Is the Republican Party Toast?

As post election day drama and trauma pile up, the future of the Republican Party tops the agenda. Some are even speculating whether or not the GOP even has a future.

 Republicans Are Becoming Irrelevant, and That is Frightening For the Future of America

As for the future of the Republican Party, I’ve had every liberal friend I know texting and e-mailing me over the last 24 hours offering me advice on the soul-searching the GOP needs to do — from dumping the ultra religious moral crusaders of the evangelical right to losing the economic and small government arguments of the Tea Party, which I find puzzling. If we did all that, essentially what would make us any different from the Democratic Party? More government vs. more government? More spending vs. more spending? More taxes vs. more taxes? Every election would basically just be a choice between two left-wing ideologies. Coke and Pepsi (then the Libertarian Party would really have an argument about presenting a different option).

Look, I’ve said this time and time again till I’m blue in the face: When I say I support smaller government across the board, I mean it. I don’t believe government has any more right or authority to tell women who can and can’t have children or tell couples who can and can’t get married than it should be running every aspect of our system from health care and finance to energy and education. The Chicago Young Republicans are as diverse as the city we live in. As a group of over 1,000 members, we have more females than males. We have African-Americans, Latino-Americans and LGBTs because the values that unite us all are free market principles, private sector solutions and a constitutionally-limited government. We can’t control what some Senate candidate in Missouri or Indiana says, which is a burden those states’ primary voters must bear; nor can I tell every Republican in America what to think, say, and do.

But our losses were more than just Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock. There’s no doubt America has socially shifted to a center-left nation. We also lost in purple states like Florida, Virginia, and Ohio because I believe America has economically shifted to a center-left nation as well.

I do believe that America is center left on the social issues and that the social conservatives have literally driven folks away from the Republican Party. However, I do not agree that America is overall a center left nation. Moreover, the Republican Party absolutely lost voters by emulating the Democrats and being big spenders who pile up the debt. The national debt increased by $5 trillion during the Bush years.

As a Libertarian leaning fiscal conservative who hates the spending and debt, I quit voting Republican in 2006 simply because Republican socialism wasn't any less painful or destructive than Democratic socialism. As election results prove, I'm not alone.

One of the most annoying things that Republicans do is accuse the Democrats of being socialists while believing the delusion that Republicans are in fact fiscal conservatives. It's always a LOL moment. The truth?

The Tea Party Republicans Spent More Than the Dems They Replaced.

Can you hear the screeching roars of the Tea Party Republicans accusing the Dems of being socialists, commies, fascists, Marxists, big spenders and a whole lot worse?

Well, as it turns out, the Republicans and the Tea Party crop of Republican Congress Critters that sailed into the District of Crime in January, 2011 to clean up the Democrat fiscal mess turned out to be bigger deficit spending hawks than the Democrats they replaced....

The approximately $1.59 trillion in new debt accumulated since the Republican-controlled House gained a veto over federal spending legislation is more than the total increase in the federal debt between 1789, when the first Congress convened, and October 1984, when the 98th Congress was nearing the end of its second session.

How about Obama being the food stamp president?

Bush is the REAL Food Stamp President

Republicans just can't stop calling Obama 'The Food Stamp President'. However, the truth is quite different and Bush and the Republicans are responsible for massively expanding the food stamp program....

President Bush dramatically expanded eligibility, restoring benefits to nearly a million individuals at the beginning of 2003, and paving the way for the program to expand as it did during the rest of presidency. As a result, Bush managed to oversee unprecedented growth in the program even as the economy grew. Obama then followed up on this with an eligibility expansion of his own in the 2009 stimulus package. It’s not unreasonable to criticize Obama for the expansion of the food stamps program under his watch. But Obama's Republican critics shouldn’t forget that it was a GOP president who helped make that expansion possible.

Not only is Republican hypocrisy outrageous beyond belief, Republican socialism isn't any different than the Democrat version. Yet, when I confront Republicans on entitlements and fiscal issues, they inform me that they aren't socialists, just compassionate conservatives. Huh?

So as fiscal conservatives, Libertarians, constitutionalists and advocates for small government flee the big government socialist GOP, the Republican Party that has no grip on the reality on the ground is scratching its head in utter bewilderment.

At the root of the GOP's problems lies the stiffling Republican base that refuses to hold Republicans accountable, so long as Republicans continue to scream "rape is legitimate, kill the Muslims, bomb Iran, outlaw homosexuality, ban gay marriage, ban abortion under all circumstances and for any reason, and crush constitutional civil liberties with the Patriot Act and NDAA".

That's the pathetic state of the Republican Party.  The only question remaining is whether or not there are enough sane small government conservatives left in America to take back the Republican Party from the socialists, statists and theocrats.

As for the wars and foreign policy, that's another issue for another day.