There’s been a fair bit of blogospheric discussion of this piece by Brink Lindsey in the New Republic calling for a liberal-libertarian alliance (the link I provided is to the publicly accessible version at the Cato Institute website).

The problem with proposals like these, it seems to me, is that they inevitably overestimate the number of libertarian voters out there, and thus their desirability as a partner in some grand coalition. Even polls that seem to show that there is a significant group of libertarian-leaning voters usually rely on generic questions about government in general. When it comes to abolishing particular programs libertarian sentiment appears to be much thinner on the ground. The economies of the much vaunted “libertarian” west and southwest, for instance, turn out on inspection to be heavily dependent on government land programs, infrastructure subsidies, and government-sponsored industries like aerospace and defense contractors. How likely do you think those voters are to embrace thoroughgoing laissez-faire?

Part of the reason this idea has gotten so much attention, no doubt, is that libertarians are vastly overrepresented on the internet in comparison to their presence in the population at large. I’m willing to guess that there are many more red-state economic populists that the Democrats could potentially pick up than there are libertarians.