It's definitely sugar coating the current situation, but if people follow his lead then it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The Tea Party was largely an insurgence within the GOP. Obviously it did not take over the GOP, but it ended up getting a hell of a lot more influence over national politics than it would have if it had insisted on splitting to another irrelevant third party. With enough of a groundswell, it is possible to run the bad folks out of the GOP and replace them with liberty friendly people. This is exactly what Rand is trying to do. It doesn't happen overnight, although it could happen a lot faster if we managed to get term limits.
Okay, okay, more people get elected under the "reform/save the GOP" approach than via the LP/CP, same as it ever was. Then
the policy never changes, same as it ever was. What part of the welfare state has gotten repealed, what part of the warfare state has been reduced under this approach? "It doesn't happen overnight," you say? It hasn't happened in decades, and a recent blip of some election victories hasn't changed that basic dynamic.
I would say the independent liberty movement
in general is more responsible for getting the political environment back to being oriented around real reform, precisely by NOT being dependent on the major parties or MSM to establish its legitimacy. We (and to a lesser extent, Tea Party supporters) have done an end run around them, and don't buckle when they attempt to whip us into "mainstream," or go with the establishment flow conformity.
How exactly are the Republican reformers supposed "to run the bad folks out of the GOP" in the form of the big banks, big business, big lobbies, and big military contractors that control both parties from the top? Do the reformers have more resources than those factions? The reform can't happen from the inside, because the main bad folks are the puppet masters who run the show from without it. If you get rid of the current "bad folks" leadership, the elite controllers will simply replace them with another set of puppets. So yes, use the main party label as leverage to get into office where possible, but don't expect either of the elite owned majors to ever be reformed, as the concept is fatally flawed.
