The GOP's Death Wish

A lot of Republican liberty activists and Libertarians saw the handwriting on the wall in 2006 when the GOP lose the House of Representatives. The GOP operates under the delusion that it has a solidly committed base and it only needs to get out the vote to win elections. This is not only a boneheaded assumption, it's dead wrong. It's wrong because the GOP never understood it's own volatile base and automatically presumed that the Republican base was nothing but a bunch of religious right whackos who just need to hear candidates unleash venomous attacks on the social issues and 'Bingo', they would win an election.

The truth is that the GOP base has always been a complex and mixed bag of diverse constituencies including libertarians, independents, fiscal conservatives, Buchananites, paleo-conservatives, constitutionalists and other disgruntled factions who once aligned with the Republican Party, mostly out of desperation and the fact that the Republican Party was once deemed the lesser of the two evils.

What happened in 2006 and again in 2008 is that all those ticked off and angry disgruntled conservatives and libertarians could no longer even hold their noses and vote Republican like they once did. They revolted.  In fact, these voters finally decided that the lesser of the 2 evils is still evil.

Cato made an astute observation on the impact of the libertarian vote on the GOP in 2006.

Losing Libertarians

President Bush and his colleagues are telling voters that no matter how unhappy they are with Republicans, they'll like Democrats even less.

But evidence from around the country suggests that even if the conservatives come home to the Republican Party, the GOP could still lose Congress by losing libertarian voters.

Take a look at independent voters. There are more of them than before, especially in the West. More than 25 percent of Arizona voters now register as independent or third-party voters. And according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll, they've shifted sharply toward the Democrats in this fall's elections.

But independents haven't fallen in love with the Democrats. They seem to be motivated more by dissatisfaction with Republicans than enthusiasm for Democrats.

If the situation was bad for the Republican Party in 2006 and 2008, it's going to be even worse in 2012 given the rise of the Ron Paul movement that has captivated the young.  A platform of peace, liberty and prosperity is a campaign theme that rings loud and clear.  Americans are fed up with the wars, crony capitalism, assaults on civil liberties, bankster bailouts and massive corruption.

But it's 2012 and the GOP once again thinks that all it needs to do is get its base fired up and to the ballot box.

What base?  The GOP base is permanently splintered and fractured.

The GOP has lost the independent vote, the female vote, the fiscal conservative vote, the anti-war vote, the constitutionalist vote and a whole lot of other voters who really did once hold their noses and dutifully vote Republican.

Those days are long gone.  Yet, the RNC/GOP machines have the blazing audacity to go out of their way and overtly employ fraud and treachery to disenfranchise the Ron Paul supporters and libertarians.

Chasing away the remnants of a dwindling base is not a strategy for winning elections.  But that is precisely what the Republican Party had done.

Ultimately, I believe that liberty activists will succeed in taking over the GOP machines, county by county and state by state.  The Paulites already took over the GOP machines in IA, MN, ME and NV, even though establishment Republicans are still working damn hard to kick the Ron Paul delegates out of Tampa.

What's left of the GOP is not a pretty sight.  The general perception is that the heart and soul of the GOP, as it is presently constituted,  is the socially intolerant Warvangelicals who lust for endless wars, theocracy and big bad government.  It's not a stretch to assert that the American people are indeed thoroughly disgusted with these folks and consider them vile.  Voters may not be pleased with Obama and Gang but they also fear the the Republican nutjobs who booed when Ron Paul suggesting invoking the Golden Rule on foreign policy.

In a nutshell, the Republican Party is just too damn scary for most Americans.