I occasionally read that American political parties are diminishing in importance as more and more voters decline to register as either “Republican” or “Democrat.” Our political bickering would largely cease were it not for the incessant fighting between the major parties, so the argument goes. This fighting has supposedly “turned-off” more and more voters, who now increasingly register as “Independent” in the thirty-one states that record voters’ party affiliation.

Now it is true that the percentage of voters who do not register as a member of a political party has been going up, but not radically so. However, I completely disagree with the proposition that our savage political discourse is responsible for the fractured state of politics in America. To the contrary this is merely an effect; the real cause of this sad state of affairs is a broken political consensus. Our politics today truly is severely fractured, and this fracture is becoming wider and more dangerous.

But the reason isn’t because conservatives, who primarily identify as Republicans, have become more conservative. The fact is that conservatives still espouse the same principles that we have always held dear- Democracy, free enterprise, small government, low taxes, love of country, respect for religion and the inherent human rights which we derive therefrom.

So what about the liberals, or should we now call them the liberal/progressive/socialist Democrats? Have things changed over there? If the answer isn’t immediately obvious, I’ll provide you with some clues: The Democrats can’t agree on which ideology they espouse and one of their major candidates isn’t even a Democrat, but a lifelong Socialist! Ask yourself: Would Harry Truman, Jack Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, or Hubert Humphrey be comfortable as Democrats today? Would they even recognize their old party?

Liberal commentators freely acknowledge that the Democrat Party is spiraling out of control in an ever leftward direction. Its embrace of violent political correctness, irresponsible voter registration laws, and open borders in the face of massive illegal immigration, daily rends our social fabric. The party’s acceptance of the horrors of late-term abortion is for us perhaps the most incomprehensible position of all, but to these issues, we can now add one more, breathtaking in its scope of destruction:

I am speaking of course of the actions by certain federal agencies which ultimately resulted in the recently released Mueller Report. Leave aside the unnecessary chaff in this lengthy report written by a hostile staff of partisan Democrats, and the essential findings are that there was never any evidence of collusion between the Russians and Donald Trump or his staff, nor was there any evidence to charge the President with obstruction of justice. And Mueller’s investigators knew all of this two years ago!

What actually did happen, however, was that the Obama administration authorized spying by the FBI on Donald Trumps’ presidential campaign, an act unprecedented in American political history. Obama and the Democrats were, of course, seeking to elect Hillary Clinton in 2016. They used the so-called Steele Dossier, a campaign propaganda document packed with falsehoods, created by a foreign spy and paid for by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee. This report was then presented as factual to an unsuspecting federal judge in order to obtain a warrant to spy on the Trump campaign. The resulting wreckage lies everywhere across our political landscape.

Yet the impeachment of President Trump remains at the top of the Democrats’ agenda! Moreover, their party has embraced financially ruinous programs like the Green New Deal, Medicaid for All, and outright Socialism. Clearly, Democrats will not be satisfied with anything less than a root and branch disavowal of our national heritage, our market-directed economy, and our Judeo-Christian moral framework.

The old adage “There isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between the two major parties” has long since ceased to be true. The Democrat Party has a starkly different future in store for us if it ever again wins full control of the institutions of government in our state and in our country. So no, parties are not going away in America. Actually, they are becoming more relevant than ever.

Only the Republican Party has the strength, the will, and the organization to successfully resist the Democrats (or whatever they will ultimately end up calling themselves). One certainly doesn’t have to agree with Republicans on every issue- we have differences among ourselves, after all! But it’s now more important than ever that voters across the conservative political spectrum rise up and be counted as Republicans.

So my question is not addressed to my Republican colleagues after all, but rather to the hundreds of thousands of voters across Louisiana who have been asking themselves the same question: Have you had enough of the Democrat Party?