I am now starting to meet a lot of Independents and libertarians.

[texas1928]

It is getting hard to find people who will admit they voted for Bush. You have to pry it out of them. When I can I ask them "So, how's that working out for you?" But they will not admit to being registered republicans.

[louis-t]

1. I have noticed this phenomenon, reported same here several times.

They still spout right-wing rhetoric though, don't they?

[Marsala]

2. That may be why so many Independents lean to the right.

They are lapsed Republicans.

[FSogol]

3. None of the Repub candidates here in No. VA have the term Republican on their signs

and most of their signs are blue.

[Ikonoklast]

4. Just like ex-Nazi Party members

Reeeeeeaallllyy hard to find in Germany, oh, say, around May 1945.

"Nazis? What's a Nazi? None of them around here, pal."

[Narkos]

5. I have a BIL, same deal ,"I'm a Libertarian!"

He with the life-size cut-out of the chimp and bookshelf full of wingnut propaganda. I call bullshit on most of those people. They're just embarassed Republicans.

[kurt_cagle]

6. Libertarians not necessarily Republicans

The programmer community is a fairly large Libertarian bastion. They tend to be for smaller unintrusive government, pure free-market economics, fiscal responsibility ("you don't buy things with money you don't have", "you break it you own it"), self-reliance and social equality, in my experience. Many of them would have fit fairly cleanly into the mold of fiscal conservatives of the 1960s.

Most of them are absolutely aghast at what the Republican party has become. They despise the religious right, have been fairly heavily shafted by the oligarchy, and find the neoCon agenda scary and frustrating. For the most part they've been well aware of what's been happening in the financial community for years, but their concerns fell on deaf ears, because people were getting rich.

They are not flocking to Obama in part because they don't necessarily trust the Democrats much more than they trust the Republicans, but overall they are coming around to him. I'm going to guess that Barr and Obama will split the Libertarian vote about half and half. Ironically, I think they would have gone in fairly large numbers to McCain until he did his dance with the devil in Palin, but there's no way that they're going to allow anyone that closely allied to the Fundie crowd to become president.

[msallied]

8. You nailed it perfectly.

I really don't have much against the Libertarian party. They are a little more hardcore economically than I am, but I am very much with them on social issues. It's understandable that they appeal to people from either party.

[calimary]

7. Sounds like the post-nixon era.

You couldn't pay anybody to admit they'd voted for him.