I've heard this one before. I still don't get it. Isn't a party by definition a bunch of people with common ideas and principles? How are all those people with ideas and principals so different from the ones the party supposedly has still part of the party? And what is the point of a party without a common set of principles?
No, that's not the definition or purpose of a political party.
A political party is an organization for influencing government, a tool for obtaining political power. One need not be monolithic, and in fact, the nature of our system is such that they can't be particularly monolithic. They must be as broad as possible, which leads all of the disparate political interests to coalesce into either of two parties.
The Democrat party certainly isn't homogeneous and uniform. Do the unions have the same interests and ideologies as the feminists or the environmentalists? Of course not. Yet they still work together as part of the same party, because that's the way for them to achieve political power.
The Republican party is (or ought to be) the same way, disparate interests working together to achieve their various goals. Problem is, none of our factions seem all that willing to work together. We'd rather snipe at each other.
I don't really care about the past or future of the party. I'd like to know what this means to the future of the country.
Fair enough. I don't care if you know anything about the Republican Party and/or what it means for the country, so long as you're not spouting off about it.
Now, if you're going to hold strong vocal opinions on matter, then I'd reasonably expect you to know a thing or two about it.
If you're going to weigh in sensibly, one of the biggest things you'll need to understand about the Rep party is that it isn't now, never really has been, and probably can't eve become, truly uniform and monolithic. See above.
The name of the game is to have the Republican party in control of government and to simultaneously have the conservative types in control the Republican party. This is the route to small-government, liberty-minded political power. This is the mechanism that allows us to fix things in our country. As such, any effort that undermines either half of the equation is ultimately counterproductive, and you'll probably find me opposed to it.
So, basically, if one does not have this same faith in the party, one should STFU. Nice. Real nice.
Go back and re-read what I said. You seem to have missed the point here.