The Politics of Economics

I was just reading another positive spin on the economy.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20080604-1420-economy.html

As a commenter observes: "Good News! Eh? must be Bush's fault lol."

I don't deny that everything negative the doom and gloom pundits write about the economy might come true.  But one reason I am very skeptical is the political nature of economics reporting.  Most on Wall Street are Democrats, and most reporters are Democrats.  This is an election year with an incumbent Republican they want to replace.  They are thus motivated to emphasize the bad news.

Romney vs Giuliani from my libertarian perspective

Neither Mitt Romney nor Rudy Giuliani are libertarians to most of us who support that cause. Personally, I believe Romney would be the better of the two, when measured from my libertarian-right perspective.

Romney is exceptionally brilliant, while Giuliani is merely very smart. Romney has an impressive private sector resume, while Giuliani has spent most of his career in government and the (non-productive) legal sector. Both men will advocate far more government than I'd like, but Romney is more likely to favor mandates that involve private sector competition. Romney ran a diverse state; Giuliani ran a specific city.

So in the categories of competence and free market experience, Mitt Romney is my preferred candidate over Rudy Giuliani. Despite Ron Paul's foreign policy errors, he is still my top choice among the major party candidates.

My friend Bruce Cohen has some related thoughts.

The Ron Paul Phenomenon

It looks to me like Republican Ron Paul is getting more enthusiasm, support, and contributions from LP members than I've ever seen before. I bet he's taken in more money, and gotten Libertarian Party (LP) members to work more hours, than the entire party gets in a typical [year, decade, eternity?]. He gets some of his strongest support from the anarcho-libertarians, even though several important Ron Paul policies are incompatible with their beliefs. Party members need to think about this.

Surely Dr Paul gets lots of publicity by being in the GOP, which puts him on TV in political debates that seem to occur almost every week. But most LP members don't care much about that venue or party. The official party candidates are getting almost zero attention, which is normal on the mainstream national level but not necessarily among party members.

What is it? Can the Ron Paul phenomenon be leveraged by the LP now or in the future? If libertarians can only get this much attention by running in one of the big two parties, then maybe Libertarians need to think about turning the party into an activist wing of one of those parties and field libertarian candidates there.

Or maybe Ron Paul is a one-of-a-kind phenomenon capitalizing on a unique alignment of the stars.

Has there been any discussion of this on any blogs or e-mail lists?