[mwfunk]

Historically the Republican party has been libertarianish, at least in the sense that the guiding principles were minimizing the size and reach of government, keeping the government out of people's lives, and legislating at the most local levels possible (don't make a state law if a local law will do, and don't make a federal law if a state law will do).

This changed in the '60s- Democratic support for the civil rights movement caused a massive shift in the south, in which a huge number of voters (evangelical, socially conservative voters who had supported the Democrats since the end of the Civil War) switched allegiances from Democrats to Republicans. That period also saw the rise of Barry Goldwater, who also wasn't a traditional Republican- he was more of a demagogue who engaged in a lot of flag waving and and emotional oratory to get people riled up.

Ever since then there's been a cognitive dissonance within the GOP- the old-school libertarianesque beliefs wedded to the social conservatives and demagogues of the Religious Right (who aren't traditionally right-wing (or left-wing) at all, they've just latched on to the Republican party as being more amenable to being bent to their will).

This cognitive dissonance has reached epic proportions in the last 10 years, in some cases leading to polarization in the party (fiscal conservative/social liberals vs. those who are completely driven by religion and social conservatism). In other cases it leads to politicians who somehow try to appeal to both the libertarians and the Religious Right (Ron Paul being a prime example), and I just don't know what to make of that. The views of the world embodied by those two groups could not be more different, and seems impossible to reconcile in any intellectually honest way.