Seriously- what does the current Republican party stand for? Permanent war, fear, the nanny state, big spending, torture, execution on demand, complete paranoia regarding the media, control over your body, denial of evolution and outright rejection of science, AND ZOMG THEY ARE GONNA MAKE US WEAR BURKHAS, all the while demanding that in order to be a good American I have to spend most of every damned day condemning half my fellow Americans as terrorist appeasers.
[...]

Screw them. I got out. They can have their party. I will vote for Democrats and little L libertarians and isolationists until the crazy people aren-t running the GOP. The threat of higher taxes in the short term isn-t enough to keep me from voting out crazy people and voting for sane people with whom I merely disagree regarding policy. Hillarycare doesn-t scare me as much as Frank Gaffney having a line to the person with the nuclear football or Dobson and company crafting domestic policy.

The real problem with the GOP is that is has ceased to be a political party. You can view it as a massive criminal conspiracy, an uncomfortably large religious cult, some combination of the two, or any number of other unpleasant things-but not a political party. However one may want to define political, alienating or demonizing 70 percent of your fellow citizens does not fit. Deliberately bankrupting your own country does not fit. Cavalierly dismissing the death and suffering of tens of thousands of your own people does not fit.

Once upon a time, the difference between “liberal” and “conservative” had less to do with means than with ends. Right and left may have argued over the best way to improve our schools, but no one would have seriously suggested doing away with them. They may have debated the best way to fix the highways, but no one would have suggested that they could be ignored. They might have quibbled over how best to rebuild a devastated major city, but no one would have dared leave it to fester in the sun. And however differently they might have interpreted the Constitution, no one would have derided it as a scrap of goddam paper.