Well the creationists always seem to be associated with Republicans. I think the article has quite a valid point. Most Republicans who are fiscally conservative now refer to themselves as libertarian. Even Tom is mainly a libertarian, I find it hard to work out where they even connect to the Republicans any more.

Take the Afghanisan and Iraq wars for example. In Afghanistan the two parties were identical enough to discard this. In Iraq however the libertarians are against it. See for example LeeRockwell.com and Antiwar. So in terms of fiscal and most of national security the libertarians are consistent.

The rest of the world has the same attitude on Iraq as the libertarians do to a great degree. So what is left of the Repbulican ideology that hasn't defected? Look at Buchanan for example and how much of what he says in criticism of the Republicans is really old style Republicans. So there are two splits that ook away a lot of principled thinking.

It may well be the the reason the Republicans are doing better is that in losing their principled people to the Libertarians and the Reform Party the ones left are more willing to say and do whatever to be elected. The strategy of big give aways to the rich and corporations in return for lots of money for advertising is basically buying votes. This has pretty clearly been shown now to have thrown fiscal conservatism out the window to pay for these campaign contributions.

This is not an unusual situation world wide, for a party to split like this. In the United Kingdon for example there is Labour, the Tories and the newer Social Democrats. It seems that the latter has become a kind of new Tory Party to the extent the old one may fade away.

The greens for example split from the left in Germany and are trying to do so in the US. The Republican philosophy for a long time has been a mix of Libertarianism and conservative Buchanan like attitudes on immigration, isolationism, etc.

A lot of this may have occured by the virtual take over of the Republican party by the Bushes. They selected Nixon and got him to run, financed him and persuaded him to favour George Bush as CIA head. After this Bush was VP with Reagan for 8 years with enormous influence.

Now there is another Bush for 4 and perhaps 8 years and there could be Jeb for another 8 after that. So the overall influence of Bush ideas on the Republican party may end up stretching from 1968 to 2016, or 48 years. While there were Democrats in Carter and Clinton in there the Bushes seemed to have a lock on the presidency when the time came for a Republican. Having that is a big influence on the Congress as well.

So the party may be suffering from this control which lead to many ideological splinter groups forming. In many ways reading these groups, they are more critical of Bush than the Democrats have been until recently. The Libertarians for example are particularly vicious aobut Bush in some ways, and the Cato Institute has been critical for some time. I get the feeling they have been sidelined.

Sometimes they can be ideologically extreme but you can count on the libertarians to have things well thought out. The Neo Cons may have more influence because they seemed to have been one of the few ideologies not to pack their bags and leave.

So there are few priciples left in Republicanism. Abortion is one. States rights seems to be in more trouble under Republicans these days than Democrats. Gay marriage is a hot potato with conservatives like Sullivan, where does he fit in? He doesn't seem to like Republicans any more in fiscal conservatism. It's hard to rally people around two sexual issues like abortion and homosexuality when Libertarianism seems inclined to leave people's personal privacy alone.

Likewise the tough on crime is not as popular any more with drugs, many countries are now following Holland's lead. Inevitably this will become a medical problem rather than locking people up. It's hard to see again how the Libertarian approach is not the best for the Republican party here as well. In any case both sides seem tough on violent crime.

Schwarzenegger illustrates this quite well, he seems much more like a Libertarian than a Bush Republican, and yet the party endorsed his ideas. More of this seems destined to bring Libertarianism back into the party much more.

As Sullivan himself said the Republicans are captive to special interests as he believes the Democrats also are. I think the Democrats are in a lot better shape ideologically since communism failed because their extremists had to face reality over this. Republicans still haven't faced up to the failures throughout South America of unregulated capitalism. This is ironic as in the US the special interests are more intent on getting a protected regulated monopolistic status from Republicans. They have their hand out for subsidies and government contracts as much as welfare queens ever did. It seems they themselves don't believe in the free market for themselves.

So Quo Vadis for Republicanism?