A good article in The Prospect magazine inquires whether Libertarian voters might be angling to bolt from Bush and vote Democrat in '04.   Most of the folks profiled in the article consider their primary beef to be Bush's foriegn policy adventures:

Libertarians have long been advocates of having the smallest government and fewest possible restraints on individual rights. Traditionally that's led them to talk mostly about domestic issues, such as gun rights and congressional spending. But it's the iron foot of the Bush foreign policy that's really pissed off people like Stefanescu and Jim Henley, an influential libertarian blogger.

BUT, other libertarians like myself reluctantly accept that the nature of WMD, terrorism, and so on require a fundamentally preemptive stance.   The age of deterrence is over. Too much libertarian thought is predicated on assuming that others are as rational in their pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness as you are.  Homo economicus vis-a-vis homo economicus can "read" each other's minds and predict each other's actions / reactions to enough of a degree that they can get along and lead happy productive lives with no external coercion. 

Deterrence requires a prescriptive theory of mind.  If your opponent doesn't believe in life in this world and you do, well, they've got an upper hand if your whole strategy is based on retaliation.

Where I do wholeheartedly agree with the "card-carrying" libertarians is when the issue of spending, taxation, and free trade come into the picture:

...The president advocated free trade during the 2000 election and then increased tariffs on foreign steel. That's a big libertarian no-no. And the Bush economic plan -- cutting taxes for the rich while sending spending through the roof -- doesn't exactly warm the hearts of those who really believe in smaller government.

"One party's become tax-and-spend. The other's become borrow-from-your-kids-and-spend. It's not altogether obvious to me that one is better than the other," says Gene Healy, a senior editor at the Cato Institute, the best-known hub of libertarian thought.

Sigh.   How true, how true, how true.   Bastards.   All of them.  The money quote in the article - the way the Republicans treat their libertarian constituency:

..."Neolibertarians are to the Republican Party what African Americans are to the Democratic Party -- taken for granted because they have nowhere else to go," wrote Henley on his blog last year.

I've spent most of my BlogLife defending the administration and this article presents an opportunity for a much needed breath of fresh air.   Here's how a Democrat (Clark?) could win my vote in '04:

• Acknowledge Iraqi intervention was a good thing -- tacitly acknowledge the broad plan (regional revitilization of the MidEast).    Don't make your entire campaign platform be about some radical course change in US policy towards the Mid East or predicated on the rhetorical difference between WMD and WMD Programs.    I can accept some tactical differences in what we're doing but nothing wholesale.   But above all, do NOT make UN approval the acid test of legitimacy.   Bush is strong on Foreign Policy, don't attack him here.  
• Vigorously attack the deficit -- There's no 2 ways of counting the red ink at the bottom line.   Bush has exploded the budget.   Military expenditures & security, I can handle (we're still near a Post-WWII low in military spending as a % of GDP).   But even with that, our budget has been blown out of the water.   Bush is worse than Clinton here (even accounting for bubble-inspired revenue surprises Clinton received).  Andrew Sullivan notes:

  Even on non-military, non-homeland defense matters, the Bush administration enacted a 6 percent increase in government spending in 2002 and almost 5 percent in 2003. Government is growing strongly as a sector in American life - and Bush is now proposing the biggest new entitlement since Nixon: free or subsidized prescription drugs for the elderly. When you add all this up, you come to an obvious conclusion: the Bush administration is actually a big government liberal administration on fiscal policy.

• Medicare / Social Security -- Bush will never take aggressive action to reduce outflows in these programs.   He's way too beholden to the AARP's votes.   It will take some strong, tough action to rescope these programs to target their original recipients and remove the market distortions they've introduced.  This is the single, biggest, long term threat to our ability to maintain fiscal solvency.   Period.
• Foriegn aid:  kill farm subsidies -- This is the single best thing we can do to help developing nations.   Bush won't do this because he panders to the Farm vote, just like he does to the AARP.  This maneuver will even help secure (albeit over the very long term and in a very indirect way) some measure of Peace and Security in strife-torn regions like Africa and to a much lesser extent the Mid East.  A Democratic prez will have a much easier time making this an issue than a Republican.
• Education deregulation -- do you really care about kids?   Deregulate education and push forward school choice, voucher, and charter school initiatives.  It's rare to find a policy issue that so many economists uniformly believe in - you actually have to work hard to find dissenting economic voices.  The Country Club Republicans are quietly against this because they've paid home price premiums to live in "a good school district".   They've got a nightmare vision of East Palo Alto flooding into Palo Alto High.   Or the Crips & Bloods flooding into Beverly Hills High.  But that's exactly what it is, an absolutely unrealistic 'dream'.   At the very least, for the country club set, it's an issue of neglect - they have no idea what a hellhole an inner city school can be.    (NOTE TO DEMS:  this is NOT an issue that's solved by more school funding).   This is the *real* way to help minorities and the economically marginalized for the very long haul.

That's the core.  Most other issues (Gay Unions, Stem cells, Abortion, etc.) stack rank WAY below these for me.  My vote isn't going to be influenced by platform nuances in any of these other areas by more than 5-10% - as long as you're not trying to eliminate Abortion or ensure state-sponsored, 3rd trimester access for expectant 12 yr olds without their mothers, I don't really care.   (Yes, I'm a centrist here even with Gun control).   Some other issues (notably the Economy..) I don't really blame / credit Bush administration (so put away the "worst economic record since Hoover" hyperbole.   It's annoying).

So basically, continue Bush's foreign policy (for the most part) but significantly revamp the domestic.  Clark - the ex-military man - could be the guy to do it.  

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