Whether you cheer or decry Donald Trump, you have to agree: He’s the byproduct of a Republican Party that’s dying, or perhaps already long since dead.

Republicans, as we know them, simply do not matter.

Whether they control part, all or none of the government, nothing they claim to believe in ever gets anywhere.

Taxes rise; government regulation grows; socialized medicine and government-run schooling expand; non-defense spending skyrockets and the national debt grows with no end in sight.

Read any Ronald Reagan speech on the evils of expansive government. It has all come to pass, as much under Republican reigns (George Bush I, George Bush II, John Boehner’s and Mitch McConnell’s Congress) as Democratic ones.

Instead of shrieking about Donald Trump, career Republicans would do well to consider why so many in their party want nothing whatsoever to do with them.

If you want yet another indication of what’s wrong with the moribund Republican party, consider the words of Paul Ryan, the present Speaker of the House.

Ryan, 45, the Wisconsin Republican and 2014 vice presidential nominee, told The New York Times on Friday, “If we try to play our own version of identity politics and try to fuel ourselves based on darker emotions, that’s not productive.”

“I believe in an agenda that’s inspirational, that’s inclusive, that’s optimistic,” he said.

If Paul Ryan and other Republicans really believed in inclusion and optimism, they’d stop serving as collaborative hacks for the expanding welfare state and instead call for its demise.

What’s more inclusive than individual rights?

Individual rights refer to the equal rights of all citizens, under the law.

Under such a system, there are not greater rights for some, and lesser rights for others. If you happen to be a member of a politically favored race, victim group or religious group, you do not receive rights (or money) which other people are not entitled to receive.

Everyone is equal, plain and simple.

Ryan is trying argue against pitting one class or group against another. His intentions are right, but the method by which he suggests we do so – “inclusiveness” – is completely wrong.

It plays right into the arguments and plans of his alleged opponents. Hillary Clinton is logically right to come along and say, “If inclusiveness is the purpose of government, the Democrats will spend a lot more, and take it a lot further, than these timid Republican ever will.”

Inclusiveness is not the purpose of government. Inclusiveness is not even an end in itself.

Inclusiveness happens only as a byproduct; only when you respect the individual rights of everyone.

It’s what happens when you do what the Declaration of Independence originally demanded.

That Declaration of Independence, for those of you who went to government schools and were not encouraged to read it, states the following:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…

In other words: The purpose of government is to protect rights.

Rights refer to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

There are no rights to anything else, including the labor of others to provide you with health insurance, cell phones, food stamps, bank bailouts, ethanol subsidies and all the rest.

Equal individual rights. It does not get any more inclusive than that!

Notice that governments “derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.” This means that rights-upholding governments serve the individuals whose rights they are protecting…not the other way around.

The moment government departs from the mandate of the Declaration of Independence is the moment you start excluding some for the sake of others.

The socialism fostered by today’s Democrats is inclusive—only if you belong to their favored victim or pressure groups.

Note that Democrats are only concerned with the “rights” of some groups over others. The rights of “poor” over the “rich”; racial minorities over majorities; Muslims over people with different (or no) religious beliefs; corporations deemed “progressive” over ones deemed exploitative, predatory, etc.

Career politician Republicans: You did this to yourselves. You are just as clueless as your opponents in the other party.

The Republican Party was not hijacked by Donald Trump. It was already dead.

Its established leaders were the last to know.

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