The original article focused on pragmatism.. how people vote and why.
The philosophical issues are really quite irrelevant to the pragmatic.
The simple fact is that in blue and purple districts, which is most districts from park district to statewide, neither conservative nor libertarian can win without the other.
Consider the moderate alternative. With moderates support is a one-way street. Conservatives and/or libertarians are expected to support moderates. But moderates are not expected to support, and do not support, conservatives or libertarians.
But most, but not all, of the time, conservatives and libertarians support each other in a two-way street. That is pragmatism.
Furthermore, the image of the attention starved wacko libertarian is not at all what most libertarians are.
Here in Illinois, those who would self-identify libertarian or score libertarian in the little quiz are 80% or more pro-life, pro-traditional family. We get along fine with the other 20% but they are not us.
A lot of the mis-understanding is in the emphasis of single issue conservatives (life) and single issue libertarians (drugs).
Most libertarians and most conservatives are multi-issue, life, guns, taxes, spending, borrowing, eminent domain, regulations, etc. The multi-issue conservatives and multi-issue libertarians, which is most of us don’t have the problems that the single issue people do.
You pretend that conservatives and libertarians are on equal footing within conservatism, where do you think that nationally, libertarians fall in church attendance?
Do you think that on average the self described libertarians are regular church goers?