If you have not yet done so, please read the original Blue Republican article (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robin-koerner/blue-republican_b_886650.html) , as the Blue Republican movement that it spawned cannot be properly understood without it. Saving the nation from its slide into a statist, militaristic social democracy and returning it to liberty and the Bill of Rights depends on a process tha
t is already underway: 1) the Republican party must expand to include all people who have a passion for liberty, including those with a Liberal sensibility, and 2) the liberty wing of the Republican party must eventually become dominant. 3) Meanwhile, liberty voters must come to dominate the Independents or swing voters who do not identify with the GOP. Although huge progress has been made for liberty over the last few years, the movement suffers from a tendency of many libertarian activists to be more concerned with winning arguments than winning supporters. Blue Republicans bring a sales and marketing sensibility to liberty, recognizing that sometimes the insistence on winning the argument may lose us a “customer”. The Blue Republican brand gas already brought thousands of pro-liberty Independents into the GOP and even bringing self-identified progressives to vote for pro-liberty, pro-civil rights Republicans. We succeed by respecting Independents and Liberals’ moral convictions: rather than asking them to change them, we show that they can better serve their intended ends by supporting the Constitution and Liberty, and by recognizing that statist and progressive means have failed by the intended ends by which they have been justified. Blue Republicans recognize that although the Liberty movement is not yet a majority of the GOP, it is becoming an increasingly large proportion of independently minded voters and declared “Independents”. With continued effort, it can become the majority of that group. In a two-party Democracy, the median voter is the one who must be won over to secure a majority. As large numbers of self-identified Blue Republicans refuse to vote along party lines for candidates whose politics are antithetical to their principles, they put on notice that to win the swing vote, and therefore simply to win, candidates must promote liberty and Constitutionalism. We thereby leverage control of the swinging middle to influence the mainstream. We have attracted huge support by making the case that both wings of the Republicrat establishment have failed us – an idea to which Liberals and Conservatives are very open. Starting from that point of agreement makes potential supporters more open to our classical liberal alternatives than they would be to an overtly Libertarian manifesto, which puts off many potential supporters by including items that non-libertarians find unacceptable, even if through lack of understanding. In short, we are about making sure that most swing votes are liberty votes while we continue to work on taking over the Republican party in the name of Liberty. Some Democrats and Independents are already disposed to consider the GOP because they believe that government intrusion into their individual lives, and abuses against their civil rights have gone too far under an increasingly leftist Democratic establishment, but they have not made the leap to voting for GOP candidates because they view the GOP as mean-spirited and hypocritical. They therefore vote for what to them is the lesser of the two evils, the Democratic party, with the idea that they are at least voting for a party whose members mostly have good intentions. The Blue Republicans challenge this behavior by providing a visible and growing group of recent converts to a libertarian Republicanism for them to join, and by proving that even if the neocons and religious right dominated the Republican party’s recent past, they do not necessarily have its future. Libertarians and Constitutionalists have plenty in common with Liberals and Independents on crony corporatism, the monetary system, peace vs. That is enough to bring them all under the Blue Republican umbrella. This Blue Republican umbrella is very inclusive, comprising pro-choice and pro-life citizens; anarchists, minarchists, libertarians, conservatives and pro-peace progressives; those who prefer zero-tax, flat tax, fair tax and even progressive tax, and so on. Even though the group includes a range of views on our preferred political destination, they agree that the direction in which our nation must now go is directly away from statist, militaristic, anti-civil rights social democracy. The Blue Republican approach attracts such broad support because it puts principles over orthodoxy, and finds broad agreement on major issues without letting less important disagreements distract from the common cause. The following goals are indicative of possible directions of growth of the Blue Republican movement as a political brand that will change the mainstream of American politics for peace, liberty and the Bill of Rights. Blue Republican will become a commercial brand for merchandise that is ornamented with political slogans and images that reflect post-partisan political thinking and classical liberal values in an American context. Blue Republican will overtly support candidates – of whatever party – who espouse our values and who especially need votes from Independents and those who are not used to voting Republican. Blue Republican will sponsor conferences or panel events that would put on a single stage political and economic thinkers who would not typically share a stage. This would be about finding common ground in favor of liberty in certain areas among people who do not otherwise share the same political views. The participants would have to be sufficiently well known as to increase the profile of the Blue Republican movement
A think-tank or foundation that seeks to affect policy made by Liberals in the direction of liberty and smaller government by showing that goals that are shared by Liberals and libertarians have been harmed by progressive means. Articles aimed at progressives will continue to be written to explain the failures of progressivism in a way they can accept, and promote classical liberal and Constitutional solutions, policies and candidates. The movement will continue to benefit from the credibility it already has with Liberals by virtue of Blue Republican articles’ consistently appearing on the Huffington Post and with Libertarians by their consistently appearing on the Daily Paul and Daily Capitalist etc. Numerous lectures will be delivered to Liberals that explain exactly why our current illiberal two-party political system has failed, and elucidate how many of these failures can be undone by a return to the Constitution and the ideas of classical liberalism. Blue Republican will have a presence at numerous liberty-oriented events nationwide and internationally, and will promote the brand and products at such events. A book will be published in support of a Blue Republican account of US politics, and marketed through Blue Republican channels. The term “Blue Republican” will be used extensively in the mainstream media to describe the recently converted liberty wing of the Republican party. Blue Republican will have its own media outlets, which may include a magazine and radio programs from a classical liberal perspective, but targeted at Liberals rather than convinced libertarians. The goal will be to show Conservatives and Liberals that the real divide in our politics is not between Left and Right but between those who would control others and those who would not. Blue Republican will make informational videos of high production quality that discuss many of the perspectives presented in my articles, nudging those of a different political philosophy toward classical liberal ideas. Universities will have Blue Republican student groups. Members of local groups of Blue Republican nationwide will stand under that banner for local elected offices. Advertizing campaigns will ensure the use of the term “Blue Republican” in the mainstream media and put the name and the key elements of its message in front of the huge numbers of voters. The message will be libertarian, but the word “libertarian” will never be used.
