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Following the embarrassing Republican defeats in 2006 and 2008, the Party is once again trying to assert itself and figure out how to make a comeback. It can be done: look at how the Democrats came back, following near extinction in 2004. A few inside the GOP and quite a few outside the GOP believe that victory will happen once the Party becomes more “open” and “seeks those who haven’t been given a voice.” When pressed for details, this often leads to a call to admit Libertarians into the Republican Party and especially into positions of leadership at the county, district, state and national level. But, is this a recipe for victory or a Trojan horse for permanent defeat?

Who are the Republican Libertarians?

The Republican Liberty Caucus (RLC) is a group that has been making some big inroads with GOPs throughout the country. In fact, the Republican Liberty Caucus is now an official club of the Buncombe County GOP after a motion to table their inclusion was defeated at that county’s convention on March 7th. According to the RLC’s website, their members are Republicans working to change the GOP from the inside out, not vice-a-versa. The same website goes on to say that “Libertarians do not have a good track record with electoral success. The RLC is attempting to change that by using the Republican Party as a vehicle to implement our libertarian ideas.” That brings up a good question: are these people Republicans or Libertarians? And, if they truly believe they are Libertarians first, what does that mean for the Republican Party platform should the RLC advance to significant leadership positions?

What do Libertarians have in common with conservatives and what are our differences?

To their credit, the Libertarians share our concerns about protecting U.S. sovereignty from the corrupt, anti-American, United Nations. In addition, the majority of Libertarians have an admirable respect for the U.S. Constitution as it was written and not how the liberals in our country and the U.N. would like for it to be interpreted. Another very important area of agreement is fiscal responsibility. I haven’t seen any evidence that the RLC or other Libertarian groups endorse the irresponsible spending policies of the former Bush administration or the tax-and-spend and bogus stimulus packages being forced upon us by Obama and the liberals in Congress. Those are areas where conservatives and Libertarians are in agreement. But, there are some major areas of difference:

According to their website, the RLC has partnered with the leftist American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), an organization that picks and chooses what parts of the U.S. Constitution they want to support. Other groups the RLC has endorsed include the Free State Project, a group that has been encouraging its activists to move to New Hampshire in order to influence that state’s government. One of the groups linked to the Free State Project’s website is the New Hampshire Coalition for Common Sense Marijuana Policy. Another group the RLC has endorsed is the Medical Marijuana Project, an organization advocating for pro-marijuana legislation across the country, including North Carolina.

On the subject of abortion, the RLC takes a neutral stand -- something that is unacceptable. The Republican Party can’t win elections unless it has the pro-life community behind their candidates. Case in point: 1996 when California Governor Pete Wilson and Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter both ran for President. Both of these Republican candidates made removal of the pro-life plank from the Republican Party platform the centerpiece of their campaigns and both campaigns quickly fizzled out early in the primary.

On the subject of religion and America’s Judeo-Christian heritage, you’ll find varying opinions among the Libertarians. Some of the radical Libertarian bloggers are militantly atheistic and scream “separation of church and state!” whenever people of Faith express their First Amendment views. The RLC views religion and spirituality as a personal endeavor that should not impact public policy decisions, ideas not shared by the founding fathers of this nation who were deeply religious men as evidenced from their writings and in their monuments throughout Washington DC and Philadelphia. 

The RLC’s opposition to a Federal Marriage Amendment is another area of incompatibility with conservatives. Poll after poll, and vote after vote, clearly show (even in liberal California) that the vast majority of Americans support marriage as between one man and one woman. Without a Federal Marriage Amendment, supremacist judges can interpret marriage however they like. This has happened in Connecticut and will likely happen here unless the Democrat leadership in the NC Legislature allows S272, the Defense of Marriage Act, to receive a vote.

Is there a plan for Libertarians to “take over” the Republican Party?

The Libertarian Party’s Facebook.com page features a lively topic discussion called “libertarian takeover of the GOP.” The Campaign for Liberty website has a posting where a blogger writes: “Just as the radical ‘progressives’ through Moveon.org and other affiliates invaded the Democrat party structure and effectively took over it’s apparatus so does a group need to seize control of the only last salvation this country has and take over the Republican Party and use that as its instrument to change.”

Over on the hatemongering Daily Kos site, a liberal blogger who calls himself “Abraham Running For Congress When I Turn 25” had this to say about the Libertarians (I’m keeping his poor punctuation and grammar intact): “But in My opinion, if they (libertarians) feel more comfortable in the Republican Party we should just help them take it over. I think it would be much easier to work with libertarians than to work the crew that currently run it… We need to be willing to debate policy. And I think I would do that with a libertarian Republican Party.”

Closer to home, a blogger in Western North Carolina had this to say in August 2007: “…we think that the opportunity is clear and the time is right for freedom-loving progressives, libertarians and classic liberals to charge the ramparts and take over the Republican Party…”

If anyone reading this seriously thinks that “progressives” will help the Republican Party win elections in North Carolina or nationwide, they should think again. That word is code for the Obama-loving Moveon and Michael Moore types who now run the Democrat Party!

History has repeatedly shown that when Republicans win, they win because their candidates articulate BOTH a fiscal and a socially-conservative message. That’s what gave Ronald Reagan two landslide victories (three if you want to count the first President Bush’s victory over Michael Dukakis). This was the formula that rallied conservative-minded Democrats to Reagan’s side as well as to Jesse Helms here in North Carolina. And, it was a betrayal of that dual conservatism that has temporarily destroyed the Republican Party. The decline began when the second President Bush began to rapidly embrace globalism, big-government spending and illegal immigration after he was safely re-elected in 2004. By 2006, the Reagan and Helms Democrats had gone home and as we saw in 2008, John McCain’s anti-conservatism did nothing to woo them back nor motivate the base of the Party he had spent his entire career stabbing in the back.

Conservatives in North Carolina’s Republican Party need to be aware of what’s going on in their local, district and state chapters. We should welcome ideas to protect American sovereignty, self-government and our border security. However, we should not compromise on the right-to-life, the sacrament of marriage, traditional morality and the protection of our country’s Judeo-Christian heritage. If we lose those socially-conservative principles in our platforms, we can forget about winning future elections.