Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Um, dude. Your problem is that most Republican voters turn out to be completely uninterested in Libertarian ideas and policies. Just about all of Trump's divergences from the prior orthodoxy move the party away from where you want to be. No one is forcing anyone to vote for Trump -- he destroyed the other candidates in the primary. Trump voters are not interested in being socially tolerant. They want to restore traditional social hierarchies, and they want to use the government to do it. The notion that Trump has somehow opened the door to a GOP that is more open to Libertarian ideas is a delusion. If that's what you tell yourself to make yourself feel better, enjoy the placebo, but if I were a Libertarian, I would be looking to shore things up with the Democrats to try to get a little leverage. The notion that you get leverage from Gary Johnson is silly. The Mormons at least have a clue about how to play this game -- Libertarians, not at all.
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Libertarians are a better fit with Democrats. The social positions are much more aligned. And right now, the Democrats are the party of free trade.
But for whatever reason, the Libertarians who've made progress have done so within the GOP. So the most efforts are aimed at expending on those gains.
Ideally, however, Libertarian ideals will infect both parties. And you can see some of that happening already with marijuana and gay marriage. At a state level, you can see it happening with tolerance for gambling as a legitimate industry.
Inevitably, both parties trend somewhat more Libertarian. The nanny state and regulatory state are too expensive to indefinitely run effectively. I think we're too splintered, large, and complex a country to micromanage at the level either party desires. We're in a bit of organizational entropy right now that'll probably accelerate, and as it does, we'll become more and more de facto Libertarian.
And that's a good thing. Because the option is severe state control.
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