It's because social conservatives are extremely reactionary folks with usually an incoherent political strategy which leads them to losing battles more often than winning. I think Ron was the best social conservative in the last election but look at how the "social conservatives" treated him.
That all depends how you define "Social conservative." If it were up to me personally, "Social conservative" shouldn't really be a political term. I'm socially conservative, in that I support conservative social norms. But I don't think government should have anything to do with enforcing those norms (Unless we're talking about a norm that has a victim if violated... obviously murder, theft, fraud, and the like would apply, I also believe, more controversially, that laws against abortion and piracy are also justified as I believe that those actions do actually have victims.
I guess, but his overall stance still seems kind of muddled to me. One day he says that he supports state marriage amendments that define marriage as between a man and a woman, and the next day he makes it sound like the government should be out of marriage all together. As Freedom Fanatic said it's not really an important issue, but it's good to be consistent.
Yeah, true. It still doesn't matter though. If I ever run for any level of office I'm going to try as hard as I can not to mention the issue whatsoever. I think that even articulating a stance in public gives it attention that it doesn't deserve.
I wish that were the case, but I don't think it is. It seems to me like gay marriage is a lot more important to the average American than the possibility of drone strikes on American soil.
Well, I think the average American votes on the economy, not social isues, and not foreign policy. I, of course, am the opposite. I vote primarily on foreign policy and civil liberties issues and put economic issues as secondary. If a left-winger supported peace and the Bill of Rights I'd probably vote for them. I'd probably support Kucinich for President if he had a better second amendment view. Not over Rand or any other freedom candidate, but against any neocon I'd probably root for him, even with his bad view on guns, just because of war alone, although considering the second amendment view I'd probably have to vote 3rd party.
EDIT: Rand is against DOMA? Ron was for it, so I'm surprised... I personally don't care at all about the "Federal gov. won't recognize..." portion, but I do care about the "States will not be forced to recognize" portion because I don't want to give Leviathan any more powers to regulate anything.
