Yeah, instead of all the constant whining, just leave the GOP and start a new party. Great idea.

“…a cynic might say that Tea Partiers were merely a tool to regain power for the GOP.”

Yes, this is true at least partly, in that the GOP elite have tried to co-opt the enthusiasm and some of the policy of the Tea Partiers. On the other hand I have to point out that the GOP elite have actively worked with Dems and the media to de-legitemize many of the Tea Party candidates who either beat GOP establishment candidates or for whatever reason were not perceived as playing ball.

Lets face it, when the GOP elite decide to portray GOP candidates as crazy and stupid it hurts those candidates, the candidates lose credibility. At the same time the Dems never throw candidates overboard, no matter how crazy, stupid or dishonest they are. Almost as if they realize that Congress and the government as a whole are composed primarily of crazy stupids.

I don’t see why the GOP needs to actively work against flawed candidates. A Christine O’Donnell or even that Akin guy can be rehabilitated and I don’t see how they are worse than that obvious mediocrity and fraud Liz Warren.

I think you miss the point Adjoran. Whether you start a new party or reform the existing, we are still in the same place. A GOP and Democrat party “All In” with each other.

When Buchanan bolted the party he told it like it is. The Dims and Stupid Party are just two wings on the same bird of prey.

Maybe the broader point is that talking about the nation ‘as a whole’ just doesn’t tell you much about this many people across this much territory.

There is no overwhelming national interest in the GOP surviving as the “official” second party of America, anymore than there was for the Whigs to endure when the GOP replaced them. The Whigs did not answer to their base and passed from the national scene; the GOP is doing the same now.

There is a basic disconnect between the GOP voter and the GOP leadership. The GOP voter wants to act to preserve the country; the GOP leadership wants to act to preserve its dwindling number of incumbencies and the attendant perks.

This is a scenario that has already played out to its sordid end in CA and the national GOP seems committed to repeating it.

Oh, and Smitty, if the Congress expands the Republic is doomed, for those new seats will overwhelmingly be in the Gimmistans of the East and West Coast.

You blame the Federal Reserve Act for deficit spending, and speak to me of “superficialities?”

Well, it should be presumed that a larger House would be roughly proportioned as the present one, just with each Rep standing for fewer voters. But it’s a stupid idea that adding hundreds more politicians with $150,000 salaries, full perks, staffs and office expenses, would help in any way. There is just no reason to make that assumption.

Well, you have to admit that Bernanke has done as good as Congress at job at producing a budget the last three years. But no: my argument is that the Federal Reserve has been an enabler of deficit spending, through Quantitative Easing.

It’s kinda like saying the US is a Christian Nation. The two problems with that is the US has never been a nation. And, secondly, it ceased to be a Christian nation in the 1840s as the ruling consensus evaporated. Then we got Lincoln, and all his pomp and works, who proceeded to destroy the Republic and found a new one on the ruins of the first. That gave us Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson, FDR, LBJ, Carter, Clinton and, now, Zer0. The last was the product of a post modern population that has turned its back on the founders and what worked.

Now we have one party masquerading as two, and both stealing us, and our great grandchildren, blind.

More importantly, the unit of analysis in Christianity is NOT, never was, and is unlikely to become, ‘the nation’.

At this point, I’d sooner (per P. J. O’Rourke and Hunter S. Thompson) see the California legislature screwed by a herd of horny, acid-crazed bull elk than allowed to pick senators. Not that on the evidence of Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer for the last twenty years the voters themselves are any great shakes. I’m just saying never underestimate the ability of politicians to make things worse.

So you get a bunch of new blood, who instantly become incumbents with the same vested interest in reelection. So what?

I fail to see how “the last century” argues for more idiots in DC, and I don’t understand what you even mean by “people cashing out” – if you are making an argument, you need to connect the dots better.

The problem with whining about the GOP – which has run a more conservative candidate than the Democrats in every single election since 1952 – is that some conservatives have a need to blame someone else for their failures. The fact is we have presented exactly ONE great conservative candidate in 60 years.

As I posted earlier in response to a related lament from rdbrewer @ Ace (I’ll fix formatting later, sorry for cut & paste):

670 Every single nominee was elected by the Republican voters in the primaries. If you want more conservative nominees, you must do one or more of the following:

1. Attract more conservative voters
2. Recruit better conservative candidates (Santorum, Gingrich, really?)
3. Sell the rest of the party’s electorate on the conservative candidates

Whine all you wish like some crazed fringe nutter about the “Establishment forcing X down our throats,” but “they” have done NO SUCH THING. Our primary process is the most democratic in the world – even more democratic than the Democratic Party because the GOP reserves far fewer
“Super Delegate” seats for party bosses and activists, elected officials, and special interest groups.

Every candidate starts out even. The problem is that since Reagan (and for the most part before him) the so-called “conservative” candidates have SUCKED A**.

If your complaint is instead who gets support from big donors, tough. It’s their money, who the hell do you think you are to tell them who to donate to? But Romney in particular built his own donor base until he had the nomination wrapped up, he wasn’t a consensus pick of our big money men like, say, Dubya in 1999/2000. Neither did the others you mention, Bush the Elder, Dole, and McCain, attract the unanimity of the money men early UNTIL they had effectively wrapped up the nomination.

So, don’t go blaming the Party because “conservative” candidates like Pat Buchanan, Phil Crane, Pete DuPont, Paul Laxalt, David Duke, Steve Forbes, Alan Keyes, Phil Gramm, Bob Dornan, Gary Bauer, Bob Smith, John
Kasich, Herman Cain, Mike Huckabee, Fred Thompson, Duncan Hunter, Tom Tancredo, Sam Brownback, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Michelle Bachmann, and Thad McCotter just had no broad appeal in their own party.

Fair enough, but turnovers in State houses _could_ lead to a higher turnover rate in the Senate, which would help.

Constantine The Great might differ with you [written with love ].

But also, no reform like this of the House will work if you do not, at the same time, void the 17th Amendment.