Still just trying to live free

At the Conservative Political Action Conference, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele charged young conservatives “to go forth as the champions of freedom” and to defend the rights of Americans “to live free and die free without the government taking what they have worked for.”

Being a libertarian activist must feel like a thankless job.

I remember supporters of Texas Rep. Ron Paul out on street corners, holding cookouts and concerts, long before Republican elites realized they were disconnected from the youth and certainly before anyone thought Indiana would matter in the election.

Many of those same supporters were out on Inauguration Day, trying to convince students who might have backed Obama with a “Real Change Requires R3volution” rally.

Despite what must have been a disappointing election, turnout for the Young Americans for Liberty at IU (formerly IU Students for Ron Paul, then IU Students for Liberty) meeting I attended was pretty good. Andrew Sharp, the group’s president, seemed optimistic about what he called a “organizational” year.

Sharp and two other Young Americans for Liberty, Merry Milton and Sam Spaiser, attended this year’s rally.

They said that this year, Ron Paul got a better venue and a pretty good response, except when he drifted into foreign policy. Paul did make it on to the straw poll for potential presidential candidates in 2012. Milton noted that the existing tension between libertarians and other Republican activists was still there, but much more subdued.

Spaiser described many of the rally attendees as “born-again fiscal conservatives.”
There has definitely been a shift. I remember when conservatives on this campus used to recoil, almost defensively, at the mention of Paul. Now IU College Republicans are planning to take part in a Bloomington tea party protest against the bailouts – something Paul’s supporters opposed all along.

There are reasons to be skeptical about how much influence groups like Young Americans for Liberty and the Campaign for Liberty can really have in the GOP, even if they do have a few lessons for Republican strategists.

Paul’s supporters showed the power of the Internet in campaigning, but they also showed its limits.
The debut issue of Young American Revolution, a Young Americans for Liberty newsletter, depicts Barack Obama and Paul locked in a battle for America’s youth. Sharp claimed only Obama raised more funds than Paul in Monroe County for the Indiana Presidential Primaries. But in that same (admittedly pre-decided) contest, Paul barley captured one tenth of the votes John McCain won.

It’s also not clear what kind of candidates the GOP will actually put forward in 2010 and 2012. Americans might hate giving money to AIG and Citigroup, but support for government intervention in the economy is at its highest rate in decades.

Some Young Americans for Liberty members seemed suspicious of Todd Young, the Bloomington attorney most likely to be the Republican challenger to Democrat Baron Hill, our current representative, in 2010.

But all the members I talked to seemed convinced that if they keep bringing their message to students, many will rethink how they voted. Andrew said he was in talks with Union Board to bring Tom Woods, a libertarian author and activist, to IU.

Woods has a lot to say about government culpability in the current economic crisis, though it’s a topic he tends to oversimplify.

Still, Woods, however flawed, would certainly give a better talk than John Edwards or Ann Coulter.