To people like Michael Barone and David Brooks, politics is a self-referential game in which legislative victory or electoral victory is the sole standard of what is “practical.” They seem unable to fathom that there is an external reality

I’d have to agree with this.

At some point you have to have both strategy AND a point of drawing ideological lines in the sand.

Why claim him or be haunted any more than spraying the kitchen with Lysol will have us be “haunted” for the nasty smells?

Like Mark Steyn said, conservatives need to solidify the party, yes, and we can’t run a 1/2 conservatism to combat the New Statism.
But not at certain prices of trying to make the tent so large as it includes anyone who takes contrarian views to free markets and limited govenment.

Get on board, or vamoose.

True as far as grammatically correct, but then context is key here:

Even the pro-choicers claim they are against abortion merely to have little sis fit into her prom dress on demand, I hardly see much wrong with Romney as a conservative, nor is the distinction here known that for Objectivists and libertarians the notion of a border that leaks worse than a spaghetti strainer a good thing.

Some do benefit from having golf courses and roofs fixed for El Cheapo, but long term we all know where liberal Democrats are grooming their new voting bloc.

NO?

This is the one of the fundamental problems with the culture – a subjectivist / intrinsicist split. There just are no secular free market defenders out there with the exception of Objectivists and a few libertarians. But even with the libertarians you see the same thing – Christian libertarians like Ron Paul or on the other side the secular anarchists who sometimes seem like they are all EvPsych type determinists.

It looks like if the best Republicans were to capture the country we would end up with a smaller welfare-state but a much, much more Christian culture. I think many Objectivists would probably choose a bigger welfare-state but with a secular culture if they had to choose between the two. Unless Objectivism becomes popular there will be no popular secular pro-liberty movement. Where would it come from?

I checked him out last year after seeing his anti-bailout speech.

I can’t help thinking that this, in the long term, is what will earn any party a basic level of respect even of those who do not fully endorse its platform, and is a necessary condition for success.