Ryan Sager Interview
Over at New West, Christian Prabasco interviews former Reason intern, current contributor, and Elephant in the Room author Ryan Sager about the relationship between libertarians and the GOP. Snippet:
Probasco: Do you think the losses the Republicans experienced in the last election were primarily due to libertarians splitting from the party?
Sager: No, I don't think the libertarians did it all by themselves, but I think a lot of the things Bush has done, as far as big government conservatism, are responsible. And certainly the corruption issue was huge and so also was the South's captivity of the Republican Party. You really saw essentially no losses in the South outside of—well, the big one was Senator George Allen, who was somewhat of an anomaly with his idiocy in the macaca incident, and even then it was a razor-thin loss. You saw huge losses in the Northeast, some losses in the Midwest, and some very important losses in the West. So as far as the Republicans becoming the party of the South, that absolutely happened in this election. The less you went to church, the more likely you were to switch from Republican to Democrat in this election. We saw about a 14-point loss among Latino voters because of the Tom Tancredos of the world and the whole anti-immigrant sentiment. You certainly can't blame Bush for that. He has always understood the importance of trying to bring Hispanics into the GOP coalition. But the ultraconservatives did quite a bit to push Latinos away this time.