Will the GOP come home to Goldwater?

This is a must-read for the GOP from Greg Mankiw and Andrew Gelman. Based on Gelman's graph, Mankiw suggests that if the Republican party embraced moderate, mainstream Libertarianism and distanced itself from social conservatism, it could win back the youth vote in future elections. A reformed Republican party could certainly appeal to what I believe is a growing demographic in the American electorate: young voters that are socially liberal, but prefer limited government. If the GOP were to celebrate a Goldwater revival, Christian evangelicals would have to take a back seat (for once). Yet, the Republicans could redefine their base by giving many voters suffering from a collective political identity crisis a party to come home to.