Most of the self-identified “true conservatives” I’ve dealt with both in Alaska politics and online wouldn’t know a “Taft Republican” if hit in the head by one and have never read a word of Wm. Buckley. And they sure don’t know anything about the ideological battles of the late ’40s and early ’50s both with the Soviets and their allies and within US domestic political parties and alliances. They range from just a visceral anti-governmnent to the tin-foil hat wearing, black helicopter crowd to the SIVVs who don’t care what a candidate is about so long as s/he is anti-abortion or, to a lesser degree, anti-illegal immigration.

To relate it more to my area of expertise, I watched lots of employees become union stewards because they thought the employer didn’t recognize their talents and promote them. Likewise, I watched lots of union stewards become radical dissidents inside a union because they never could manage to get elected to union office. I watched Sarah Palin throw a hissy-fit because she didn’t think the Republican Party of Alaska properly recognized her talents when she ran for Lt. Governor (and she only got the best patronage job in the State as her reward for losing to the better known candidate). She and her proxy Joe Miller, also one of the “unrecognized,” set about to both bring down the leadership of the Republican Party, at which they failed, and to destroy all things Murkowski, at which they’re one and one. All the examples demonstrate the same dynamic; people who either can’t adequately work the system or who can’t get enough support within the system set out to radically change the system in such a way as to get the recognition and power they think they deserve.

I’m sorry, the Libertarians and libertarians can’t dominate the Republican Party. If they want to dominate a party, they can go over to the Libertarian Party, where a lot of the libertarians won’t actually be welcome either, and there they can be happily irrelevant but pure. Likewise the SIVVs; there are some districts around the country where they can dominate, but they cannot win statewide elections outside The South and the rural West. Both the Libertarians/libertarians and the SIVVs have to accept that the Republican Party won’t do anything to them but is limited in what it can do for them and that is the best they can do against the Party that is dedicated to doing things to them.