Rand Paul’s campaign collapses:

The libertarian moment in American politics—foretold just last year in the New York Times magazine—is like the horizon; always retreating as we advance upon it. The political events of 2015 are a brutal reminder about how far this country is from embracing libertarianism and how alien those ideas are even to the purported shock troops of the freedom movement. While libertarianism’s opponents can take heart, its champions are setting their cause back by pretending that all is well. The collapse of the Rand Paul campaign speaks volumes. In a 15-person field, Paul is the only candidate who looks even remotely libertarian (social tolerance, foreign policy restraint, and limited government). He started the campaign with decent name recognition, a seat in the United States Senate, lavish media attention, a serious will to win, and a battle-tested, national political operation inherited from his father, Ron. If there were any significant support for Libertarian ideas in the GOP—any at all—Rand Paul would be near the top of an otherwise crowded, fragmented field that is fighting over every non-libertarian voter in the party. Yet he’s polling at a mere 1 percent among Republican voters nationwide and has a higher unfavorability rating than anyone else in the GOP race

If politics was intellectual and logical, surely libertarianism would be what everyone could agree on. Lets all leave each other alone. But politics isn’t logical. These are reproductive strategies. They are burned in as deeply as any instinct.

In areas where humans are densely packed and resources are overabundant, you get the conflict and competition-averse r-selected reproductive strategy of liberalism. Where humans are densely packed enough to routinely encounter other humans, but resources are scarce, you get the competitive K-selected strategy of conservatism. Where humans adopt an r or K-strategy they seek to use government to make the world around them either r or K, so the world they live in will be congruent with what they are designed to encounter.

Libertarianism is what you see in animals like Grizzly Bears that are so spread out they rarely encounter others of their species. For that reason, it will only emerge in humans rarely, and most often where they are spread out away from each other like Alaska or the western states.

All the logic and reason in the world will not make K-strategists and r-strategists ignore their instincts. Compromise is impossible.

Understanding where politics comes from is invaluable to strategizing. Rand wasn’t perfect, but he might have done better recognizing the facts of r/K, and downplaying his libertarianism in favor of appealing to K-strategists by emphasizing where he would agree with them.

Until r/K takes over the field of political science, everyone is just guessing.