Nostradoofus

I’m a lifelong, 5th-generation, pro-business Republican. But I’m the first to admit the party has lost its mind.

To see how far the GOP has strayed from its principles, imagine you live in 1965, under the Johnson administration, and are suddenly catapulted forward 40 years.

You arrive in 2005 to find that one party dominates politics. It engages in massive deficit spending. It attempts a guns-and-butter strategy of running a major overseas war while expanding social programs at home. It creates regulatory barriers to protect domestic industries from foreign competition. It expands regulation of financial markets, reducing the efficiency of the engines of American capitalism. It expands federal control over traditional states-rights issues. And its leadership values social engineering over economic advancement.

Now someone asks you: based on that information, which party is in power? You, freshly arrived from 1965, would naturally say Democrats. And you would be wrong.

Republicans are now demonstrably a bunch of regulation-happy, big-government spendthrifts. Where are the laissez-faire, get-out-of-my-face Republicans I thought I was voting for?

Who are these guys?

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