As you all know by now, I don’t always agree with Steven Greenhut & his fellow Register editorial writers. However, Greenhut’s latest post at Orange Punch really hit me. Where do libertarians & paleoconservatives go?
The GOP no longer even talks about liberty. Limiting government is no longer on its agenda. When the GOP at least gave lip service to those issues, then libertarians could at least arguably be a part of it. But now the GOP is best epitomized by Giuliani and McCain, there’s no place for us to be within that group. It probably won’t matter, electorally speaking, but those of us who want to reignite a freedom movement will have to look elsewhere for now.
So where do they go? Once upon a time, “conservativism” meant a restrained foreign policy, support for civil liberties, and fiscal responsibility. But now, “conservatism” has been claimed by the religious right, the imperalists neoconservatives, and the corporate right. So where do the “old school conservatives” go?
Some are coming to the Democratic Party, though many like Greenhut refuse to join us here. Others are now going third party. It just looks like they’re no longer welcome in the Republican Party.
So while we’re all preparing to be excited next week with our Democratic Convention, I can’t help but think about all the disenfranchised paleoconservatives & libertarians. So what kind of effect will this have in the November election? And what will this cause the GOP coalition to look like in the future?
The floor is yours.
We will go home, scrape the Ron Paul stickers off our bunkers, clean our guns and shed our tears on framed copies of the Constitution.