Here come the socially conservative Democrats?

I've been referring a lot lately to the book The World is Flat lately. Partway through the book, Friedman predicts that today's political parties are going to fall apart and reform as what he called "the Web Party" and "the Wall Party". You've just given some good examples of crossover where people who traditionally follow one party find common ground with people in the other party on an issue, and that phenomenon is growing more and more.

The premise behind the Web Party is that cosmopolitan, liberal minded people, who want to see democracy, progressive values and prosperity grow abroad will find things in common with corporate business types, and they will support globalization, economic and political openness, etc.

Meanwhile, social conservatives (people who dislike outside influence on their culture--not religious or abortion or other things sometimes called "social conservative issues") will find common ground with labor unions (who traditionally voted Democrat), and both will favor more protectionist, isolationist policies, closing us off more from the rest of the world, economically, politically, and socially.

If you look at the political history of the US, I can't see many parties that have lasted as long as the current Democrat and Republican parties. I mean, of the parties that came and went, there were Whigs, Tories, Progressives, Populists, the Federalists, the Democratic-Republicans, etc. and those are just the major players. Is it time for these two parties to die and to re-invent themselves to better differentiate their stance on issues consistently?

I wish we were seeing the rise of the socially conservative libertarianism - something that makes sense to me on so many levels. So many of the conservative "family values" can be resolved within the libertarian construct.

I ran across a good overview of this idea on a random blog by Politically Incorrect. It sets up the libertarian ideal as being made up of two axioms:

1. The fundamental (and maybe ONLY) purpose of a state is to protect its citizens - this may or may not include a provision for the enforcement of contracts.
2. An individual's freedom to act is absolute up until the point where it infringes on the freedoms of another.

These allow many so-called social issues to be logically analyzed.

Abortion, for example, would be prohibited under axiom 1 if life is defined as beginning at conception (or sometime very shortly thereafter, IMO). And, really, how else could you define life that wouldn't also allow adults in certain situations to be "aborted?"

Gay marriage could also be easily addressed by taking marriage out of the hands of the government, as it is outside of the scope defined in the two axioms. The social issues that come along with welfare and education can also be avoided by pushing them into the private sector for the same reason.

Less taxes, less corruption, more safety, more individual responsibility, etc. So many pros ...

How about McCain-Romney?