Conservatism No Longer the Driving Principle of the GOP?

I read an insightful article at North Star Writers Group today by David Karki that sums up the current Republican primary situation about as well as anything I could imagine (no wonder I found it insightful--I could have written it).

Here's the part that says it best for me:

And let's be honest here: There is a certain point where this line of thinking is completely counter-productive. If we are going to become a European-style socialist country, and suffer the disastrous consequences of such an ill-advised leftward move, better to do this under a Democrat president so they can receive the full measure of responsibility and/or blame. The worst of all worlds would be to have a liberal Republican signing all the left-wing crap Sen. Reid and Speaker Pelosi would shovel out of Congress, so that the Democrats could still blame the GOP for the inevitable awful results.

Just as it took Jimmy Carter's stagflation and foreign-policy fecklessness to get America to turn to Ronald Reagan, so too might it take something worse than that to get what now appears to be a more liberal country to turn away from socialism's inexplicable allure.

By the same token, it might take a term or two in the political wilderness for the Republican Party to decide if it wants to survive or go the way of the Whigs and into oblivion.

We have seen in this primary that conservatism is no longer the driving principle of the GOP. The candidates that remain all embody P.J. O'Rourke's classic line about the motto of the party: We're just like the Democrats, only not quite as much!

Fred Thompson might be a little better than the indictment of this last paragraph, but his mixed record is why I supported Duncan Hunter head-and-shoulders above him.

Who knows. Maybe the Republican Party can pull it's head out of the sand before the primary season is over...but I doubt it. Maybe they'll pull it out after a "term or two in the political wilderness" as Karki says. Somehow, I doubt it even then.

It takes an intellectual, observant, engaged and savvy electorate to select the best candidate or candidates of a party (in this case, for Republicans to select a conservative). And Karki said, "We have seen in this primary that conservatism is no longer the driving principle of the GOP."

I see three possibilities to explain this. First, that the average Republican voter has given in to class envy, sold out and joined the liberals and mushy-middle who consider what a politician can put in their pocket more important than the long-term health of our nation.

Second, the majority of Republicans are so rattled by the thought of a Hillary Clinton presidency that they'll willingly sell out conservative principles in exchange for what they believe to be a more-electable "lesser of two evils."

Or third, that the average Republican voter no longer holds the philosophical integrity, the discernment, or the engagement necessary to tell a genuine conservative from a faker.

Either way, conservatism--and the Republican Party as it's vehicle--are in trouble. If the Republican "vehicle" has all flat tires, that means conservatives are going to have a hard time getting to the battlefield. And if conservatives aren't there in force to stop liberalism, then this great nation of the United States is going to dive-bomb it's own destruction.