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How did this travesty happen?

Years and years of voting for the lesser of two evils. I'll paraphrase Ayn Rand. The lesser of two evils is still evil. If you are offered a plate of food with a lot of poison and one with only a little poison, which should you choose? The obvious answer is neither since they both contain poison. Go out and find your own, non-poisoned food.

I don't know when you were growing up but the Republican Party has had an ongoing internal battle between the liberal, big-government wing and the conservative, less- government wing since the days of Teddy Roosevelt. Control has flowed between these wings for decades with the conservative wing holding on to power through much of the eighties and nineties. Now, as the liberal wing seems bent on taking over, many conservatives want to juimp ship instead of staying and fighting.

I guess we should ask the question: "WWRD? What Would Reagan Do?" I don't think he ever thought about leaving the Republican Party when it was controlled by the Gerald Fords and the Nelson Rockafellers. He stayed and battled for his ideas and, eventually, won. We should do the same.

RINOs who switched parties after Reagan left office.

They can be found in office in many places, often as governor.

As RINOs infiltrate the party, the Socialist influence on the Democrats also becomes more pronounced. So the political “middle” slouches Left more and more.

Republicans are continually branded “extremists” as a result for holding true to party principle.

How did this travesty happen?

I have a theory. It involves two major factors.

When 9/11 happened, you had a lot of semi conservative democrats (Joe Lieberman types that are for strong defense but socially liberal) that knew that the current dim party was totally unfit to fight a war. So they bailed and went for the GOP; this explains Bush's bigger reelection margin in 2004 and I think they also constitute the base of support for the RINOs infesting the party these days. Simultaneously, the social conservative wing of the GOP became more active. While I'm glad all my Christian brothers and sisters are getting involved, the truth is that they've been so uninvolved up to this point that they don't understand the American system of government. They don't understand that government is not empowered to do many of the things it's doing, and they just don't seem to care. I think there's basically a deal between the old dems that joined because of 9/11 and social conservatives ignorant of the American system. That is that the social cons will let the liberal RINO republicans have what they want on domestic spending as long as they let the social conservatives win on their social issues and a few domestic programs of their own.

The result of that is George W. Bush: a fine man, who has done well on some things, but likes big government more than Bill Clinton.

God help us all.