They're only now starting to understand the problems that staying loyal to the establishment Republicans has created for them:
President Bush's immigration bill has created a rift between right-wing talk radio and Republican politicians that threatens to rupture the conservative coalition, according to a nationally syndicated radio host.
"If [the bill] is jammed through before, ironically, Independence Day, I think we will have been witnesses ... to the end of the old conservative coalition," Laura Ingraham said on Monday. "I truly believe that it is over if this happens, and it's time to rebuild and restart."
Conservatives should not be surprised by any of this because it is the natural consequence of their own collective myopia. When the conservative tent became so big that it came to encompass people who have virtually nothing in common, aside from a common hatred of elitist limousine liberals, it was doomed. On the one side, you have rabid statists like Michelle Malkin who can seriously defend FDR, a man who should by all rights be one of the great devils of conservatism, and on the other you have people like Lee who are mostly libertarian.
Conservatives also have only themselves to blame for the current immigration bill issue. They are the ones who continue to sheepishly support candidates for office that they know have abysmal voting records. When it comes election time, there is little doubt that nothing short of voter fraud or a truly charismatic, principled candidate running in the primaries will keep people like Trent Lott from receiving the majority of their conservative base's support. For years these people have been conditioned to uncritically assume that a Democrat is worse, even when the Republican they have been electing could not be picked out from the Democrats if you put their voting records side-by-side without any personal identification.
As much as I would like to, and probably could get away with, indulging in some libertarian triumphalism over this schism, it threatens us as well. There is a deep divide between "cultural" and "political" libertarians, the former being more concerned with being able to consume vice than political freedom as witnessed by their tendency to sympathize with overt fascists like Rudy Giuliani who have soft spots in their platforms for certain "freedoms" like state-sanctioned gay marriage. We too are ripe for a movement-destroying schism if we are not careful, which we won't be because of the snarky, self-absorbed nature of the cultural libertarians.
I admit the likes of Bill Maher have introduced a competing left-wing "libertarianism" concept into the popular political discourse, but doesn't the same principle that informs political libertarianism also inform cultural libertarianism?
No. Cultural libertarianism is antagonistic toward all social institutions, not just the state. It sees as much tyranny in the church opposing gay marriage as the state outlawing it, for example.