Over at Reason, a Kochtopus tentacle that apparently hasn’t read the “Help the Republicans” memo, since they’ve been steadily pissing on nominee to be Mitt Romney, Matt Welch covers the “increasingly bitter” Koch-Crane feud. Brink Lindsey and Will Wilkinson, two libertarians previously bounced from Cato for being too friendly to liberals, have differing takes: Brink thinks it’s bad, while Will thinks it’s much ado about little.* Over at Slate, Dave Wiegel, who previously bounced himself from Reason for being insufficiently unfriendly to Obama, thinks the Kochs are making themselves look whiny.
The Kochs probably will succeed in taking over Cato, which they will probably turn into another AEI or Heritage Foundation, simply another appendage of the Republican Party, and Cato’s quirkiness will be gone. Libertarians have always had a “doesn’t play well with others” flavor.† “If you want to get along, go along” is the classic, if not ultimate, wisdom in politics, and libertarians tend not wish to do either. They’d rather be right than popular. But if you’re a billionaire, you can buy all the friends you need. At least you can try.
*Even though Brink and Will were bounced together, Brink devotes a large chunk of his take on Koch versus Ed to a take-down of Will’s take, and concludes with a none-too-tovarishch PS: “Since I wrote the above, Will has come out with another long post. It starts with a lot of uninformed speculation about the Kochs’ possible motives and then transitions to an extended elaboration of his differences with Cato. I don’t think he says anything that causes me to change what I’ve already written, or that I feel I need to respond to, so I’ll just stick with what I’ve got.” “Uninformed,” huh? Ouch!
†In the early days of Cato, libertarian ikon/outcast Murray Rothbard was bounced for being, well, too Murray Rothbard.
