Emily Ekins and I have an op-ed in today’s Politico pointing out that while the Tea Party is united on economic issues, there is a split virtually right down the middle between traditional social conservatives and those who think government should altogether stay out of the business of “promoting traditional values.” Candidates and representatives hoping to appeal to the Tea Party, we argue, need to focus on a unifying economic agenda that takes into account this strong libertarian undercurrent.

We conducted a survey of 639 attendees at the October 9, 2010 Tea Party Convention in Virginia, one of the larger state Tea Party gatherings of its kind to date. We included the same questions from Gallup and the American National Election Studies that David Boaz and I have used to identify libertarians in our previous studies, “The Libertarian Vote” and “The Libertarian Vote in the Age of Obama.”

In our new survey, we found libertarians were 48 percent of Tea Partiers, versus 51 percent who held traditional conservative views. We defined traditional conservatives as agreeing that “the less government the better,” and that “the free market can handle these problems without government being involved,” but also believing that “the government should promote traditional values.” Tea Party libertarians agreed that less government is better, and prefer free markets, but believe that “the government should not favor any particular set of values.”

These findings help refute the assumption that the Tea Party is just another conservative group, both fiscally and socially. The data should also caution Republicans not to over-interpret potential midterm gains in the House and Senate as a mandate for social as well as fiscal conservatism.

Our survey replicated the methodology of a Politico/​Targetpoint survey from a Tea Party rally in April, which also revealed an even split between libertarians and conservatives. At the time, journalist David Weigel criticized this finding because it sampled a tea party rally that featured Ron Paul. No surprise, Weigel reasoned, that the survey “skewed” libertarian because Ron Paul’s supporters “were out in force.”

This Tea Party Convention in Virginia also featured Ron Paul—as well as Lou Dobbs, Rick Santorum and Ken Cuccinelli. With this more wide-ranging speaker line up, it would be harder to argue that the crowd skewed libertarian. If anything, we might have expected the sample to skew conservative.

While ours and Politico’s surveys sampled local tea party events, add to this a new national survey from The Washington Post/​Kaiser/​Harvard on the role of government. It found respondents who support or lean toward the tea party split on the social issues: 42 percent moderate-to-liberal, 57 percent conservative or very conservative. These three data points, taken together, suggest that our findings would likely hold up if we repeated the survey at other tea party events nationwide.

Many still mistake the tea party as one large group, sharing common interests, which our research shows is incorrect. For instance, Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson made this mistake, in an widely circulated op-ed earlier this week, asserting that the Tea Party has “the worldview of the American right — and the polling shows conclusively that that’s who the Tea Party is that.” As the chart below shows, libertarian and conservative Tea Partiers agree on economic issues, but libertarians are less concerned about social issues.

Both groups are extremely concerned about the recently passed health care reform, cutting federal government spending, and reducing the size of government. However, Tea Party libertarians are less concerned than conservatives about the moral direction of the country, gay marriage, immigration, job outsourcing, “the Mosque in NYC,” and abortion. While these differences may seem subtle, given the question wording we used, small changes are statistically significant.

It is important to recognize that these groups are not necessarily consistently ideological on all fronts. For example, we shouldn’t expect Tea Party conservatives to reflect all the views of William F. Buckley, Jr., nor Tea Party libertarians to reflect all the views of John Stossel or scholars at Cato. Nevertheless, the two groups were unified on economic issues but were different on social and cultural issues at a statistically significant level.

One finding surprised me. While we know the word “libertarian” remains unfamiliar to many who hold libertarian beliefs, the word may be gaining traction. On surveys, most libertarians identify themselves as independent, moderate or, reluctantly, conservative. However, in our survey we included an option for respondents to self-identify as “libertarian.”

Surprisingly, 35 percent of respondents who hold libertarian views self-identified as such. In previous surveys, we’ve found only 2 to 3 percent self-identify as “libertarian” nationally. To the extent that Tea Partiers talk to their neighbors and friends, perhaps we will begin to see the word “libertarian” catch on. This would certainly be good news for the “libertarian brand,” and a possible trend worth exploring in future research.

Emily and I will be writing up our findings as part of a longer study. And Emily’s more extensive research on the Tea Party, including her widely circulated analysis on Tea Party signs, will be part of her doctoral dissertation for UCLA. In the meantime, here is our survey questionnaire, and some charts showing further break down between libertarians and conservatives. Please let us know if you have additional data questions.

European criticisms of U.S. airline security match those of many U.S. travelers, so the recent volley of complaints from the other side of the pond are unremarkable. The most interesting tidbit from this news story is that British pilots are part of the chorus.

There’s a chance that it was some organizational spokesperson whose interests diverge from the actual men and women who fly planes. But if you want to choose a group to trust on airline security, it’s the group with local knowledge and a genuine stake in the outcome. That’s not any security agency. That’s pilots.

Today POLITICO Arena asks:

Are Mitch McConnell’s and John Boehner’s recent statements about not compromising a refreshing bit of candor from top political leaders, rather than the usual platitudes about bipartisanship and working across the aisle?

My response:

Mitch McConnell’s comment about making Obama “a one-term president” and John Boehner’s vow that Republicans will not “compromise on their principles” if they win the majority do indeed challenge “the usual platitudes about bipartisanship and working across the aisle.” But they also reflect a deeper problem that the midterm campaigns have begun to unmask, namely, that decades of compromises have brought us to a state where further compromise is no longer tenable. Look at France. Look at Greece. Look even at England.

I allude, of course, to the “entitlement” schemes that are sinking all western democracies — others more than ours. These are giant Ponzi schemes that would be criminal if undertaken by private parties, because like all such schemes, they’re unsustainable, with late entrants left holding the bag. But unlike their private counterparts, the public versions force us all to play. Yet as the day of reckoning approaches, government has only limited choices: either reduce the promised benefits, or pay for them by taxing or borrowing more or by selling government assets (e.g., western lands), each of which has inherent limits, or by printing money, which is another way of breaking promises — and it ends ultimately in a death spiral. That’s the hard reality. Government isn’t Santa Claus.

So when Obama governs as though he has no grasp of that reality, talk of a one-term presidency is simply coming to grips with reality. And if this election is any indication, Americans appear increasingly to appreciate that. To be sure, there are issues on which to compromise. But for far too long we’ve acted as if every issue were “political,” from retirement security to healthcare to so many other “problems” that in truth are simply the problems of life. Earlier generations solved those problems privately, either by themselves or in voluntary association with others. Indeed, the freedom to do so was what the Constitution was written to secure.

But Progressives disdained that kind of freedom as illusory. They wanted us to solve our problems collectively. The New Deal institutionalized that vision, of course, turning the Constitution on its head. Thus today’s progressives think that nearly every “problem” is a political problem, to be solved collectively — utterly ignoring the evidence of the ages about such collective undertakings. Sarkozy has prevailed for the moment in France, but strikes continue to cripple the economy, and the opposition has promised to make him pay in the next election. One can hope only that American voters will take a different course and that those they elect next Tuesday will have the wisdom to know when and when not to compromise, because this cannot go on forever.

Today’s NPR story, “Health Law Hardly At Fault For Rising Premiums,” was much fairer than its headline (and the sub-heads, if that’s what we call them). ObamaCare is “hardly at fault for rising premiums?” Really? The story quotes an insurance-industry flack who well establishes what the Obama administration’s own regulations confirm: ObamaCare will be a major driver of premium increases for some health plans. A sub-head calls such claims “misinformation.” Oh? The article does more to bolster those claims than the administration’s flack does to knock them down. A more accurate headline would have been, “Health Law at Fault for Rising Premiums? In Some Cases, Yes.”

One wonders whether, in some posh Versailles salon, there’s an editor who already knows what the headline should be — never mind what the article says.

Here’s some recent commentary on California’s Prop. 19 ballot initiative:

• Today, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof makes the case against the war on cannabis. Although there is no mention of Cato, Kristoff mentions the work of our senior fellow, Jeff Miron, and links to our report on the Budgetary Impact of Ending Drug Prohibition. Kristoff also mentions Portugal’s drug decriminalization policies and links to a Time Magazine article that highlights the Cato report on that subject by Glenn Greenwald.
• Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch make the case that Prop. 19 is the most important item before the voters in this election cycle. Even more important than whether Barbara Boxer can continue her work in the Senate? Yes, read the whole thing. Dan Mitchell has additional thoughts here.
• George Soros is in the news for helping the Prop. 19 effort with a one million dollar contribution. He explained his reasons for supporting Prop. 19 in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.

For additional Cato scholarship on drug policy, go here.

The College Board is out with its annual reports on college prices and student aid, and the story is pretty familiar. According to The New York Times, the reports reveal that over the last year tuition and fees rose 8 percent at public, four-year schools, and 4.5 percent at private non-profits. Meanwhile, student aid rose at a very fast clip. Indeed, over the last five years, despite lightning-quick growth in sticker prices, after-aid college costs actually dropped.

Now, don’t expect to hear this from the College Board or even mentioned in the Times, but doesn’t it seem at least plausible that giving more and more aid to students enables schools to raise prices? You know, that colleges might jack up tuition and fees knowing that government, largely, will ensure that students can cover them? It’s not only plausible, it’s almost certainly the case. But like I said, forget about ever reading that in The New York Times. Instead, we get this standard lament:

“The College Board figures are depressing and utterly predictable,” said Terry Hartle, senior vice president of the American Council on Education. “When states cut funding for higher education, tuitions go up to make up for the difference.”

Dealing with this one gets incredibly tiresome, and it should infuriate taxpayers who fund both massive student aid and subsidies to public colleges.

For one thing, of course, cuts in state subsidies don’t explain constantly increasing private school costs. Moreover, while no doubt public schools sometimes raise tuition to make up for state funding dips, they also raise it when state funding is going up. Indeed, as this chart from the State Higher Education Executive Officers illustrates, public schools raise prices no matter what is going on with state and local subsidies:

How can schools get away with this? Because students are able to cover the incessantly rising prices. And how can students do that? By using more and more money that comes from someone else!

The data scream this reality so loudly even passed-out undergrads could hear it. So why does it get so little attention? In part, no doubt, because many in the media refuse to even consider that there could be a causal connection between ballooning aid and skyrocketing prices. Even worse, the people controlling the aid see votes, votes, votes from playing education Warbucks. And if, say, the President of the United States can buy votes with student aid, why would he ever admit that his “generosity” mainly just lets higher education bleed taxpayers dry? The unfortunate answer is, he wouldn’t.

While flipping through the radio on my way to pick my son up from school yesterday afternoon, I was dumbfounded to hear Congressman John Boehner talk about repealing Obama’s Medicare cuts on Sean Hannity’s show.

I wasn’t shocked that Boehner was referring to non-existent cuts (Medicare spending is projected to jump from $519 billion in 2010 to $677 billion in 2015 according to the Congressional Budget Office). I’ve been dealing with Washington’s dishonest definition of “spending cuts” for decades, so I’m hardly fazed by that type of routine inaccuracy.

But I was amazed that the presumptive future Speaker of the House went on a supposedly conservative talk radio show and said that increasing Medicare spending would be on the agenda of a GOP-controlled Congress. (I wondered if I somehow misinterpreted what was being said, but David Frum heard the same thing)

To be fair, Boehner also said that he wanted to repeal ObamaCare, so it would be unfair to claim that the interview was all Bush-style, big-government conservatism. But it is not a positive sign that Boehner is talking about more spending before he’s even had a chance to pick out the drapes for his new office.