Lessig is a member of the liberal elite. He's a Harvard professor with multiple advanced degrees, writes books and gives speeches with big words in them for aca

Lessig is a member of the liberal elite. He's a Harvard professor with multiple advanced degrees, writes books and gives speeches with big words in them for academic audiences, advocates pro-consumer anti-business IP policy, and endorsed Obama. That is emphatically not a recipe for being taken seriously by the Republican party. A successful Republican candidate is the kind of guy a redneck feels he could have a beer with, bonding over frothing hatred for Obama, who is definitely a Muslim and probably not an American. Higher education is a bed of liberal snakes, waiting to corrupt our youth and rob them of their good Christian family values. Science is to be distrusted, if not outright rejected. Job creators are the true American heroes and should be given as much power as possible and taxed as little as possible: they've earned it, through superior intellect and hard work. If anyone needs to be disenfranchised in political discourse, it's not the rich, it's the welfare queens and the unions. You have a point: there are many similarities between Lessig's views and idealized conservatism, particularly libertarianism. But the mainstream Republican base is going to hate him personally, and after that, nothing else matters.