In effect, Paul was saying that the way for Republicans to win was to become more libertarian — though only up to a point. Purity was the movement’s game, not his. Paul reminded me that he worked on his father’s 1988 Libertarian Party presidential campaign and felt a great deal of sympathy for anyone trying to take on the major parties. “I also gathered signatures to get him on the ballot,” he said. “I know what a thankless job that is. Anybody who stands in a parking lot is thought to be an extremist.”

But later, with an irritated edge to his voice, Paul added: “Some people are purists, and I get grief all the time — all these libertarian websites hating on me because I’m not as pure as my dad. And I’m putting restrictions on foreign aid instead of eliminating foreign aid altogether. And I’m like: ‘Look, guys, I’m having trouble putting these restrictions on, much less eliminating them! So give me a break!’ ”

This June I watched Nick Gillespie deliver the keynote address at PorcFest, the annual libertarian outdoor festival held in Lancaster, N.H., and named for the area’s ubiquitous porcupine. About 500 campers sat attentively, while several others stood off to the side, Hula-Hooping as they listened. Arrayed before Gillespie were several boxes of exotically flavored Pop-Tarts that he had purchased at the Lancaster grocery store. He held them up as evidence that individualism was flourishing and choices were in abundance or, as he put it, “The libertarian moment is now.” Their moment had arrived, Gillespie said, “because the main political drivers have destroyed their credibility. Only the dead think the G.O.P. is the party of small government.” At the same time, he added, “the Democrats had a clean shot to demonstrate that they’d protect our liberties, and they proved themselves to be utter frauds.”

With deadpan aplomb, Gillespie then said, “If we can have 20 different types of Pop-Tarts, maybe we can have more than two types of political identification.”

After the speech was over and Gillespie gamely posed for a few pictures with admirers, I cornered him and asked him if he was suggesting that libertarians leave the G.O.P.-flavored Pop-Tarts on the shelf. Gillespie said it all depended on Republicans. “This is the fundamental question for the Republican Party,” he said. “Are they going to embrace the libertarian elements of Rand Paul and Justin Amash? Because that’s their only way out. They’re at 25 percent self-identification, and it’s not going to climb back up if they keep re-electing the old horses. Libertarians don’t need them. We’re already alienated and out of the mainstream. We don’t need the Republican Party in the way that they need the energy and the vision of libertarians.”

But, I wanted to know, would libertarians be willing to meet the G.O.P. somewhere in the middle? Among the 1,700 or so attendees, I had seen guns and Bitcoins and slogans like “Liberty: Too Big to Fail” and “I Do Not Consent to Searches.” What I had not seen or heard was any show of support for Rand Paul. The crowd here at PorcFest, many of them young, all of them passionate, represented just the sort of army that Paul would need in the early primary states and beyond — the same sort of army, in fact, that powered his father’s improbable showing in previous elections. But they still talked more about the father than the son.

Gillespie acknowledged that the answer remained unclear. “I think that if a major-party candidate articulates 75 percent of the catechism,” he said, “both self-identified libertarians and people who don’t realize they’re libertarians would vote for him.” But then again, he said, it might take “a hundred years or something” for his movement to find its true expression in a political party. “We’ve gone from a movement that didn’t exist, then we all believe in this roughly similar thing, then we have a dalliance with the G.O.P., then we realize, no, we’re totally separate. And then we find out, no, we really need to activate politically in a conventional two-party system,” he said, his tone betraying little concern for the pace of this process. “And it may be we’re still some years away from that. I don’t know.”

Our libertarian moment, in other words, might very well pass unexploited. But it remained, for Gillespie and his fellow travelers, a moment to savor: Pop-Tarts washed down with Green Hat gin. Interesting stuff was happening in the garage called America, and you could try to change the system, or you could also elect to be boring. Either way, you were at perfect liberty.