However, I’m not…

    <blockquote><p>However, I&#8217;m not as sure as you are that libertarians will support democrats in droves rather than support Republicans who are banning abortion. Some libertarians will do as you describe; but there are many who will just continue to vote Republican, because in the final analysis the only things they give a damn about is tax cuts and opposing aid to the poor.</p></blockquote>
<p>Amp, I know a lot of libertarians and have worked closely with them in the past, and I think this is really uncharitable. You have to distinguish the Neal Boortz wing of the party (disaffected Republicans who signed on due to misguided outreach efforts by the LP in the 1990s) from the actual libertarian hardcore who have been involved in the LP since the 1970s (not all big-L Libertarians are really well-classified as small-L libertarians.) The latter often have any number of political and cultural blind spots, limitations, and flaws, but the overwhelming majority of them have consistently opposed the war, the PATRIOT Act, the further criminalization of abortion, the War on Drugs, etc. There&#8217;s been a lot of talk, and activism, for the past 3 years on renewing the Left-Libertarian alliance that existed during the Vietnam War period, and most of the Libertarians that I know are inclining towards the Democrats at the moment if they are inclining towards any major party candidate at all.</p>
<p>As for whether the disaffected Republican wing or the hardcore libertarian wing makes up the numerical majority of the party, I don&#8217;t know; most of the national leadership is to some degree or another in the latter camp, and much of the state leadership too, but some of the state parties are in the hands of the former. I don&#8217;t know how much the positioning of the disaffected Republican wing of the party has affected your perceptions of libertarians as a group, but one way or the other I would like to urge a more nuanced view.

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