Smitty, you’re not being cynical, you’re just realizing a disappointing truth. Career politicians of any stripe have more in common with career politicians than they do with anyone else, the occasional Ron Paul notwithstanding.

What you are discovering is that it is not democracy, without more, that protects individual liberty. It is limited government. Separation of powers was a great idea, and it worked for exactly as long as it took the three branches to figure out how to collude with each other. Congress acquiesces in executive power-grabs because they get the wonderful trade-off of the lack of accountability. The Supreme Court arrogates to itself the ability to “judicially review” legislation for constitutionality, and the other two branches stand aside because now they’ve just been relieved from their oaths to preserve and defend the Constitution; hey, we’ll pass any law we want and the Court will tell us if we’ve gone too far. Then the Constitution becomes whatever five people say it is.

Constitutional jurisprudence doesn’t even mention the text of the Constitution anymore, except in passing. You’re just a rube, a hick from the hills, if you think the Supreme Court is going to interpret and apply the text in any given case. No, they are going to interpret and apply what they have said about the text. They are going to refine their balancing tests. They are going to create case-by-case exclusions from the exceptions they created to the general rule that this class of litigant deserves only rational review while other classes of litigants deserve strict scrutiny. The more they do this, the more they enshrine the rule of men and not of law.

And so it goes, as that perennial favorite of adolescents discovering “modern literature” (Kurt Vonnegut) used to say.

How do the people take their sovereignty when they have dribbled it away for generations, and large numbers of them (perhaps a majority) are content to commit cultural suicide? Look to history. It usually involves a group of people who get enough and say, “no more,” and it usually doesn’t end prettily. This is one reason why people let things get so bad before they act. The alternative seems worse until things get really bad.

You may call this cynicism. I call it a study of history.

If 2016 turns into Clinton/Bush Redux, I will seriously consider voting Libertarian.

I have to agree, my projection is that there will be no functional Republican party within six years. The progressives and other assorted statist will be early departures, followed shortly by the libertines (aka ‘fiscal conservatives.’) The traditionalists and assorted social conservatives will be left as a rump party, one that will have substantial effects regionally, but be entirely ineffective on the national stage (i.e POTUS and the Senate.)

Be like congress, go on Amazon and just spend, spend, spend! Just make sure you support an Amazon affiliate blogger!

“If the GOP doesn’t re-invent itself,” then it’s time for another party to takes its place.

“renegades losing committee assignments for breaking party discipline”

Darn right. I care not fig #1 for the GOP as such. Means to a Constitutional end.

I submit the evidence is clear. The GOP is not in fact a means to that end.

In Illinois the Republicans and the Democrats are in bed together, these days the Republicans take the subservient role, but they’re all corrupt. The Tribune’s John Kass has dubbed the entire corrupt mess the Combine, it’s also worth noting that the Mafia (known here as the Outfit) has long had a place at that table, in fact for years it was understood the Chicago’s 1st Ward Aldermanic seat would be held by the Mafia. Today we can add street gangs to the criminal corrupting influences, as recently documented by Chicago Magazine. Those two corrupting groups are the muscle and threat makers that protect the Democrats and the Combine, when Kass was investigating ties between the Mob and the Daley administration a mobster stopped by his table at Gene and Georgetti’s to inform Kass that the mobster knew where Kass’s children caught the bus for school. Also notable is that the local gangs and the Mafia earn a bulk of their income from the sale of cocaine, cocaine that is brought to the city via the Sinaloa Cartel, which your readers may recall from Fast and Furious. Also notable is that many areas with the most gang activity have been, ahem, “organized” by community organizers.

I had been willing to give the current GOP crop the benefit of the doubt.

In particular, as the financial situation and internet have both altered the debate.

You are assuming we don’t decide to emulate the 1776 Patriots and see what a determined well-armed minority can do. I wouldn’t assume that….

-I call what you wrote a conservative view of the world. Bravo, damn well put.

-A Minor Quibble: Instead of the term ‘Rule Of Men’, I prefer the term ‘Rule Of Whim’, which I think resonates with a larger pool of people and requires less explanation that the former term.

Give me Liberty or give me the death of the GOP!

BTW, I’m sitting here at The Fiscal Cliff Bar, enjoying my third Maker’s Mark – got quite a glow going – which explains my comments above. As Abobe says, ‘Let it burn’, as long as the bourbon doesn’t when swallowed.

The same scenario is playing out all over the country – to a lesser in the vast majority of cases, to be sure – but it still speaks to the degeneration of America into a Banana Republic.

[Scene: In The Whitey House]

OBAMA: John, we’re bigger than US Steel.

BOEHNER: Yes, yes we are, sir [sniffles].

FYI: In my post, No! No More! Enough!, I quote Joan, Smitty, McGehee, and Adobe.

The renegades are people like John Boner, and Can’tor. The establishment is utterly useless.

I find myself in agreement with AW. I, a Conservative aka a Socon am leaving the GOP. The statists are staying, and their libertine lapdogs are most likely to stay as well.

End result…rerun of the Whig finale which was driven by the Democrat’s desire to treat humans as chairs, and we have the same repeat now, but instead of blacks, its babies.

Saith Yoda: “It WILL be.”