[Blackirish]

The Repub party needs to go back to it's roots of limited government and personal responsabilty.

Leave nanny statism to the dims.

[seeker_two]

Amen, brother. Amen....

[Dracian]

According to our research, about 15 percent of American voters hold libertarian views—about the same share of the electorate as the “religious right,”

You wouldn't know that from Free Republic where the fundies have purged so many conservative-libertarians in their attempts to "purify" the party.

[almcbean]

This article is stupid on many levels. Just one example-why is a libertarian complaining about the refusal to give a government subsidy for research on embryonic stem cells?

[Protagoras]

Spell check is your friend.

[guitarist]

If "libertarian" means it's a-okay to tear babies limb from limb by abortion, and that man marrying man equals many marrying woman, please count me out!

[The Ghost of FReepers Past]

The weird thing is, the social conservatives are less nanny statists than the so-called "moderates" who always vote for all the social programs that are offered to fix the problems created by a lack of moral values.

And judicial branch of the government ordered moral indifference and unborn child murder is hardly less government. Personal responsiblity has long been dead. No one has to fund their own retirement, educate their own children, pay for the research on or drugs for their sexually-promiscuously acquired venereal diseases, and on and on. Hostility to religion and any kind of moral social structure -- like a nature based, reality based, traditionally based definition of marriage -- has left no one but the government responsible for the disasters people make of their lives. The more responsible you are, the more baggage you have to pick up and carry for the irresponsible.

America gave up on freedom a long time ago.

[GourmetDan]

Both parties are involved in pushing America into hell, both financially and socially. It's only a matter of how fast. Repubs just go a little slower than Dems.

One World Goverment is the goal and America must be destroyed to achieve that end.

[Beagle8U]

Libertarians have a few planks in their platform that fit well in a conservative Republican platform.

Evidence of that is that Libertarians often vote for Republicans to have any chance to move those issues forward.( taxes, property rights, gun ownership).

If Libertarians (at best) make up 15% of the Republican vote, it is a fools errand for them to attempt to take on the Religious Christians that make up 85% of the entire American population.

If Libertarians want queer marriage, legal drugs, abortion, high taxes, banned guns, no property rights, and a expanded Federal Government, they can vote for the RATS.

Its the Libertarian's choice to determine the issues in their platform that mean most to them. Its not up to Republicans to change to accommodate radical ideas to appease them.

You can't blame Republicans for some of the nutball things in the Libertarian platform.

[DoctorMichael]

The Repub party needs to go back to it's roots of limited government and personal responsabilty.

I agree completely!

Also important to saving the Pubbies is the spouting of ID/Creationist nonsense, Intelligently Designed to destroy and discredit the Conservative Movement.

[MEGoody]

As the Republican base fragments and Christian conservatives consider a “fast” from politics

Chicken Little, is that you?

[Eva]

Before I go and read the whole article, I have to know if the definition of triangulation as being between libertarian and the social right is yours or theirs. I always thought that triangulation was Clinton term for threading the needle between the left and the middle, a sort of domestic form of the "Third Way".

[Mr. Jeeves]

Leave nanny statism to the dims.

A significant segment of the Religious Right has not been supporting Republicans for the proper reason - because Republicans will fight for freedom of worship against Democratic legislation that tries to curtail it. Rather, they have stayed on board in the hope that their beliefs would some day be written into law. Thus, there is anger at Bush for not doing enough to advance the social conservative agenda - they want laws passed, not speeches.

The grand coalition is fragmenting a bit.

[Moonman62]

It's bad enough for the liberal media to pile on, but now the National Review is doing it too.

[x]

Republicans should reembrace the libertarian principles of the party. They should return to Reagan’s fiscal conservatism and Goldwater’s social tolerance.

Boaz and Kirby are themselves libertarians, so there's no surprise in their recommendations.

They may be right, but 1) social issues are a lot more complicated and divisive than they were in Goldwater's day, and 2) globalization has advanced a lot since the Reagan years.

Hands-off "social tolerance" means something different now than it did in 1964, just as a hands-off laissez-faire economic policy can be expected to have different consequences than it would have had in 1980.

[PjhCPA]

the libertarian vote for Bush dropped from 72 to 59 percent, while the libertarian vote for the Democratic nominee almost doubled. Republicans’ margin among the libertarian swing vote thus narrowed by 31 points.

What? That makes no sense to me. Someone tell me how that works.

[mysterio]

Leave nanny statism to the dims.

Agreed.

[JCEccles]

Still looking for the fantasy land of Libertania?

Some children never grow up.

[Jim Noble]

I think that this article is pretty close to the truth.

I always saw 1994 as a libertarian wave. I'm a weak to moderate libertarian, but enough of one to have a horror of Democrats in power.

The GOP leadership has been pushing people like me away, and they need to quit it.

[eleni121]

The articleis replete with fallacy afer fallacy.

For one, Libertarians are almost an extinct breed and bear little or not relationship with independents.

Another fallacy is that the republicans have polarized the nation...far from it! It is the left wing Godless infiltation of the DEMOCrapic party that has polarized the nation.

The rest of the article is just more gobbledigook.

[phoenix0468]

And leave the dims at home, crying in their pillows because they lost another election they were "supposed to win". It will be high humor and great entertainment seeing the knashing of teeth among dims this November 8th. LOL.