It depends on what brand or sort of "Libertarian" we are talking about.
I believe there is great success for the Republican Party in promoting the virtue of individual responsibility and less government intervention in the private and public lives of the individual.
However, there is nothing but failure ahead for any Party that falls off the cliff into the realm of hostility to the basic functions of a modern government. Many people who call themselves "Libertarian" (or conservative) have simply found an ideological dwelling place for their pursuit of selfishness and indecency towards their fellow man.
I'll gladly take a social conservative with a heart for people and God's creation over an ultra-ideological libertarian self-ist who has no concept of being "their brother's keeper".
I agree with this. In fact the GOP used to be a lot more socially libertarian (and, to contrast, Democrats used to be a bit more statist).
The problem is that they got hijacked by two different groups - religious extremists and kleptocrats. Though the GOP has long been pro-business, the kleptos took it to the extreme eliminating safeguards which helped less ethical types garner large short term profits over long term economic health. The religious extremists were mostly for the votes with a few token gestures here and there, but they scare the kleptos because Jesus tended to talk about helping the poor and all that a lot. (not that some of the more extreme folks couldn't be convinced to ignore that, but the pigeons are coming home to roost now). So you have a schism now between two groups at odds with each other trying to work together.
Their other problem is that the Democrats took over the ground they abandoned. (Especially the third way types). They moved from center-left to center right economicly, as the GOP was moving to an odd combo of hardcore lassez faire and corporate cronyism (although the Dems are not exactly guiltless either), and socially jumped radically from the idea of individual freedom to religious-based nanny statism, while the Democrats backed off on that front and moderated their views on governmental control of individual choices.
So now the main Democratic office holders tend to run from slightly liberal to moderately conservative on both economic and social views (-1 to +4 economic, 1 to 5 social) while the net republican mainstream has moved into the upper right corner (+4 to +9 economic, +5 to +10 authoritarian) though there is a schism within the party on that, as the kleptos don't tend to be concerned about social issues - beyond their value in manipulating the religious right, and the religious right has to contend with all that social justice stuff in the new testament which risks pulling down their economic score.
There is no way the current economic plans of the Democratic administration occupy that part of the spectrum. Every one of their plans revolves around more government control!
