Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey says that Hillary Clinton’s ascension to the Presidency is nearly inevitable and the fault lies with a Republican Party that has completely abandoned it’s principles:

First and foremost, the Republican brand as effective stewards of the taxpayer dollar is in tatters, and the shredding doesn’t look to stop any time soon. Just yesterday, 138 House Republicans joined the Democrats in voting to override the president’s veto of a wasteful and pork-ridden Water Resources bill. That vote was a shameful display of personal politics over the national interest, and it contains the seeds of destruction of whatever conservative principles remain in the Republican party.

The callow accommodation to big-spending Democrats in Congress is one of the ways the Republican party will return itself to the days of serving as a compliant, permanent minority. Happy for table scraps, elected Republicans will simply abandon the ideas of their party in order to “get along”.

No wonder Americans prefer Democrats on the economy, taxes, and spending issues, according to recent polling data. When the choice is between Democrats, and the Democrat-lite ideas the GOP has become so comfortable offering, the Democrats will win every time.

The only way the Republican party will beat Hillary Clinton is to return to its limited-government roots. That’s the only way to rebuild a majority coalition.

To be honest, of course, it’s the been a long time since Republican Party really was the party of limited government. As Stephen Green notes, even the heady days of the 1994 takeover of Congress, the Contract with America was really more talk than action, but at least they were talking about limiting government back then. Today, the GOP is close to returning to the days when it was a “me too” version of the Democratic Party’s social welfare-ism. And it never won elections when it did that.

Armey lays out quite clearly what’s needed:

To counter Hillary Clinton’s perfectly oiled political machine, Republicans need to return to their Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan roots. They need to present an alternative vision for America—a positive vision that limits government and trusts individuals and leaves families, churches, and businesses free to make their own decisions, and not have bureaucrats and politicians calling the shots.

And that’s not something we’re hearing from any of the Republican candidates for President, except for a guy who’s still in single digits in the polls.