If we respect ourselves, we should not let ourselves use this Republican talking point.
The Republican Party was formed in 1854. The term "Grand Old Party" came into existence in about 1876 or shortly before then, when the party was less than 25 years old. It was a talking point then and thereafter to mask the party's youth and relative inexperience and regional unpopularity in much of the readmitted Reconstruction South. The Libertarian Party is equally entitled by age to use the "Grand Old Party" than the Republican Party was, arguably more so now.
Today most Democrats would be sympathetic to the (then) relatively anti-segregationist, relatively egalitarian, anti-Confederate and -lynch law and -Jim Crow stance of many (NOT ALL) Republicans. The Republicans did the lead the fight for Civil Rights in Congress in the early 1964, before the rough historic "swap" between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. Confederate revanchists and supporters of segregation left the of Bull Connor and joined the Party of Richard Nixon, while northern liberals began to leave the party of Eisenhower and join the party of Kennedy and Johnson in increasing numbers. But it is important to realize: "Grand Old Party" is the oldest talking point in American politics.
Maybe the Republican Party once had men and women of character who stood against theocratic madness, fiscal chaos and world-wide military domination. What we would give to be led by Grant, or Eisenhower today? Even Theodore Roosevelt - an unreconstructed imperialist and racist - was less damaging to the Republican than the law-contempting theocrat in the White House now.
What should be crystal clear to every Kossack, however, is that the party that wrote torture into U.S. law, supports the slow but real erection of an evangelical Christian theocracy and spends like a drunken president groping pederast Florida Congressman sailor lobbyist is neither grand nor old.
This new mode of Republicanism is not old. It is not grand to care more about power than peace, safety from sexual predators or fairness to all American regardless of ethnic heritage or religion. The modern GOP Team Red is a modern, post-Internet age theocratic heresy from a legacy of modest government, for which the Republican Party did, at times, stand once.
Ronald Reagan would not know this party. Reagan's libertarian streak would not have permitted contempt of Congress and the "Patriot Act" [sic] nor the Dobson-Brownback-Santorum-Coburn-esque theocon emergence of today. Goldwater would not know this party. Even Nixon was upriver of this cess pool.
They are not "grand" and "old"; they are new and theocratic, imperialist, antinomian and authoritarian in theory and practice. They are not evil to a man and woman, but they have become evil in practice. They cover for a child sex predator, for years, because that is what the party of "family values theocracy and corruption required to maintain power. And so addicted they are to power that their leaders see not how clusterfucked they are. But their voters see. Republican women see. Bay Buchanan sees. The Washington Times sees. And they will see when they have to cope with Speaker Pelosi and the mother of all vengeful paybacks.
But don't call them grand. Don't call them old. Call them tired, brick-stupid, corrupt, inane, immoral, depraved. Call them "the Devil" or "Wingers" or "Team Red" if you must. But don't cover for their evil by giving air to their talking points. Don't call them the Grand Old Party or the GOP.