For the foreseeable future, the Republican Party is doomed to remain an ugly marriage of disparate interests.
In many ways, it resembles a nasty laboratory experiment combining parts of several species into a weird creature.
In theory, it is the party of fiscal conservatives, but that has not been the case for decades.
They have been a super-spending party. Its distinction in this regard with Democrats has been that Republicans spend only on certain interests, especially on wars, whether wars on drugs or wars on terror or various colonial wars.
Adding to the record of fiscal irresponsibility has been a long stream of tax cuts, many of them poorly considered for the long-term interests of the country and reflecting ignorance of the many roles taxes play in a society.
The tax cuts have been vote getters from certain segments of the population but, perhaps even more, they were money-getters for the party from those massively benefiting.
The party has always been against serious reform in financing elections – the single most anti-democratic element of American government, a system that in some ways effectively acts as a poll tax - because it always said its “story” was more difficult to tell and required more money. It also embraced the specious argument that giving money was a form of free speech.
The party in fact would be a perpetual minority were it not for the Religious Right.
However, as a more honest John McCain told the world in 2000, the Religious Right has a pernicious effect on the party, and I think all thoughtful people recognize this.
The horrible irony that America was founded largely by deists and others wishing not suffer under religious opinions in their government escapes these people entirely. They just keep coming like a mob of zombies in a horror movie, always ready to impose new inappropriate religious practices to American government.
