This should have been a conservatarian revolution.
The Republican Party is composed of three main wings. The first is the neoconservative ‘old guard,’ which has been the pragmatic, centrist, and unrelentingly dominant force in American right-wing politics for a long time. The second is the ‘tea party’ or, in older parlance, the ‘religious right,’ which is a kind of populist paleoconservatism that is rooted in traditional values and has relatively little patience for pragmatism or compromise. The third is the ‘conservatarian’ wing, which is made up of true-believers in limited government and strict constitutionalism, and whose members tend to lean toward at least some of the positions of the Libertarian Party.
There is a lot of overlap between these groups. Few Republicans, and even fewer conservative independents (like myself), fit cleanly into one wing or another. But I have always said that my views generally fall somewhere between the platforms of the Republican and Libertarian parties, and so conservatarian describes me better than almost any other political label. If I was a Republican, that is the wing I would likely find myself in.
Just one year ago, conservatarians seemed poised to wrest control of the Republican Party from the old guard. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), the poster-boy of Republican conservatarianism, was winning straw polls and seemed to be a real contender for the presidential nomination. Tried-and-true members of the old guard like former Governor Jeb Bush (R-FL) and Governor John Kasich (R-OH) failed to gain traction. Republicans seemed ready for a change in direction, and Paul seemed like he could be the beneficiary of the old guard’s impending fall.
