I've always considered myself libertarian, but I've always voted straight party republican in every election in which I've voted. Unfortunately the republicans don't seem to be a very attractive alternative to those of us who desire to see a smaller federal government and promotion of individual liberty.
I have a confession to make. I had always voted straight down party lines. But in the NJ Senate election between Giant Douche (Bob Menendez) and Turd Sandwich (Tom Kean) last year, I couldn't bring myself to vote for a nanny state quasi conservative who kicked me out of bars and restaraunts because I enjoy a legal product like cigarettes in the name of a social engineering experiment designed to coerce me to quit nicotine.
For the first time in my life, I pulled the lever for some Libertarian candidate who had about as much chance of winning as I did (I should have run, but the DPRNJ is a hopeless train wreck. I could win in my district. Affluent and right wing. But I would just go to Trenton and want to shoot myself after two weeks. Why bother. It's hopeless. People here are just too f'ing stupid).
I prayed that Kean wouldn't lose by 1 vote and make me feel guilty. He was a useful idiot lib candidate running as an R under his dad's name and lost by 76,000,000 votes or something anyway.
Unfortunately the republicans don’t seem to be a very attractive alternative to those of us who desire to see a smaller federal government and promotion of individual liberty.
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The way I see it, small government advocates are idealogical, theoretical, principle driven. This is a minority of even the voters overall. It takes a lot of study and thought to a principled commitment to limited government that will withstand arguments that appear expedient or situations that tug at the heartstrings. It’s an intellectual tradition. It may be that no mass party can represent us effectively because we are a minority. The route to victory is to capture the Republican party elites so that it is a top down policy and the success of it persuades and informs more of the electorate. Even if small government types are a majority of the Republican base, the voters in the country are 50%, and the parties are divided 50% to 50% in rough terms, and the small government types vs. the neo-cons and Rockefeller and big finance types in the Republican party are divided at around 50% to 50% . . . that works out to maybe 12% supporting small government consistently. The funny thing is that that 12% could control policy making if they are smart and work harder (are more motivated) than the others. The difficulty is that the big finance and country club type Republicans have a lot (probably most) of the financial power and often their business interests and political interests are intertwined, so they actually make money by giving money (in other words they are highly motivated). If the 12% supporting small government withdraws from the effort within a major party, they have no chance at all of victory. This is of course a bunch of imprecise numbers, nothing scientific about it, but I think it makes my point. “We” strong believers in limited government are a minority.
I think we could have a shorter march than the hard left did if we tried to regain control of the institutions, school, university, church, non-profit, and media, that help define voting because the culture is still American and is still less alien to us than it was to the hard left when they started their march through the institutions. The problem is that the culture is slipping quickly and the left knows the importance of cultural institutions and has consciously taken them over for political purposes, so they won’t let the camels nose in under the tent like we unthinkingly, and very liberally, did. Lots of libertarians and conservatives don’t really get what they’ve done or how they did it.
But the hard left has done it by controlling the general direction of the Democratic party, even while being a minority. The hard left has been far more successful in capturing the Democratic party than the “libertarian/conservative” Republican base has been in capturing the Republican party.