Pournelle has an interesting take on that question: http://www.baen.com/chapters/axes.htm. Its a long read, but worth it.
Rather than one axis, he uses two: "Attitude toward the State," and "Attitude toward planned social progress."
Regards,
Col Sanders
Yet if in 2000 one used FR as a guide, one would have thought the Libertarian candidate would have gotten 20 percent of the vote.
Libertarians are always making the case that Conservatives and Republicans need to bow down to the libertarian views or face rejection by libertarians.
No Republican or Democratic politician with a brain would consider doing that.
Some 30 percent of the voters are moderates... sometimes called swing voters. To get one libertarian vote costs about 5 moderate votes. Only a idiot would trade 5 votes for one.
They can threaten Republicans as they have for decades and the response is always the same... No one cares for whom libertarians vote. As they did in 2000 and 2004 they mostly stay home on election day and complain.
This has been a two party nation for at least 150 years. There is just one thing that the two major parties agree upon... There should only be two major parties. The system is designed so that a third party will pull away votes form the party most like them.
It is impossible for the Democrats to win the support of the Green Party. In 2000 Gore was not nearly Green enough for the Greens. By the same token Bush was not nearly libertarian enough for the Libertarians.
The biggest mistake of the Gore campaign in 2000, was his final days attempts to win the support of the Greens in Florida. Trying to appeal to the Greens cost Gore the Election. It cost him enough moderate votes to elect George W. Bush. W never made any attempt to appeal to the libertarians and as a result picked up enough moderate support to win.
A major party when out of power always decides it must become more like the party that is in power. Which is the exact opposite of what the Greens and libertarians are trying to accomplish.
The voting laws and the two parties have done all they can to make third parties counter productive. Thus the libertarians and unhappy conservatives who supported Ross Perot in 1992, managed to elect the very leftist Bill and Hillary Clinton.
There is only one way to enact an agenda in the USA. That is to get active in one of the two major parties and then work to change that parties position on issues so they reflect the movement's position on those issues.
When Libertarians, as they always do, try to punish the Republicans for not being what they want, they only convince the Republicans to become more liberal.
Ronald Reagan turned the Republican party into the mirror image of the Democratic party of Truman and Kennedy. That left the Democratic party with the option to adopt the polices of the Republican party of the 1930s.
The Democrats of the 1930s were for cutting taxes and increasing government spending to spur the economy. The Democrats of the 1930's were in favor of being very active in the world's foreign policy. The Republicans of the 1930s were for balanced budgets and isolationist in foreign policy.
Today's Democrats stand for the same things the Republicans did in the 1930s while the Libertarians are out there saying do as we say or we are going to eat worms.