This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, July 15, 2015.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Conservatives often find fellow travelers in libertarians, but there's no reason why that friendly

loose alliance must necessarily

persist. Charles Cook in his new book the Conservatarian manifesto makes a pitch

for a focus what he calls honest conservatism that will attract more libertarians on many election days to come.

Forgive me for starting with an analogy here, but I'm a big fan of bluegrass music,

and whenever bluegrass has an upswing in

popularity it seems like country musicians put bluegrass instruments into their

bands for their songs and then when that fades, the Bluegrass

instruments, they just go away. And I feel that way about conservatism

broadly, which is there are some libertarian ideas that get plucked here and there when they're on the upswing,

but there's, it doesn't seem like a principled defense.

I think there's some of that.

I think that libertarians will always be on the outside and their desirability will always be

desirability will always be linked to who is in power at any given point.

It is true that at the moment,

Conservatives are courting libertarians in part because we've had six years of Barack Obama and it is true that

libertarians were courted by Democrats in 2006-7 because we had 6, 7 years of George Bush.

I do think, though, that it's more than just a pendulum game at this point

because the major questions that are now facing America,

and this will change of course,

...