The Iowa caucuses highlighted a little-known fact about the Republican Party: it is really a coalition of three different groups. First and best-known are the “conservatives,” represented by Rick Santorum and the 25 percent of Iowa caucuses who voted for him. Conservatives tend to be fiscally conservative, but are more reliably socially conservative, meaning they tend to oppose such things as gay rights, abortion, and recreational drugs.
The second group is the libertarians, represented by Ron Paul and the 21 percent of the caucuses who voted for him (although Gary Johnson, who was ignored by the media and the party, is closer to being a true libertarian). Perhaps even more than conservatives, the libertarians are hard-core fiscal conservatives. But they are social liberals, favoring gay rights, legalization of recreational drugs, and (for the most part) legalized abortions.
The difference between conservatives and libertarians was brought out in the late 1960s, when David Nolan created the Nolan chart, defining political beliefs along two axes instead of the traditional “liberal-conservative” axis. Nolan’s chart pointed out that the fact that someone was fiscally conservative or liberal did not necessarily predict whether they would be socially conservative or liberal.
