It sounds cliché, but your average libertarian experiences an acute form of cognitive dissonance when considering whether to vote for a Republican presidential candidate. Since Ronald Reagan, Republicans have tended to enunciate free-market positions and argue that Washington should not impose its power on the rest of the country—while insisting that it should do exactly that when it comes to the rest of the world.
Once again the GOP is set to nominate a candidate who will blast President Obama for advancing a social-democratic agenda at home while at the same time bashing the “un-American” Obama for not doing enough to advance a “Freedom Agenda” abroad. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has surrounded himself with a cadre of neoconservative advisors, including Robert Kagan, Michael Chertoff, Eliot Cohen, Paula Dobriansky, Eric Edelman, and Walid Phares—an academic who was involved with right-wing Christian militia groups during the Lebanese civil war.
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