GOPers' Choice: Libertarianism Or Irrelevance

New statistics prove it: Republicans will probably be more like libertarians in the future, or not. And if they choose the option, they may be doomed!

This is basically the argument we hear from such reasonable people as Meghan McCain, former McCain advisor Steve Schmidt, RNC Chairman Michael Steele and Nate Silver, the math whiz behind FiveThirtyEight.com. All have suggested, in one way or another, that relying on social issues to motivate conservative voters will only serve to narrow the party. And, basically, the only issue of broad interest to Republicans across the religious/social/fiscal/foreign policy conservative spectrum is the growth of government.

Steve and Meghan argue that Republicans have to drop their opposition to gay marriage. Michael Steele refuses to call President Obama a socialist. And Silver, a Democrat with lots of fancy math and numbers at his disposal, concludes that the only way for Republicans to dig themselves out of their current ditch is to promote ideas with widespread appeal, instead of ideas that captivate a rarified segment of basement-dwelling knucklehead paranoiacs.

Those more widely appealing ideas all have to do with keeping the government out of people's lives, which sounds great to a lot of conservatives as far as taxes are concerned, but not so great as regards, say, the gays, or the legalization of the most dangerous drug ever known to mankind, marijuana.

If the libertarian wing of the party does win this battle, it will mark the first time in human history that libertarians won anything.

Sara K. Smith writes for NBC and Wonkette.