From the Wall Street Journal [via David Boaz]: Barack Obama, campaigning in Wyoming, appeals to libertarians:
“Tailoring his message to the state’s antigovernment streak, Sen. Obama put new emphasis on his criticisms of the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretaps and other heightened law-enforcement activities implemented as antiterror measures. ‘You can be liberal and a libertarian, or a conservative libertarian,’ Sen. Obama told a crowd of about 1,200 at a recreation center here. But ‘there’s nothing conservative’ about President Bush’s antiterror policies. ‘There’s nothing Republican about that. Everybody should be outraged by that,’ he added.”
Boaz, a bigwig over at the ostensibly libertarian Cato Institute, qualifies his bouquet with a brickbat, claiming that Obama also said he wants to “undermine trade agreements” (i.e. NAFTA), but as the late Murray Rothbard and Paul pointed out, NAFTA isn’t “free trade,” it’s an exemplar of managed trade. As for all those “goodies from the Treasury” he says Obama wants to hand out — well, as I pointed out in my column, this morning, Obama is no Ron Paul. But, then again, Paul didn’t measure up to Boaz’s stratospheric standards, either ….