Rock of the Westies

I'm not entirely whistling Dixie on this Western Strategy stuff; commenter Tom Scudder points out this Liberty Platform post by lefty blogger Digby. Excerpt:

I think we should adopt a western and southwest red state strategy using a platform of personal liberty, economic responsibility, land conservation, energy independence and effective national security. […]

"Republicans don't trust people to make their own decisions." It's that simple. They want to tell people how to live. I believe that is a simple argument that plays ever so subtly on the Republican mantra that says "they don't trust you with your own money!" We should steal it since they've already trained the ears of Americans to hear that formulation. […]

The western and southwestern states are far less amenable to intrusions on personal liberty, far less likely to be hyper-religious, far more "live and let live" than the southern red states. There is less history of racism than in either the south or the big cities (that's not saying all that much) and they have been leaders in women's equality. As the Republican party becomes a Christian dominated party of big government, this group is becoming unmoored from the GOP and is open to a new message from us.

Much more, about guns and taxes and abortion and National Security & stuff, here.

Whether it will amount to a hill of beans, obviously, is another question altogether (and one with the likely answer of "no"). But it's at least interesting that the topic is coming up in Democratic conversation. You can find similar sentiments over at Democrats for the West, the inevitable Schweitzer for President weblog, and even on occasion at The Daily Kos.

For a good laugh, however, you might enjoy watching another West-centric site, New West, attempt to blame Ayn Rand for neo-conservatism.