Posted on 04/30/2009 7:33:36 AM PDT by rabscuttle385
Over a year ago, Mitt Romney was losing primaries to John McCain, and conservative pundits from Ann Coulter to Rush Limbaugh predicted the end of the GOP – Coulter went as far as promising she would campaign for Hillary Rodham Clinton if McCain became the party's nominee.
By November 2008, the GOP had embraced a nominee who had considered switching parties twice, had opposed tax cuts, and had failed to advance an aggressive shift in a foreign policy that left the GOP discredited in an area it had always trumped in.
It's not that McCain's willingness to reach across the aisle was condemnable. On the contrary, had McCain been able to do that as a conservative, he would've had more than tepid support from voters.
It also has less to do with the reasons conservatives disagreed with him when they should have found common ground. For example, McCain angered many conservatives when he opposed the federal ban on same-sex marriage.
Here in New Hampshire, congressional candidate Grant Bosse was among the few Republicans who understood the importance of leaving some decisions for adults to make with God and their state, not judges and the federal government.
It's precisely the reasons many couldn't support McCain – even conservatives who stuck by their guns and refused to send him to the White House – that merit serious reflection.
So far it's difficult to sense the fundamental message shift required for the GOP to make inroads in 2010 and 2012, but it seems no state is better poised to nurture these than the state of New Hampshire.
They key to doing this successfully? Allowing New Hampshire's libertarian spirit to infuse the GOP grassroots and allowing that to spread nationally.
(Excerpt) Read more at nashuatelegraph.com ...
The GOP should offer Liber. , Const. Parties a seat at their table. Unite and then come up with a Contract, an agenda , which is really an alternative to the socialist pacifist agendas of the Dems and the Prez. It could at least make a difference in some, some House seats and some states where just a few thousand votes means a Party swing one way or another. Why not try it? Otherwise, Dem light will not win one election. Not one.
You're leaving out the SoCon wing of the GOP's accusations of libertarians being dope fiends, abortion lovers, and hippie degenerates.
I'm a free-market, pro-liberty, pro-personal responsibility conservative. I understand that the government has to be massive to do the work the Socially Consevrative wing wants it to do.
There is no place for fiscal conservatives in the current GOP.
No one in the GOP seems to want to hear that personal responsibility flows from freedom, not from nanny-state constant intervention from above.
No one in the GOP seems to want to hear that when you treat people like children, they will act like children and become more dependent on the government, never less.
No one wants to hear that, like children, when given the choice between a fun, permissive babysitter (liberals) and an old grouch (the SoCon wing), people will pick the fun, permissive babysitter nearly every time. If they're going to take your money and control you anyway, may as well has a good time, right?
No one wants to hear that the big difference between the SoCon wing and liberals is what they want to spend endless tax dollars on, not whether they have a moral right to spend them in the first place.
And no one wants to hear that taking people's money by force and spending it on "moral" programs can never be moral at all, since the government didn't have a right to that money to start with. It is not better when the government program is socially conservative. It's only better when it doesn't exist at all.
President Reagan seemed to embody what I believe - that the government can't take people's money, earned by the sweat of their own brows, and spend it any better than the people can, and thus, it shouldn't even try. We have an obligation to fund the necessities, and that's it.
I am a responsible, socially conservative person in my own life. I don't need to pay for programs that don't benefit me directly, but too many members of the GOP think I should.
Does the GOP need libertarian conservatives? Probably more than they know.
Will they ever listen to them? No, probably not.
GOP in desperate need of real conservative leaders, not more libertarian claptrap.
Dead Corpse on post 138 and mountainbunny on post 142:
Very well said.
You wrote: “The Libertarian party is a joke and the more people learn about it’s platform the less we will hear from it’s tiny collection of 226,000 registered members.”
Have you ever wondered how many Independent/Unaffiliated voters are libertarian?
From your answer, I’m going to guess “probably not”. Perhaps you should, though. There are now almost as many Independent/Unaffiliated voters in my state as there are Republicans, and this is happening all over the nation.
I live in Colorado, the birthplace of the Libertarian party. We rank #2 in personal freedoms in a recent study and are strongly independent people.
Here are the Colorado voter registration statistics from the last several years (R = GOP; D = Dems; U = Independent/Unaffiliated).
02/04
R-1044195—37.1%
D-855542—30.4%
U-911510—32.4%
T-2811247
02/06
R-1044843—36.2%
D-871689—30.2%
U-969915—33.6%
T-2886447
02/08
R-1013466—34.92%
D-885623—30.52%
U-1003003—34.56%
T-2902092
You will notice that while the Democrat party numbers stay pretty stable over time, the Republicans have been hemorrhaging party memberships for many years.
Where are they going? Look in the Independent/Unaffiliated column for the answer.
http://www.elections.colorado.gov/DDefault.aspx?tid=719
For the record, I am not a registered Libertarian.
We had the exact same arguments back when it was Bush vs McCain and how neither was a "conservative". Same recriminations time after time.
RINO's want to do the same thing election after election and they had damn well better get different results or it's those stinky "loonitarians" fault.
meh...
Claptrap like smaller, more Constitutional, governance?<p.
Buy a clue while they are still cheap.
Totally agree
Libertarians fail on 2/3 of those. Take a look at the past Libertarian candidates for President. They are all fools.
I am Conservative, with no exception. However, if I were a Libertarian, I would not be one of the half-@ssed ones you see here on FreeRepublic. I would say that Gay Marriage, Abortion, legalizing crack and prostitution is OK for America, and is nobody's business, no matter how harmful. I would say that all we need is a coastal defense force.
"I mean, we could defend this country with a few good submarines" - Ron Paul
If one thinks they are libertarian, but don't agree with most of the core philisophical beliefs, then they probably are not a libertarian.
What a phony claim, typical libertarian stuff though to claim lifelong Independents like me as part of their party, it is just like the fact that they never use libertarian "heroes" as their own, instead they only mention Republicans politicians.
Nobody ever makes a decision with God. His eternal plan is set. States and individuals that know and subject themselves to His laws (ex: You shall reap what you sow) are blessed. Those that violate His laws are cursed. Even when we under the curse for our violations, we are always within His will whether we are a vessel of His mercy or a vessel of His wrath. I'll decide for God's blessings with my life, my fortune and my sacred honor except when I'm a fool and I choose sin and slavery instead. His yoke is easy. His burden is light. He is the author of Liberty.
The first step toward becoming a party of small government is to become persons of small government.
Many are the true scientists who have tried to get the Republican Party's attention. All they learned was is that there is a reason the GOP is called the "Stupid" Party.
Having a robust intellectual basis would do a lot to help the Republican Party at this point. We also need a vigorous, impeccable, and intelligent candidate who isn’t Mitt Romney.
The Republican Party's philosophy is,
So the electorate looked. And they voted in the commies, the queers, the socialists, the taxers, the crooks, the gun grabbers, the abortionists, and every other street-corner SOB they could find.
And still the GOP doesn't get it. This is an organization that is over. Let it die.
If I wanted to be a Libertarian I would have joined that party. I am a proud Republican Conservative. This is just another attempt by the Libertarians to take over the GOP, because their party is only a spoiler.
Libertarian registration has dropped below 226,000, they aren't taking over any body, much less one our two real political parties. Especially if their actual positions ever become public knowledge.
Fine but I think that is an over simplification.
And the real problem is that it has become only one leg: national defense.
They may not be taking over, but that doesn’t keep them from trying. There are alot of people that went for Ron Paul, because they didn’t do their research. Paul has some good points and then goes off the Left cliff with position like the issueing of Letters of Mark, just to name one. We have one on the Central Committee here in Los Angeles. They infiltrate.
They may not be taking over, but that doesn’t keep them from trying. There are alot of people that went for Ron Paul, because they didn’t do their research. Paul has some good points and then goes off the Left cliff with position like the issueing of Letters of Mark, just to name one. We have one on the Central Committee here in Los Angeles. They infiltrate.
This is a difficult marriage because traditional conservatives want small government, but wish to maintain a certain degree of state control, primarily over social issues. In the eyes of libertarians this just looks like a different kind of tyranny, and traditional, especially social conservatives would see the permissive ‘anything goes’ attitude of libertarians as nothing more than liberalism under a different name.
I think federalism is where the two can find common ground. Both traditional conservatives and libertarians can agree that limiting the size, scope and influence of the federal government is priority one. If there is some divergence in the amount of control coming from the individual state houses about social issues primarily, than so be it, but it shouldn't preclude, in my judgment, wider cooperation.
Exactly. I think we could develop a workable compromise among all conservative branches by returning to a more Federalist approach.
Let the libertarians dominate in the "Federal" field. The Federal government lacks the Constitutional authority and the competence to handle most social matters, so the social conservatives really aren't losing anything significant by making this concession. Some exceptions may have to be made for key issues, such as a Constitutional amendment addressing abortion or gay marriage.
Let the social conservatives dominate in the "state/local" field, with emphasis on the "local" part. That way the laws can much more closely fit the standards of the community, and anyone who feels things are too restrictive/permissive in some area can move somewhere else. However, social conservatives should avoid flat out prohibitions when proper regulation will do the trick. As a libertarian I don't like social regulation at ANY level, but I could tolerate it if it was easy to avoid and if I was left relatively alone in the privacy of my own home. I think a lot of other libertarians could agree to this compromise as well.
As for defense, in my mind there is nothing unlibertarian about maintaining an advanced, robust military. We're making good progress in Iraq so that's becoming more of a non issue as time goes on. I don't think conservatives of any stripe would object to us carrying on the fight in Afghanistan. As for our long-term foreign policy, I think most conservatives can also get behind the idea of gradually weaning other nations off of our military support while not completely abandoning any of our loyal allies. This may not be to the liking of some of the more staunch national security conservatives, but it's important to getting the support of many libertarians (and probably some social conservatives) who are tired of us doing all the heavy lifting for other countries' problems.
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