I don’t know. I think it’s entirely possible to find overlap among those groups. After all, all those things fall under “let the free market do its thing.”

For the rest of them, I agree that it’s not hard to convince a big chunk of Americans to drop subsidies, or to deregulate, or to avoid government healthcare. The problem is getting a big enough overlap among these groups to form a viable base.

And for the record, I totally agree with your stance on marriage. I think the appropriate thing to do is have the government get out of marriage entirely, and deal with only civil unions. I think that’s a compromise virtually everyone should be able to agree on. Then straight and gay people can get “married” however they want, and the government stays out of it. Short of that, though, I’m all for gays having the right to marry. The idea that somehow the state has an obligation (or an ability) to protect the “sanctity” of marriage is ridiculous. If people want sanctity of marriage, they need to build it in their own marriages. The millions of people who’ve gotten married frivolously throughout history have insured that there is no grand notion of sanctity that can apply to marriage as a whole.

Deregulation of the economy is not popular now, but I’m not convinced that the pendulum won’t swing the other way to some degree. I think we could convince 34% of the voters that subsidies are stupid. Am I too optimistic?

Privatization of social security would definitely ruffle some feathers. Neither of the candidates have really addressed that issue this time, which is strange.

I can’t find the official Libertarian position on gay marriage, but they can have my position, which is that the government shouldn’t be in the marriage business, but anyone can get a civil union. All but the far right would be happy with that.

Libertarians tend to wiggle out of the abortion issue by saying it should be up to the states.

I agree that getting the LP into the mainstream would be most difficult. Getting any third-party into the mainstream will be most difficult.

From the right, they would lose support due to their belief in separation of church and state, same-sex marriage rights, gays in the military, abortion rights, etc.

They would also lose support on both sides due to their opposition to all subsidies.

I’m not sure exactly what they would need to drop from their platform in order to cobble together a platform that the majority (or at least 34%) of Americans would prefer to either of the mainstream parties. It could be difficult. There are a disturbing number of single-issue voters on both sides.

What other Libertarian stances do you think mainstream America would have big problems with?

I did not care for the closed and secretive nature of the Bush administration. Obama will be a refreshing change in that area.

I’m surprised you’re surprised about me voting for Barr. Had you forgotten about my libertarian streak? McCain will win Mississippi. It’ll be closer than in the past, but not too close. Pretty much every state in the Union would go for Obama before Mississippi, so if I’m wrong, it doesn’t matter.

I’m kinda surprised that you are voting for Barr. Mississippi will probably go to McCain, but I’m not ruling out a surprisingly strong minority vote for Obama to make it close.