There is a legitimate philosophy of government, which is followed by many people in this country. It used to be called "conservatism," and so I will call it here. It's the philosophy that started with Thomas Jefferson's observation, "The government which governs best, governs least." It's the thing that takes George Washington's warning about avoiding foreign entanglements to heart. I don't always agree with the results it comes up with, but I believe that it is a valuable thing, and it always makes me happier to know that there are people who wonder whether this or that should really be done by the government, or if it would be better to let individuals take care of it themselves.
The Republican party used to be the party of conservatism. As such, I approved of it, and occasionally voted for it.
However, during the past few years, the Republican party has been taken over by two different forces.
One is fundamentalist Christianity. Now, it might be controversial to say that fundamentalism has no place in our country's government, but it's what I believe. Too many of the fundamentalists' beliefs are diametrically opposed to things that are needed for a functioning republic. A republic needs citizens who are connected to reality, not people who are willing to discount it whenever it disagrees with a particular holy book. A republic needs people who go find facts for themselves and make their own decisions based on them, not followers who do what a clergyman tells them to do.
The other force is kleptocracy. Conservatism always attracted many businessmen, for good reason; government regulation frequently does get in the way of business, and sometimes it does so without much justification. However, the people who run the Republican party now are a qualitatively different breed; instead of just wanting to be free to pursue their own interests, they conspire to funnel tax money directly into their own pockets.
I'm sure that there are a great many honest people in the United States that believe in conservatism; I know more than a few myself. However, the Republican party is no longer a representative of their interests. The party has become a machine dedicated, quite simply, to ignorance and corruption. To stealing as much money as it can, and keeping as many people in the dark as it can. The evidence for this is overwhelming, and by now, pretty much everybody knows about it.
Nor is it really possible to clean up the party's image. Nearly every Republican leader is either under investigation, has already been indicted, or is on the way to jail for felony crimes. How could any of these people root out corruption? How could their successors?
If a decent, well-meaning conservative wants to run for office today, he can't run effectively as a Republican. Everyone knows that Republicans are hopelessly corrupt, and only go into politics to pass out political favors to their friends.
If conservatives want to have a voice in today's America, they must leave the trash heap that is the Republican party. Conservatives need to create a new party, one that actually follows the conservative philosophy laid out by the Founding Fathers. Once that party is established, the shell of the current one can be left behind. In fifty years, the Republicans will exist only in history books, with the Whigs and the Bull Moose; but conservatism can survive, if it reforms around a new standard.