Why the Republican party is a mess and how to fix it

Anyone in the United States who has paying attention knows what happened on Nov. 4 -- the Republican party took a flat beating.

Yes, the Republicans lost the presidency and lost seats in the House and Senate. Ah, but it didn't stop at the national level. Republicans in state legislatures, county and city elections throughout the country took a whipping.

And the Republican party deserved exactly what it got.

That's a hard thing to admit as I've affiliated myself with that party since I first saw Ronald Reagan speak in St. Louis in 1980 when I was 11-years-old. My admiration of Reagan grew when I saw him speak in Little Rock in 1984.

Sadly, the party that Reagan reinvigorated back then is weak and woefully out of touch with voters. The party has no focus and its candidates seem uncertain of what, exactly, they do believe. How did we get here from there?

The answer is pretty simple -- the Republican Party has turned its back on the core values that made the party so relevant. And that's a shame as those values -- those ideas -- are the very things that won votes.

At this point in time, it's hard to even define what a Republican is anymore. The thrashing the party took, then, can be viewed as an opportunity. It's time for we Republicans to take a good, hard look at ourselves, figure out what went wrong and what needs to be done to fix it.

Here are a few suggestions:

1. The Democrats won and they got their ObamaNation (heh, heh!) Accept it. In other words, don't run around acting like Democrats for the next four years. Sniveling whiners are irritating, and doubly so when they're crying because their side didn't win an election. Remember what happened almost immediately after Bush won in 2000? Yes, quite a few Democrats moped around claiming that "Bush wasn't their president" and they complained for four years.

When John Kerry was running in 2004, we had Democrats threatening to move to Canada and some of them committed suicide after Bush was declared the winner of that election. Instead of moving to Canada, the Democrats who made that threat chose the option we all knew they would -- staying put and griping for another four years.

Folks, this is a democracy. That means your side won't always win. And, guess what? That's just part of being an American and thank God for that. We want two parties competing for votes. Hopefully, we all understand that one-party governments tend to establish such lovely things as terror filled police states and use the military to crush any opposition. So, losing an election isn't that bad when considered in that context.

We don't have to like Obama being in office, but we don't have to go around outraged and looking like we're sucking on a lemon for the next four years, either. We don't need to hate our government, pout and hope for a rotten economy or war casualties because our candidate didn't get in office.

Besides, there are actually some good things that came out of this election. First of all, more whites voted for Obama than for Clinton back in 1992 or 1996. That's what we call progress on racial issues. Second, Obama reaffirms that anyone with drive and talent can become president. Here was a fellow with a troubled background (abandoned by his father early in life, raised by his grandparents since he was 10-years-old) and he overcame all of that to become president. Third, we're rid of Bush. Everyone should be thrilled that egg sucking bastard is just about out of the White House.

By the way, feel free to remind those Democrats who say it is now time to get behind our president and work out our problems together of what rotten sports they were during the Bush presidency. That'll make for a few minutes of fun at the very least.

2. Conservative ideas win votes. It's time to relearn what those are. One of the major problems of the Republican party is that conservatives aren't in charge anymore. What's the difference between a tax-and-spend Democrat and a borrow-and-spend Republican? Not a whole lot. Both expand the size of government and Republicans ought to fight against that. The fact that a Republican president and a Republican senator who wanted to be president pushed for a $700 billion bailout for the mortgage industry is sickening (particularly when you consider the blasted red Chinese are among the huge investors who bought the bonds allowing for that bailout).

Going back to core values such as low taxes, a small federal government, adherence to the 10th Amendment (remember that one? It's the one that reserves those powers to the states that are not expressly granted to the federal government) and an emphasis on individual liberties are the types of issues that inspire people. Republicans should also remind people that the Constitution was conceived as a way to defend citizens from the government and, as such, is to be interpreted strictly. If the feds want more power and its not granted under the Constitution, it's time to go through the amendment process, right?

If we did have a Republican in office who did support the notion the Constitution protected citizens from the government and that individual liberties are precious, would we have to contend with junk like the Patriot Act? If you think that piece of legislation was a good idea, ask yourself this -- you may trust the Bush administration with the ability to collect information on American citizens, but do you trust Obama? Keeping the kind of power afforded the government under the Patriot Act is the very type of thing that small-government conservatives should fight.

Also, party-wide support of a non-interventionist foreign policy is something else people will rally behind. What's a non-interventionist foreign policy? One that encourages friendly relations and free trade with nations and reserves military action for those times when our nation is clearly in peril. Folks, war is expensive and we get our soldiers killed. It's not to be taken lightly and should only been used when there is a clear threat to vital national interests.

Don't think I'm talking just about Iraq here, kids. I'm talking about Bill Clinton's little jaunt in Bosnia, too. When a threat to the U.S. is clearly defined, the nation should gear up to crush it swiftly and without mercy. If that threat is vague, then our military ought to stay home.

3. Identify those issues that are important and address them. Do you think the average voter really gives a damn about abortion? No, they're mostly worried right now about finding jobs or keeping the ones they have. They're worried about their retirement portfolios and our dependence on foreign oil.

Why, then, does the Republican Party spend so much time addressing issues like abortion? Does that mean it's not an important issue? No. But it does mean voters have more pressing issues in mind. Identify those issues, focus on them and come up with some specific, realistic ways to deal with them.

People want to vote for someone rather than against someone, right? A solid candidate can present those ideas that will excite voters and get them behind him. Why did Obama beat Hillary Clinton in the primaries and McCain in the election? His supporters voted for him, while a lot of us Republicans were simply voting against Obama. Obama's supporters were energetic and enthusiastic, but the same can't be said of a lot of us who were voting for McCain.

4. Credibility is important. Both major political parties rely on making promises they don't intend to keep. Bill Clinton, for example, promised a middle-class tax cut back in 1992 as a way of convincing people to vote for him. After getting in office, his toadies were running around claiming he never made that promise at all.

Republicans can't really condemn Clinton because our candidates are out doing the same thing. Let's take a look at Mike Huckabee, for example. Before he ran in the Republican primary, of course, he was governor of Arkansas.

Prior to his last term, he pushed for the elimination on the sales tax on food in Arkansas. That got people excited and the popularity of that notion helped win him another term as governor here.

Shortly after he was elected, he decided to campaign against an initiative to get rid of the sales tax on food (he said we just couldn't afford it -- knowledge he certainly had even while pushing for it). It is pitiful when our candidates engage in such behavior. If a Republican candidate makes a promise, he'd better be ready to make good on it.

5. Get rid of the bums. There's been some talk about Jeb Bush and Mike Huckabee being the future of the Republican Party. No. God no. Hell no!

We've had two Bushes in office so far and they both sucked. We don't need a third. Huckabee, meanwhile, spends money like a Democrat and just isn't trustworthy.

The party needs to be led by conservatives and truthful ones, at that.

6. Don't be afraid of third parties. Should the Republican Party refuse to return to those core values and continue down the path of catering to corporate interests, policing the planet, spending money like drunken sailors on shore leave and virtually ignoring the needs of the middle class, it's not a party worth supporting.