Republicans need to rebrand the spirit of the GOP

The Republican Party just got routed in the most ignominious fashion, suffering a huge stain on its moral character. I for one applaud the House GOP for its efforts to defund/delay Obamacare — or at least make some meaningful spending growth restrictions as a condition for raising the debt ceiling yet again.

Sen. Harry Reid and President Obama proved more loyal to their party platforms and held their ground. The GOP crumbled. Kentucky Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell negotiated a budget deal that not only raised the debt ceiling and fully funded Obamacare, but included a $2.9 billion pork earmark to build a Kentucky dam.

So just to recap, we increased the debt ceiling, which was designed to contain our runaway deficit spending, and we fully funded the federal takeover of 1/6th of our nation’s economy. And lastly, the GOP leader of the Senate just used a national budget crisis to put his hand in the public cookie jar to buy votes in his home state.

So to protect the full faith and credit of the United States, we accelerated our national bankruptcy by borrowing even more. Only politicians can sell a solution to a problem by nurturing the cause.

Many of my friends and neighbors now display considerable apathy in politics because of the lack of integrity displayed on both sides. Apathy is the pale horse of freedom. History repeats itself as observed by 19th century Yale professor George Fisher: “A people go from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back to bondage.”

Freedom and apathy cannot coexist because the forces of evil in the world never stop trying to strip away our freedoms where the few seek to control the decisions of many. In the GOP, we need grassroots members to get energized and throw out old career politicians who would trade away our nation’s heritage of freedom for 30 pieces of silver.

A body without the spirit is dead. Though the spirit of the GOP may be barely clinging to life among our career politicians, it is alive in well in our grassroots members. It’s time to recharge the paddles and jolt some spirit back into the body. I think where the GOP has gone wrong is we think that keeping party cronies perpetually in office and the spoils system intact is true power. Our freedom principles are our power.

Politicians are transient, mortal and all too easily corruptible. Only the ideals of freedom as embodied in the Constitution and founding documents are immortal and transcendent. We have survived more than two centuries under the world’s oldest constitution despite continual threats against it by being loyal to those principles of freedom above all else.

Political parties should not be treated as staffing agencies for friends and family members needing government jobs. They should not be thought of as institutions in which to funnel public pork money into a particular district. They are formed to guard ideals above all is. At one time the GOP was the paramount guardian of limited government and the Constitution — the very principles for which our ancestors fought, bled and died. The GOP must rebrand itself as the guardian of those ideals if it is not to avoid a death on the gurney and burial by socialists.

Money is not bad. It’s the love of money that is evil. Power is not bad. It’s the love of power and concentration of it in the hands of a few that becomes evil. Grassroots Republicans love God and freedom above all else and believe power should reside not with the state, but with the individual. It’s time for us to unite and defend our liberty in the political arena because if it lost there it is lost everywhere.

Daniel Hamm lives in Palmer and is an international Boeing 747 freight pilot.