Somin on Romney vs. Obama

Ilya Somin has a detailed and thoughtful post contrasting Mitt Romney and Barack Obama from a libertarian perspective. He comes down tentatively on the side of Romney overall, but acknowledges that more pacifistic libertarians might reasonably support Obama as the lesser evil. The most informative section for me was that on judicial nominations. In particular, I’m led to question my earlier view that voting GOP for the Court is pointless, in part because I trust that Ilya has some local knowledge here that I lack. My view is that the conservatives’ federalism jurisprudence has been more symbolic than substantive. On the other hand, property rights and political speech are important policy areas where the judicial right easily trumps the judicial left, an advantage perhaps not overwhelmed by the left’s superiority on wartime executive power and the rights of criminal defendants.