Goodbye GOP, Hello NEW Party

Those who claim that the problem with American politics is the two party system have got it wrong. There is only one party. The Democrats are the ONLY game in town. The Republicans are a joke. This is a problem in country that is very nearly 50/50 when it comes to national elections. Bush v Gore was as close as it could get. Bush v Kerry was extremely close too. Obama v McCain was a bit more lopsided but the 10's of millions who voted for McCain clearly were not swayed by Obama's rhetoric. Those who moved from the center/right to Obama are wondering out loud if they did the right thing.

We are a divided country, yet there is only one party. We need a new party for those of us who simply do not believe in socialism and the benevolence of the government. The GOP is damaged goods and has been for years, it's not a serious party.

The Republican party always claimed be a party of fiscal restraint, smaller government and less intrusion of your life by government. When they had a chance to govern they were hardly fiscally conservative or even competent. It makes me worry when people say they believe the Democrats are the ones who can steer the economy into prosperity. It makes me sick when this current bunch of Republicans claim they can.

John Batchelor blogs on the Dailybeast.com that the GOP is dead and has been since 1933. Ike, Nixon, Reagan and the Bushs' according to Batchelor never gave a damn about the party.

Ike was indifferent to partisanship: His beating of the splenetic Robert Taft in 1952 for the nomination was the success of a conqueror over a sharpie. Nixon was a troubled, spiteful Quaker who despised the Republican Party as the “Eastern Establishment,” and who governed as a liberal Democrat with the apostasy of wage and price controls, the EPA, and embassies to the mass-murdering Mao and the hollow Brezhnev. Reagan was a right-wing Democrat from homespun Illinois who, after years of failing in Hollywood and then charming California, swamped Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale with the passionate votes of the Democratic Party. I have long suspected that the Kennedys voted for Reagan twice.

I don't agree with Batchelor on all points but I do think it's time for something new. The Republican Party came to life quickly out of the ashes of the Whig Party and the Free Democrats with Horace Greeley penning the name in an 1854 editorial. The central unifying theme behind the formation of a new party was an opposition to slavery. There's no reason anti-socialism and economic liberty can't be a unifying force for a new party.

The Democrats will have nearly destroyed the US economy with their multi-trillion dollar social programs by the time the next few election cycles roll around, however the GOP will still be like a bitter poison to the electorate. The people should be ripe for something new. A new party should focus on constitutionally sound principals and not flowery social justice rhetoric on one hand or moralistic dogma on the other. Focusing on something foundational will surely draw conservatives, but it will also draw the people from the middle who went with Obama because he was not Bush more than because they believed in european-style democratic socialism.

There are other parties out there now, but none have struck a chord - it may take the complete dissolution of the GOP to bring about something new and substantial. The fact that Obama is reaching so high so fast my just be the catalyst that draws the disaffected together under a banner of fiscal restraint and economic liberty.

Now I will create my Horace Greeley moment... I shall call the new party the NEW party. If you need an acornym then here you go Nearly Everything Works.



CW