Jonah: Can’t you let us/me believe that libertarians are just that powerful?

Here’s a response to my original post from Nick Gillespie over at Hit and Run:

She might have added that libertarians (think Milton Friedman) had clear influence on conservatives regarding a military draft, tax policy, and school choice, for starters. In terms of partisan politics, the only self-identified libertarian in the 2008 presidential election, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), not only showed candidates how to use the web for organizing and fundraising, he almost single handedly put foreign policy on the table as a serious topic. Virtually all the GOP and Dem candidates (even Obama early on) were essentially status quo when it came to examining Iraq and Afghanistan. That’s a pretty freaking huge impact. Going back almost a decade, Republican loyalists started carping about how Libertarians, tiny in number but rich in love, cost the GOP various elections. If you take even the most conservative estimate of a semi-libertarian electorate (say 10 percent) that is consistently in favor of social tolerance and limited government, you’ve got enough Free Minds and Free Markets folks to swing any election.

By the way, I wish I could provide a link to the debate hosted by the Heritage Foundation between Gillespie and Goldberg in July 2006 about whether the libertarians should be considered part of the conservative Right. For an account of the first debate between these two, go here.