I don’t know, really, but I’m inclined to answer paradoxically that it’s never a libertarian year, and yet it’s always one.
If one means by libertarian year the election of lots of libertarians, then the answer’s surely no. There are lots of Republicans and Democrats, not lots of Libertarians.
Yet, if one means that libertarian ideas will play a key role in 2012, then I’d say yes, they will. We represent enduring and significant ideas about individual rights, liberty, economics, and peaceful commerce with other countries.
We’ve been declared dead a hundred times, but our good and sincere ideas are ones to which Americans have always returned. There’s a resiliency in libertarian policies that keeps those ideas evergreen, long after other, competing views wither.
Others may scramble over this day, or that election, but we have no reason to be similarly nervous and frantic. We have a longer view of things. A political confidence in ‘limited government, individual liberty, free markets, and peace’ is a well-placed confidence.
We’ll make a difference in ’12, and be around long thereafter.