Losing my affiliation

Quite a few folks have written or commented in re this recent post.

Here's the backstory on why I've switched from "Republican" to "unaffiliated" on the voter rolls:

(1) The GOP shows absolutely no signs of learning anything from recent history, including the pummeling they took in the 2006 elections.

(2) The "Big Tent" is no more: Current Republican leadership is trying systematically to silence libertarian voices within the party, e.g., stripping Congressman Jeff Flake of his committee leadership positions in Congress as punishment for criticizing the party's direction.

(3) Not only are Modern Republicans not libertarians, they're not even recognizable as "conservatives" outside of positively troglodytic positions on a few hot-button social issues; once they got their hands on the public treasury, they spent like sailors on shore leave, creating insupportable new entitlement programs (Medicare prescription benefit, anyone?)

(3a) There are also these little problems with our country's foreign policy... ahem.

(4) With the theocrat/retard wing of the party firmly behind the wheel, and no one with a modicum of economic literacy or respect for civil liberties in sight, the GOP is not a viable or a realistic place for a libertarian/conservative to reside.

(5) The Democratic Party certainly isn't either (I doubt that I have to explain this to you, but I will if needed.)

(6) There *is* no viable libertarian (large L, small l, makes no difference) party in the US and it doesn't look likely that there ever will be one, as the number of American voters for whom an anti-statist philosophy is a primary voting criterion is vanishingly small and might as well be zero.

Und zo.... "unaffiliated."