I too have been suffering eruptions which I call my recurring libertarian virus. Many of us predicted before the election that if Romney lost it would be a very serious blow to the unity of the Republican Party, perhaps resulting in a real third party movement. You are quite right, the tea party has not developed into a political party and even has raised questions about whether it even remains a movement. There is a streak of libertarianism in the tea party movement and that is probably why the tea party has failed to extend beyond issues of taxing and some aspects of spending-Medicare, for example, excepted because it is clearly fundamental to the tea party movement that the spending be maintained for programs they like.
So the tea party brings its own inherent inconsistency which perhaps has prevented it from becoming a longer-lasting movement having a recognizable effect on election of 2012. In may have had its effect on the 2012 election but it certainly was not obvious as it was in 2010.
The age-old question for us conservatives remains: do we try to reform the Republican Party, in effect purge it of its establishment heresies, or do we strike out into a third-party, such as the tea party might have become, or the Libertarian party. By the way, I do not necessarily believe that the failure the tea party movement to become an actual third-party was necessarily a bad thing. It really depends on the answer to the sentence which led off this paragraph.
Whatever the strategy, it is clear that we cannot go on as we have. We really need a William Pitt in the House of Representatives instead of John Boehner but none appears to me anywhere on the horizon. The lesson is clear, and it can be drawn from the fate of Colonel West at the polls or the fate of Michelle Bachmann has been marginalized by the establishment. This tells me that there is no sanctuary for us in the House of Representatives. John Boehner does not appear to have even the tactical sense of a Tip O'Neill. Can you imagine if we had a speaker of the house who was conservative enough to hold and pursue conservative values to the same extent as Nancy Pelosi pursued her mischief?
I am not unmindful of the injunction of John F. Kennedy, "first you gotta win." Unfortunately, we lost. We are lucky to have the House, such as it is. John Boehner conducts himself a speaker of the house with an eye on the next election, thinking defensively how can he retained his majority? There is no hope that Boehner will risk his majority in pursuit of conservative principles. There is some hope that Boehner will be forced to pursue conservative principles in order to maintain his majority. In other words, John Boehner should be made to fear us more than he fears them.
To return to a consideration of libertarianism, after the 2006 election I wrote a rather long piece about the necessity of the Republican Party to find its soul. I suggested that time modify the Libertarian approach in which we hope to keep the social conservatives because we are adamant about those social issues in which there is an identifiable victim. Abortion is manifestly an example in which I say we should fight to the death. But the victim test does not necessarily include opposition to gay rights because I do not see a clear connection between permitting gay marriage and the destruction of traditional marriage, this even though I am fully aware of the danger of the destruction of our institutions as intended by The Frankfurt School. In the event, we are going to lose this war against gay marriage and in the process we are going to lose the gay vote. If one goes back to Pat Buchanan's convention speech in 1988 he talks about the fight against gay marriage. We lost both.
Please do not misunderstand me, I would much prefer to pursue social issues if we could do so effectively. I do not advocate a policy of appeasement or surrender on these issues. I do advocate understanding what happened to his election and fixing it and that implies much that we already understand and much that we do not understand. On the other hand, I am an advocate of personal liberty, free speech, free exercise of religion and I oppose its establishment. If that makes me a libertarian, so be it.
There is another consideration, which is that most of us on these threads are interpreting this election fiasco that we just experienced as a class issue, the 47% who are riding free. There is truth to this but there is also another perspective of this election which we must not forget: race overlays the class issue and it is not clear that any concessions to socialism will wean African-Americans or even Hispanics away from the Democrat party. In other words, in aint class, it is race. We do not have data to tell us what happened so we are all free to be geniuses. I am saying that it is now the job of competent mechanics, experts like Michael Barone who, despite his wildly false prediction of the election outcome nevertheless retains the respect of most of us. We need experts like this to tell us exactly what happened in this election. Then we must go about fixing it. Until we have the actual data we are just blowing smoke.
