It’s clear that libertarians have been purged from the Republican party, and not just by Karl Rove. The libertarian wing of the Republican party was targeted in 1996, when the Dole crusaders eliminated every single voice of old fashioned Reagan-style small government conservatism from the convention.
So let’s assume Obama wins the election, and begins to implement his vision for paying other people’s bills with my money. Now what?
I think there is great potential here for a serious revival of free market thinking. I’m not talking about the “burn, baby, burn” attitude of all too many defenders of freedom who are eager to see catastrophe so that then people will understand... That will never work—no matter what catastrophes are brought on by their policies, liberals will always blame someone else, usually property and business owners. No, the question here is, what will happen to the Republican party?
At optimistic moments, my thinking is this: we are seeing the Republican party truly dissolve into two strands. This has been a long-running process, which is finally reaching the crisis point: the social conservatives and the libertarians are finding their differences truly irreconcilable. “Fusion” turned out to be fission.
So what will Republicans do? I think they will continue to degenerate into the theocrat party, leaving libertarians to—do what? Well, they won’t get a fair hearing from the Democratic party, I can tell you that; Democrats are not only saturated in, but absolutely defined by, the group-interest politics created by FDR. And so far there aren’t enough libertarians to make much of a difference on their own. But I think that could change—it’s up to libertarians. They now have a chance to very clearly define their differences with Democrats and Republicans: to show how certain goals dear to Democrats (privacy, gay rights, science, &c.) can be accomplished more efficiently through free market alternatives. And, better yet, they have the opportunity to draw to their ranks the disaffected Republicans bitter at the way their party has turned into the party of big government status quo. The raw materials are here, and libertarians must put them to good use. It won’t be easy, but I think at this point, with the Republican party in shambles, the opportunity may soon be better than it’s ever been.
Is this just more wishful thinking on my part?
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