The premise underpinning Robert Draper’s New York Times Magazine cover story on the “Libertarian Moment” is that libertarians offer the cure for the Republican Party’s political difficulties. The story has lots of problems — a failure to account for recent history, in which the GOP already moved toward libertarianism after 2008, and is now moving back, not to mention a general credulousness toward its subjects — but the central problem is that its major thesis is rooted in a complete misuse of public-opinion data. CONT.
Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine