THE BIGGEST PROBLEM FOR THE GOP

Last week, I touched on some things that Republicans need to do in order to win elections in the future. However, I didn't even go into what I see as the biggest single problem that GOP candidates must overcome. To put it in its simplest terms, future Republican candidates have got to stop competing with Democrats for control of institutions that liberals have established.

Nothing makes my conservative blood boil nowadays more than Republicans who have seemingly capitulated to liberal/socialist ideals and are attempting to convince voters that Republicans can manage the vast federal leviathan more efficiently than the very ones whose policies created most of it in the first place. How ludicrous can you get? As I said last week, nobody can outspend a tax and spend liberal Democrat and nobody can out-socialize a socialist; to even attempt to do so is futile and will only result in making one look like a prize boob.

Which is pretty much what Republicans ended up looking like after the election on Nov. 4th. We have indeed lost our way, as a party with viable alternative ideas, if our leadership insists on competing with liberals for control over liberal programs. And we will continue to lose elections, running the risk of virtual one-party rule in the future.

This trend must be brought to a screeching halt, ASAP. What happened to traditional GOP opposition to liberal schemes and ideas? What happened to the GOP which stood for spending cuts and downsizing the federal government? With giving incentives to business for job creation and the gradual weaning of able-bodied recipients off of welfare programs and back into the workplace again? Is the idea of a "hand-up, but not a hand-out" totally lost nowadays? It's quite clear that the GOP has become so much like the Democrats when it comes to Big Government that there is now little difference to offer voters who are fed up with it. In frustration, many potential voters sit home on election day, allowing the Democrats to win almost by default. This is what happened in 2006, and it happened this year as well, though in smaller numbers. The "silent majority," who grew so loud 25 years ago have become quiet again, and the situation is much more desperate nowadays than it was during the 1980's.

The next two to four years are probably going to determine whether us traditionalist Americans can salvage what's left of the country we've always known and loved, or whether we'll be plunged headlong into the Democrats' idea of a socialist worker's "paradise." Remember this: There's no going back, once it happens. If it does, the America we've always known will disappear forever into history. It's next to impossible to reverse things once they've been completely socialized. This game is played for keeps.

That is what's at stake. Our future freedom to determine our own path in life. We do have a handful of Republican leaders who are fighting socialism tooth and nail. I'm with them, 100%, but we need many, many more. And we absolutely, as a party, must return to the platform and principles that once made us so strong. If we can't do that soon, it's going to be the end of the world, as we know it, I'm afraid.