So how did you get to the percentage figure of 85%???I got that statistic from a website, www.isidewith.com. It's a site that quizzes you on the issues and gives you results that show how you match up against all the candidates. They don't give you that statistic directly. You just have to answer all the questions as a libertarian it will tell you how many issues the socialists agree with you on.
I'm not sure what you and your friends call socialism, but you have socialism in this country now and it's been here since at least the thirties with the New Deal. Arguably, you could say that we've had a degree of socialism in this country since 1862 when we switched to a progressive income tax. The only way we could become more socialist is if we were to nationalize industries like health insurance. Some have argued that ending the FED is socialism because you're nationalizing the central bank. Tell that to those socialist Ron Paul supporting friends of yours.
The main point is this: if your biggest issue is ending social security, ending medicare and medicaid, then you might prefer a republican or a democrat to a socialist. Ron Paul certainly wouldn't feel that way because he has stated time and time again that cutting the military budget is far more important to him than ending the social programs. Moving away from the police state is more important to him then ending welfare. Socialists would agree with him 100% on that front.
If our congress was made up of libertarians and socialists, they would be debating social programs and regulations. Foreign Policy, Civil liberties, the Collusion of Industry and government would all be agreed upon. Trade is the one that's up in the air because some would want to return to tariffs (as our founders had), and other want to go free trade but there is not consistency from each side on that issue. Although, none are in favor of Nafta, Cafta, TPP, or any other "so called" free trade agreement.
I'm also curious where you would get a chart depicting Barack Obama as right of center! LOL
I wouldn't call what we have in the US socialism, although I feel the left is wanting to push this country in that direction with Obamacare, over taxing the successful and replacing our safety nets and creating a dependency mentality. The fact we have social programs, does not make our government or being a Libertarian any where near what the democrat socialist party's vision is.