Sorry guys, but all three could form their own splinter parties, and each of those three would be larger than all the third parties put together. Plus, I suppose within each faction is a mix of lacking awareness of third parties and, among those who are aware of them, a lack of respect for the political abilities of any of them.

Remember, within each faction are political professionals who have run winning campaigns, and most of them aren’t going to suddenly place their political fortunes under the banner of any party that routinely performs in lower single digits.

I see three camps, with some intertwining.

One is the pro-defense/pro-law and order folks. This includes Specter and McCain for that matter. This group may be the least influential now within the party because of Iraq fatigue.

Another is the moral crusaders. Amazingly, Palin seems to be holding her authority here, though Canter is rising.

A third is the fiscal conservatives. This is what’s left of the old country club Republicans in the Northeast. While this group is currently ‘in’ what with all the tea parties, its also the most antagonistic toward the moral crusaders and currently without a central leader. And that lack of identity means that many assume its identity is identical to Ron Paul supporters.

There is a battle for the soul of the GOP playing out (and arguably there always is for the soul of every party). I do agree with some of the comments about the possibility of a split. The real danger I see is that the fiscal conservatives have had their expectations soaring in recent weeks. They have the ‘in’ issue. Suddenly its not terrorism or immigration or abortion – its federal deficits – their playing field.

Those rising expectations are the danger, from the Republican perspective, because the fiscal conservatives are going to be awfully disappointed and bitter when the moral crusaders continue to dominate the party.

Blank-slate exercises are grand, but inter-nation matters involving life and death issues are sometimes quite complicated.

While I’m dovish, I did initially support the concept of the Afghanistan War. For some, that kicks me out of the L camp.

Oh well…harboring masterminds of 9/11 seems like something that should be responded to.

A one sentence bromide about “morality” is no substitute for judgment.

As I’ve said, you could be well correct in your assertion that cold-warriorism permeates in all 3 factions of the GOP, but I’d argue that any of those three ideas (war hawking, social conservatism, fiscal conservatism) could do so in the other factions to some degree or another. For the sake of argument, let’s adjust the calibrations and say “liberal” republicans, “socially conservative” republicans, and “fiscally conservative” republicans, and acknowledge that hawking can occur in all 3. As I said, hawk-like stances would not be tolerated in the LP (hopefully), so ‘fiscally conservative’ hawks would likely find themselves deciding between the “liberal” republicans and the “socially conservative” ones (what, in a 5 party system, would be the CP).

Foreign policy always tends to cloud the Nolan Chart, and it certainly is clouding this discussion as well – lol.

There’s a BIG disconnect between the pols and their voters. Witness the Iraq War, which lost support pretty quickly after WMD weren’t found. My sense is that the support that remains comes mostly from social cons, since most voters are not neocons, which is largely a movement of elites, with a thin rank and file. Personally, I’d guess that the fiscal cons are our biggest potential constituency, but I suspect they don’t know what NAP is and probably like laws against kiddie porn production (as do I).

Peace, comrade. I wasn’t ‘making an issue’ so much as using what you said as a launch-point. Thanks for clarinfying your use of the word ‘conservative’.

:p

That being said, I agree entirely with your second paragraph.

This is mostly inside the Beltway stuff, but I happen to believe we Ls *could* exploit the current situation for significant gains in the public square. Instead, we argue about the def. of an L, personal secession, and LNC machinations. There are a lot of disgusted Rs and independents is my sense, and some D voters who are not down with bank bailouts and so forth.

And before any libertarians on this thread who think the LP caters to the GOP too much get their panties in a bunch… I’m not saying what you’re likely to imply I’m saying. I think there are a lot of libertarian-minded voters who hide in GOP ranks and have been brainwashed into social conservatism and cold warriorism as a part of the coalition-building that has kept the GOP together. If you ask them to vote their wallet first, many of them would gladly put the other issues aside. If they can’t, they could just stay in the ‘centrist’ GOP and cling to false promises of fiscal responsibility.

That being said, I still think the greatest room for outreach is to the left (if we can just talk some sense into many of them about economics). If the GOP did split as I wish it would (above), I think this would also open the door for the vacuum created in the DNC (as I also said, above) to bolster LP ranks as well. Right now it is to my belief that far too many people identify as ‘Democrats’ because of their opposition to social conservatism or cold warriorism. If you remove those barriers and begin operation in a 5-party ( if the GP can outflank what’s left of the DNC to the left) system, the LP would be gain from both the left and right equally. The above scenario was speaking of GOP drain into the LP, but as I’ve stated, I think we’d get some DNC drain too.

Oh, to dream a dream.

If you’re looking at the U.S. from far away, it probably seems all the same. When you live in the U.S., you’re more aware of regional differences, etc. I suspect that’s what is beyond your implication they are two sides of the same coin.

From inside the two parties, they clearly aren’t the same. From as far away as many LPers seem to be, they are.

I’ve been attempting to get more clarity from Susan on her definitions and rationale for QUITE some time, thus far for naught.

Perhaps she’ll share her answer with the assembled this time.

Of course the Republicans would say he changed, and the Specter-specific supporters as well as many Democrats would say the GOP changed.

However, I assume – and assume most others assume – that it was a tactical move to give Specter better odds of re-election. I think he even more or less acknowledged that. It looked like he could still easily win the general election as a Republican, but seemed to have an uphill fight against a primary challenger.

My question for CT is: how does Arlen Spector switching parties demonstrate the ‘differences between Dems and Reps’? Doesn’t the fact that Spector can fit plausibly into either party further reinforce that they are two sides of the same coin?

I know my name isnt Susan but i think its clear what she meant because the word libertarian isnt capitalized.

Since it’s clear that semantics is at least the partial foundation of your logic in doing so, I’d like to point out that to *me*, a social conservative is one who wants to use government (social engineer) to reflect their values upon the populace. I use this term in the political sense. If one is ‘personally’ ‘conservative,’ but recognizes that the government shouldn’t be used to advance this agenda, then yes, they could be identified as a libertarian, so long as they also advocate other libertarian positions such as free market principles, opposition to war, etc.

I am curious what you mean by identifying and activating Ls. Do you mean “‘Ls” or “L leaners”?

I say this because you are on record stating that even TAAALists are not “L” in your book. Near as I can tell, only the strictest adherence to NAP qualifies as “true” Ls, in your judgment. Is it your sense that there are significant numbers of strict NAP adherents (including 100% compliance to the plumb line) out there waiting to be IDed and activated?

I’d like to see our primary recruiting efforts aimed at identifying and activating *libertarians*. On the other hand, I am delighted to welcome ‘social conservatives’ into the LP – as long as they agree that such conservatism must be voluntary. A surprising number actually do!