"What happened to the libertarian branch of the Republican Party? " - There's a fiscal conservative subset in GOP. - There's a small government subset, but it's a secondary principle ever since the "Compassionate" conversative took primary. - There may be Libertarians who vote in the Republican Primary, for lack of a party in their state. - There are libertarians in principle and philosophy, who the media calls "Independent" because they vote split ticket in the General election. - In Ohio, libertarian such as NRA votes have long been ignored. "I was actually once, for a couple seconds in the 90s, a Republican ..." - Ummm, no. "a couple seconds"? Please. Do you really know what your core political philosophy is and/or your core policy principles? "The idea used to be against big brother controlling everything. " - Controlling what part?: fiscal big spender, believes in social engineering (whether for liberal or religious 'conservative' objectives. Your sentence is too broad to know what your complaint is. We do still have Rule of Law (*) which is good social/society 'control'; e.g. provides predictability and accountability. To have any idea where you're coming from and are concerned about, please explain; e.g. give a philosophy and/or examples of "control [by whom and how]" and "everything". *[Go ahead with counter examples -- Kelo eminent domain, comprehensive amnesty immigration, Haditha and Duke's sports team media guilty instead of presumed innocent -- if you want, but its going off on a related topic. It can certainly be shown that our 'Rule of Law culture' is under threat.] "I don't need another mother; I already have one. " I think the term/imagery you're looking for is "nanny state government", rather than mother. "...why are they not aligning with us now on net neutrality?" Ah ha, who's "us"? Would that be the corporate conglomerates that want (and would benefit monetarily from) the increased government regulation and politician-to-business favoritism that is "net neutrality"? If I understand nixguy's posts, "net neutrality" is actually "net regulated neutrality". To borrow from wikipedia, "net neutrality" would be bettern known as "internet NPOV" (neutral point-of-view). If you've spent anytime on wikipedia Talk pages of a subjective article (e.g. anything with political or opinion-controversial elements), then you know the "Neutral POV" is anything but neutral. If the original message was trolling, it certainly accomplished it's objective. It generated multiple comments and yet accomplished nothing to advance policy understanding or political philosophies. If the original message was heartfelt, then please please hang around the S.O.B. Alliance more (or National Review or Club for Growth). Read and learn, and think and talk with friends -- intelligently and with reason, try to set aside emotion except as an action-reaction observation of behavior. You've got a lot of thinking work to do between now and September, to determine your Life Outlook and hence core beliefs. Then use October to see which candidates match those beliefs. Good luck and best wishes.