My kind newspaper delivery person or someone in that chain must’ve wanted to sell mine. Conveniently not delivered yesterday.

Actually, Obama’s plan will provide a tax credit to some people who do not pay federal income taxes. See this article.

You’re right, tax cuts are a tough call. I prefer a moderate cut accompanied by a reduction in spending.

You’re right on Iraq. A little research shows that Obama hadn’t waffled as much as I had been led to believe. Obama says 16 months, McCain says as soon as possible. I have to believe McCain would have most of the troops out in 16 months because the war is so unpopular. It’s not a huge deal to me one way or the other.

I’m still undecided whether it’s better to have a tax cut right now or not. On the one hand, we’ve a massive deficit so cutting taxes makes it worse. On the other hand, we’re moving into a recession, and giving people a tax break might lessen the impact.

As for Iraq, my understanding is that McCain still hasn’t stated that he would even entertain the idea of a timetable, making his stance more like “Get the troops out . . . eventually.”

In principle, I’m for any tax cut. Though I do agree now might not be the best time for them, unless they are accompanied by a reduction in spending. On the other hand, I absolutely detest Obama’s income redistribution plan.

Iraq has never been a big issue for me. Yes, it was a mistake. Yes, Bush managed it poorly. However, McCain and Obama’s plans for the war have steadily converged until they are nearly identical. That is, “Get the troops out as soon as possible, but not sooner.”

Economic issues have been important to me for some time. Government spending and taxation, healthcare, and free trade are all economic issues. Vouchers are an economic solution to our educational problems. Energy can also be considered an economic issue.

I will admit that I have a Republican bias. However, I did give Obama a chance. However, I just can’t stomach his disregard for the free market, his income redistribution, or his stance on gun control.

Honestly, I get my news from CNN, primarily. And I consider myself moderately well informed. Perhaps you haven’t noticed, but I’m not a mayor, a governor, or a vice presidential candidate. Those who want to control the country’s direction have an obligation to make themselves well-informed.

It’s not so alarming that should doesn’t read a ton of papers, but that she couldn’t even name one. She could have named an Alaskan paper and pretended that she read it. It’s not like she has moral qualms about stretching the truth.

> I have plenty of issues with his positions.

Ben, it really looks to me like you made up your mind about McCain vs Obama and then picked which issues were important to you, not the other way around. There are a lot of issues here, and you picked the handful where you agree with McCain. Since when have school vouchers been so important to you, as a parent with access to very good public schools? When did you become a massive nuclear energy proponent? When did the Bush tax cuts become something worth supporting? And when did Iraq stop mattering? The issues you picked are certainly important, but they don’t seem like they should be the only important issues.

I don’t know. I think it’s entirely possible to find overlap among those groups. After all, all those things fall under “let the free market do its thing.”

For the rest of them, I agree that it’s not hard to convince a big chunk of Americans to drop subsidies, or to deregulate, or to avoid government healthcare. The problem is getting a big enough overlap among these groups to form a viable base.

And for the record, I totally agree with your stance on marriage. I think the appropriate thing to do is have the government get out of marriage entirely, and deal with only civil unions. I think that’s a compromise virtually everyone should be able to agree on. Then straight and gay people can get “married” however they want, and the government stays out of it. Short of that, though, I’m all for gays having the right to marry. The idea that somehow the state has an obligation (or an ability) to protect the “sanctity” of marriage is ridiculous. If people want sanctity of marriage, they need to build it in their own marriages. The millions of people who’ve gotten married frivolously throughout history have insured that there is no grand notion of sanctity that can apply to marriage as a whole.

I agree that Palin handled the “Bridge to Nowhere” situation badly. She should have simply pointed out that she had an obligation to get money for her state.

Yes, I disagree with her on most of the issues you pointed out, but those issues aren’t that important to me. I outlined the issues that are important to me in my post the other day. On those issues, I agree with McCain-Palin. Yes, we will just have to agree to disagree.

By the way, what newspapers do you read? Do you consider yourself well informed?

Deregulation of the economy is not popular now, but I’m not convinced that the pendulum won’t swing the other way to some degree. I think we could convince 34% of the voters that subsidies are stupid. Am I too optimistic?

Privatization of social security would definitely ruffle some feathers. Neither of the candidates have really addressed that issue this time, which is strange.

I can’t find the official Libertarian position on gay marriage, but they can have my position, which is that the government shouldn’t be in the marriage business, but anyone can get a civil union. All but the far right would be happy with that.

Libertarians tend to wiggle out of the abortion issue by saying it should be up to the states.

I agree that getting the LP into the mainstream would be most difficult. Getting any third-party into the mainstream will be most difficult.

It basically sounds like you don’t like Palin, but for some reason you’ve decided that Obama is somehow worse. Obama is, at the very least, a very capable man. He’s demonstrated that throughout this campaign. Palin has demonstrated instead that she’s ignorant on many issues, a fundamentalist Christian, and if the troopergate stuff is any indication, petty and vindictive. I don’t know how you could prefer that to Obama. You also still seem to be ignoring the fact that she *is* the nomination. People voting for McCain are voting for Palin to take the second-highest office in the nation. The possibility of President Palin is not insignificant.

I don’t think we are going to agree on this, though. If you can look at Palin and Obama and pick Palin, I don’t think anything I can say would sway you.

From the right, they would lose support due to their belief in separation of church and state, same-sex marriage rights, gays in the military, abortion rights, etc.

They would also lose support on both sides due to their opposition to all subsidies.

I’m not sure exactly what they would need to drop from their platform in order to cobble together a platform that the majority (or at least 34%) of Americans would prefer to either of the mainstream parties. It could be difficult. There are a disturbing number of single-issue voters on both sides.

A lot of people tried to fault her for trying to get earmarks for her city and state. I can’t see any problem with that. She would have been negligent if she hadn’t tried every funding source available. However, now that she is possibly in a position to change the wasteful practice of earmarks, she’s standing up against them. I don’t see a contradiction there.

What other Libertarian stances do you think mainstream America would have big problems with?