presuppositions - and more importantly, the presuppositions of its donors. It is not really science. It is partisan politics hidden in a disguise of "objective, empirical inquiry."

I have already pointed out the hypocrisy of the Heritage Foundation and the Club for Growth - how they championed the individual mandate and the health care connector until Obama adopted those policies (see here the libertarian magazine Reason tout the individual mandate as a free market idea in 2009 2004).

CATO, on the other hand, is a bit more consistent. They have always been hardcore libertarians. And it is amazing! All of their research backs up their libertarianism. Every time. No dissent and debate necessary. It's just back to the laboratory for another groundbreaking experiment that proves libertarian presuppositions!

Which is why it is no surprise to me that CATO's Michael Cannon doesn't like Mitch Daniels' health care policies. For libertarians like Cannon, the only acceptable action that Daniels could have performed would have been if he had deliberately ignored any problems in Indiana's health care industry and just sat on his hind parts all day, cursing the government. For ideologues like Cannon, government is always bad. Furthermore, Cannon isn't required to govern. He can just rock back in his armchair, dreaming about his utopia of a world, whose economic and societal apparatus functions beautifully without any concentrated human effort.

Folks, libertarianism is not the same thing as conservatism. Let's not confuse the two. We ought to expect that our leaders provide clear policy options that address actual societal needs. If conservatives want the option of governing, then they ought to show that they can govern. Libertarians, on the other hand, are anti-governors.

What is funny is to watch in a Republican primary contest how each candidate tries to accuse the other of not being conservative (read libertarian) enough. That's because if the candidate was a governor, he wasn't conservative (read libertarian) enough. Governors have to live in the real world, which means they can't be dreamy ideologues. They face political constraints as well as the need to make policy ideas work in a very particular setting.

So Cannon doesn't like Danielscare. Blah, blah, blah.