I AGREE - HOW 'BOUT REPUBLICANS BEING REPUBLICANS?

Ed Morrisey had a conversation with Rush and posted at Hot Air:

...we both see is the lack of a credible opposition to the massive spending and intrusive governance we’re seeing from the Obama administration. The Republicans dissipated their credibility on fiscal discipline and responsibility from 2001-6, and we both see little improvement so far among GOP leaders, at least until recently. We need an effective and credible smaller-government, free-market party...

That is one big reason Republicans lost so much the last few years. Given a choice between Democrats and Democrat-lite, people are gonna pick Democrat. Who wants poll-driven people that will sell out their values? Who's gonna vote for people that allow that kind of behavior to become rampant?

Be Republicans again, stop takin' bullshit and we will be back. Especially as people wake up to the Totalitarian nightmare in the making.

There are increasing calls that the head of the RNC doesn't get this and needs to go. If he truly doesn't, that sure makes sense to me.

Joseph C. Philips makes a lot of sense too:

More than a few have proffered that the problem with the Republican Party is that it has moved too far from the political center and given too much sway to the fringe right. They hold that in order to survive and become vibrant again the Grand Old Party must jettison (or at least silence) the far right and must begin appealing to the moderate wing of the party. In other words the party must become even more like Democrats. I suspect this brilliant advice was dreamed up by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid while doing shots of Tequila in some smart bar in Georgetown. They never dreamed Republicans would be so daft as to actually consider it.

He quotes one of the spokesmen for this view, Colin Powell:

“Americans do want to pay taxes for services,” he continued, “Americans are looking for more government in their life, not less.”

...what people want is not the pertinent question. The issue is–do the people have a right to those things they want and, assuming that they do, is government the best vehicle for meeting those wants. This has and I suspect will always be the primary bold letter demarcation between conservative thinking and that of new liberals. Conservative principles hold that the purpose of government is to protect liberty; that the purpose of law is justice and that the free market is more effective in the allocation of scarce resources. New Liberals on the other hand accept as true that rights flow from the state; that the purpose of government is the distribution of equality and that a bureaucracy made up of really really smart people is better than the free market at dispensing goods and services(to say nothing of virtue).

...It was not the opposition to abortion or homosexual marriage that pushed republicans from power. Rather it was the Republican failure to articulate a sensible fiscal policy beyond the oxymoron of big government conservatism.

The party was shown the door because they promised smaller government and delivered both larger government and larger deficits; they promised free markets and instead protected corporate interests, they promised reform and delivered lip service. In other words the culprit was the rejection of conservative principles in favor of new liberalism.

The Republican Party will not be revived by compromising core principles. If limited government, free markets, personal freedom, American exceptionalism and traditional values are principles republicans can no longer stand up and fight for there can be no resurgence of the party - no resuscitation. The epitaph has already been written.

Exactly.