Well, that was my main point. Thanks, I was starting to feel awkward.
I disagree with you there. There are two problems with that:
1 - When W. was running on a humble foreign policy in 2000, there were still plenty of libertarians/paleos who didn't vote for him and actively opposed him. Again, the LP just ran a candidate against Amash claiming he wasn't a true libertarian or something.
2 - Most importantly, the trade-off isn't worth it for the GOP if you're implying the "purists" need to be satisfied. That platform alienates lots of traditional GOP voters. . Again, would most of those people vote for, say, Flake or Lee? Of course not, it'd be the lesser evil stuff all over again. Did they vote for Connie Mack in FL?
I feverishly edited my previous post for about 45 minutes without realizing you responded, and my points about demographics are relevant to our camp's emphasis on foreign policy and such. I'll restate some of those points and expand on a few in this post.
To start with, old guard Republicans are a mostly homogenous group of middle/upper-middle class baby boomers and their families (with the exception of younger generations lost to attrition), and the Democrats are a mish-mash coalition of interest groups, while our camp is strongly weighted toward younger generations. It should therefore go without saying that as time goes on, the traditional Republican demographic will continue to shrink, while our camp and the Democrats will both continue to grow.
If you look at the younger generations, you'll see a huge simultaneous increase in both libertarian and liberal views at the expense of neoconservative or even paleoconservative views compared to the baby boomers or even the 40-50-year-old crowd. Why is this? It's because the younger generations first and foremost oppose the current Republican Party for their extreme stances on foreign policy, civil liberties (vs. "national security"), and social issues, and we consider these to be "obvious" areas where the Republicans are hugely wrong. We're largely united on these issues as a generational thing, because younger generations share a different culture with each other than the baby boomers do. This may not be true of teens in strongly Republican families, but the older they get and the more they're influenced by peers and outside influences, the more it becomes true. For instance, I do not know a single person between fifteen and thirty-five in real life (not the Internet) who opposes marijuana legalization...and I grew up in an almost homogeneously conservative setting. While there are far more important issues and almost nobody bases their vote on that, my point is a more general one about a cultural disconnect between young people and the Republican Party. (Obama is a worse drug warrior than Bush by far, but a lot of things are about image, and the Republicans and Democrats project very different images. Plus, Republicans are more gung-ho about this kind of stuff on average.) While young people may be more likely to adopt their parents' foreign policy views than social views, they are still drifting away from the Republicans one-by-one, and pretty much nobody is drifting in the other direction. Younger generations are strongly rejecting neoconservative foreign policy with increasing frequency, and the gap is widening. Many of us have seen pointless and endless obscene war and conflict for the entirety of our adult lives, and we're growing increasingly sick and tired of it.
Economic issues are more complex, but we (we as in younger generations) became keenly aware of America's economic decline during the Bush years, and so we associate establishment Republican economic policies with that decline. Ultimately, this association is largely correct, due to the Republican Party's own corruption and insistence on corporatism and enormous spending...and Republicans are so obviously wrong to us on foreign policy and civil liberties that it's all too easy to simply drift left. (Side note: If there's any economic issue that young people overwhelmingly agree on, it's abject disgust with the excesses of copyright and patent law. Most believe in the concepts in principle, but few to none agree with what the copyright lobby has turned this country into.) Liberals easily mistake Republican corporatism with capitalism in its entirety, so without someone like Ron Paul to set people straight, this has made entire generations extremely vulnerable to socialist indoctrination. I mean, if you were a teenager or 20-something trying to reconcile conservative economic views with our economy in 2008, and you considered the Republican Party to be completely batshit crazy on foreign policy and social policy, who would you turn to? The younger generations were already gravitating left due to a shared disdain for pretty much everything George W. Bush stood for, so with the Democrats presenting the appearance of inclusivity on the issues we consider to be no-brainers, it was all too easy for full-blown leftist views to flourish...hence the rise of the Obamabots.
As time goes on, older generations will die and younger generations will rise to prominence, and so the Republican Party will only find it harder and harder over time to sell a belligerent foreign policy and coercively socially conservative agenda. They'll just continue to lose voters by attrition until they fade to oblivion. The Republican Party HAS to change to sell themselves to younger generations, and thus far they've continually drifted left on fiscal conservatism to try to make up for this...but this is the road to economic devastation, and Republicans still aren't making any inroads, because it's their foreign policy, civil liberties, and extreme social views that are more fundamentally at odds with the younger generations. Now, our camp in particular, the Ron Paul/libertarian/etc. camp, is more accomodating toward non-coercive social conservatism than the liberal youth, and a lot of that has to do with the influence of our older members (not least of which include Ron Paul himself). Many of us are socially conservative ourselves, except in the sense of forcing it on others. Ron Paul epitomizes the fusion of social conservatism with social tolerance, and as a voting bloc, we have no problem teaming up with people with socially conservative leanings...but they can't be repressive like Santorum, either.
Just to be clear, I should point out that when I say young people are more socially liberal than old guard Republicans, I am not counting the issue of abortion or asking conservatives to sacrifice that for the sake of appealing to younger generations. We - not only young people as a generation, but libertarians as well - as just as divided as any generation on that issue. There will always be room in a major political party for pro-life views, because it involves a debate far more fundamental than arbitrary religious or cultural behavioral standards. (For instance, I'm religiously agnostic, but I'm strongly pro-life in every case except when the mother's life is in danger. At the same time, I do differ from a lot of more religious types in the sense that I think pushing for life to be defined by the moment of conception is unnecessarily polarizing, since it's the opposite extreme from, "as long as the head's not out, you can jam scissors into the base of the baby's neck and suck its brains out, and it's not murder." Defining life as brain waves and a heartbeat would make it a whole lot harder for extreme pro-choicers to argue that chopping a baby into bits or burning it to death with chemicals is morally acceptable.) In short: "Pro-life" is not the kind of social conservatism that alienates entire generations...not by a longshot.
My point in all of this is that the youth are the future, and there are things that mainstream Republicans do and stand for that totally alienate them (and us), but those do NOT include fiscal conservatism. Fiscal conservatism should be the unnegotiable core of the Republican Party, and policies inconsistent with it (like spending more than the rest of the world combined on the military) should be discarded...but Republicans have instead sacrificed all genuine small government ideology for the sake of the neoconservatism and extreme social conservatism that younger generations simply won't abide by. The youth have drifted left in many ways, but as Ron Paul has shown, today's younger generations are capable of enormous enthusiasm for free market ideals that are far more ideologically consistent and conservative than anything the Republican Party leadership is selling! We're just not capable of enormous enthusiasm for Santorum, or war, or torture, or a surveillance state, or the eradication of the Bill of Rights. (The more liberal crowd is fooled enough by Obama's rhetoric to stand for a lot of it under the Democratic banner, but the same goes for conservatives fooled by Romney or Paul Ryan's rhetoric on fiscal conservatism.) That doesn't mean all young people love fiscal conservatism: They've indeed drifted left economically, and we have our work cut for us if we're going to reverse that, but the most important thing for Republicans to understand is that the rise of socialist ideology is largely a result of Democrats exploiting their greater appeal other areas.
Back to your points, the shifting demographics mean that our camp is quite a bit more diverse than hardcore libertarians from twelve years ago. There are a lot more hardcore libertarians today, but there are also a lot more Constitutionalists, who are somewhat less picky regarding conservative candidates. That said, "liberaltarian" element cannot be ignored either: Ask yourself, "Why do they like Ron Paul?" Obviously, they prioritize foreign policy and civil liberties so highly that they're willing to accept and gradually learn to trust an economic program that goes against their instincts. The "liberaltarians" will vote for someone who supports the free market
if sold correctly, but they will run like hell from obvious corporate shills...unlike, say, the conservatives in the Republican base, who immediately swallow "lower taxes and less regulation" rhetoric from neoconservatives as sufficiently capitalistic.
For instance, conservatives seem to worship Paul Ryan as this great hope for fiscal conservatism, but all of us in the Ron Paul camp - libertarians, paleocons, Constitutionalists, and liberaltarians - take just one look at his support for the bailouts and immediately think, "What a fraud." There's no going back from there: We know he's full of crap, and so there's no way we can support him. We'd reject him even if he started speaking like Bush did in 2000 on foreign policy, but it's not because we wouldn't support any Republican but Ron Paul, or because we have an unattainable standard for purity. It's because unlike most conservatives, we demand someone that means what they say about supporting the free market...otherwise, what's the point? (This goes doubly so for trying to win back the rest of the youth who have been seduced by heavily interventionist or socialist economic thought.)
The problem libertarians had with Bush was they saw through him. He talked a great game about foreign policy, and I think a lot may have believed him on that point, but his connections to the military-industrial complex and government-bedding energy industry created a huge trust deficit. His VP choice was Dick Cheney, and he had more neoconservative connections than Rainman could count. Keep in mind, libertarians are not prone to easily buying politicians' rhetoric about lower taxes and cutting back on regulations, because we've heard it all a million times before: Usually, if Republican politicians are fighting regulations, they're highly selective and spend the bulk of their efforts fighting the specialized ones that primarily affect their corporate buddies...or they just try to reword them and create special exceptions for them. Libertarians oppose pretty much all regulations, but we're not going to be impressed if Republicans spend all their time defending Halliburton or Monsanto. We're mindful of where the efforts are really being spent, and we can tell when the Republicans aren't bothering to fight for all the small businesses that are crushed by red tape, regulations, legal costs of proving compliance, etc., and all the small farms that are being raided and shut down due to big agriculture's influence on food regulations. When Republican politicians come off as corporate shills rather than genuine defenders of free market capitalism, they're not going to earn the enthusiasm of our camp.
There are varying degrees of libertarian purism, and it's multidimensional as well: I'm an an-cap on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but I'd vote for Rand Paul in a heartbeat anyway...but Jeff Flake? Patriot Act...dealbreaker. Jim DeMint? Same deal. I can respect Jim DeMint for being a real human being with a conscience (as opposed to a sociopathic narcissist like most politicians), but he differs from me too much on lynchpin issues to have my support. Some libertarians are more judgmental, and the "liberaltarian" crowd needs some massaging before they'll support someone who markets themselves primarily as a conservative...but understand that it can be done, as long as the rhetoric comes off as earnest and believable enough instead of a George Bush rehash (which is what Romney, Christie, Rubio, Jeb, Ryan, etc. are like). In short, yes, I'll agree with you that "just changing foreign policy" isn't enough: Conservatives need to revise their sales pitch for fiscal conservatism, reducing regulations, etc. into something that sounds earnest...and the closer they come to sounding like Ron Paul, the more people will be receptive to conservative economic policy.
Ron Paul won over so many of us when Bush 2000 couldn't because he is so unmistakably genuine. You don't have to be Ron Paul to get most of our votes, but an obvious charlatan isn't going to cut it, no matter what he says. Regardless, our purity tests are neither here nor there:
You seem to be thinking, "Why on Earth should the Republicans try to appeal to some niche group of extreme libertarians?" Taking that attitude, it's easy to come up with a hundred excuses why they shouldn't. What they really need to do is appeal to young people in a genuine non-gimmicky way, and it "just so happens" that libertarianism is where the overlap lies between the younger generations and conservative views. What's most important to understand is that we are not some static demographic...we're a growing demographic, but so are young liberals, whereas the old guard is shrinking. The common thread here is that younger generations absolutely cannot stand Republican foreign policy and civil liberties stances (Obama's hardly better, but he talks a good enough game that liberals are fooled, much like conservatives are fooled by guys like Paul Ryan). Republicans can win over our camp -
and eventually even liberal youth - by selling the free market earnestly, but they can't be full of crap...and entire generations won't even start to be receptive until Republicans cave in to an extreme makeover on foreign policy and civil liberties (and their most extreme social views, like federal bans on XYZ, whether it's pot or gay marriage; I mean, that's just senselessly alienating people out of spite). That is why I place the emphasis on foreign policy (etc.): It's not only the glue that holds our camp together and makes the more "liberaltarian" elements more receptive to conservative or libertarian economic policies, but it's also one of the biggest reasons people started going Democrat in the first place and accepting their economic indoctrination. Change in the Republican Party must start here, or its generational deficit will continue to worsen.
You can argue, "Well, in that case, we'll lose the social conservatives and hawks! They're a larger demographic than libertarians, so what would we do without them?" To that, I'd say, "How is relying on that voting bloc working out for you?" Those views may seem popular in your own social circle, and they're hugely popular in the Republican Party due to its relative homogeneity compared to the Democrats...but the old guard is aging fast, and the old guard is dying, and if you want fresh blood, you HAVE to appeal to younger generations. You can try to do that by drifting left economically and sacrificing small government and fiscal conservatism, sure...but what's the point of Republicans winning elections if the result is crushing poverty? Currently, that's the direction Fox News is leading you, because Rupert Murdoch is a Lieberman liberal. So, you can listen to the bought-and-paid for "conservative leaders" and sacrifice fiscal conservatism...or you can listen to us. If you sacrifice the other superfluous stuff - like everything Santorum stands for, basically - then suddenly you're appealing to younger generations enough to spread fiscal conservatism...and you end up sounding suspiciously like the liberty movement.
Republicans have to come to us, not the other way around, and if they refuse to change, they'll start losing elections worse and worse as time goes on. If you're lucky, you'll simply lose minds to our camp, and we'll finally be able to bring true economic sanity someday. (This is simply not possible with the neoconservative foreign policy, so supporting guys like Romney to "stop the Democrats" is wholly counterproductive to us. Not only will it not work, but it will further tarnish the name of fiscal conservatism. This is a huge reason we weren't all tripping over ourselves to support "anybody but Obama.") If we're all unlucky, you'll lose more and more young minds to the Democrats and worse, and they will be indoctrinated to believe more and more in socialism every day. The clock is ticking here: The longer the old guard remains stubborn and refuses to hand over control to younger generations of fiscal conservatives (that would be us) so we can present a credible alternative, the more minds will be lost to leftist ideology in the meantime.
TL;DR: To summarize, don't just look at the numbers today, and don't frame the problem in terms of, "What would it even take to please extreme libertarians, and what would it cost?" Instead, recognize the Republican Party's woes as a generational issue, and the long-term way forward should be clear: If the Republican Party wants to survive, it MUST start appealing to younger generations, or the party will continue to die a little more every time someone dies or turns 18. Since compromising on fiscal conservatism and small government is the road to famines, it's a complete non-starter...what's the point of winning elections if the result is crushing poverty? You have to pick something else to compromise on and woo people back to fiscal conservatism, or the human race is screwed. Once you let go of the other stuff - all the stuff Santorum stands for, basically - then you suddenly start sounding like Ron Paul, or Rand Paul, or others associated with the liberty movement.
...wow, okay. I think I'm done editing now...maybe.
