An excerpt from a debate I participated in over 20 years ago:
..."Libertarians within an existing party could work to not only influence, but eventually convert the entire party to a libertarian perspective and program."
This argument underestimates the intelligence and the political skills of the current leadership of any party libertarians might join. These men are acquainted with libertarian thought; they are not ignorant of the ideas we profess and the kinds of policies we would like to see instituted - they simply believe otherwise - they oppose us, and they would charge libertarians within their party who attempted to change that party with subversion - and they would be right. A party so enfeebled as to be taken over in this manner would be an empty prize.
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Twenty years down the road, I'll settle for a reasonably sympathetic party, which in Canada is the Conservatives. I'm not so sure about your Republicans.
I do believe you're correct. Except that today's Republican Party is already an enfeebled, empty shell, with no principles and no position except expediency and get-elected-itis. It's "OUR team can do no wrong because they have the magic letter after their names, while the other team can do no right because they have the wrong talisman... they have the evil D."
Even though growth of government under the Magic Talisman has been exponentially GREATER than under the evil and vile clowntoons... Billy Jeff, for all his trashing of all I hold dear, could NOT have grown, and did not grow, government to anywhere NEAR the degree accomplished by Bush, the republican shaman, with the kind cooperation of the republican congress, who took great umbrage at passing the spending bills of the Ds.