Conservative pundit, former GOP strategist, and co-founder of The Lincoln Project Steve Schmidt announced yesterday that he is going to register as a Democrat.

“I spent 29 years as a Republican, I’ve spent two and a half as an independent, and later this afternoon I will register as a member of the Democratic Party,” Schmidt told Plouffe. “Because in America today, it’s only the Democratic Party—which is the oldest political party in the world—that stands for the ideas and ideals of American liberty.”

I would argue that the Democratic Party is the only place left for actual conservatives who care about the Constitution and are concerned about the slide toward totalitarianism and autocracy we are now seeing from the right wing. Biden is already proving himself to be a centrist, even irritating progressives in the process, and while the Libertarian Party might seem appealing to conservatives who bristle at the idea of putting a (D) next their names, the sad truth is that Libertarians are marginalizing themselves more and more with their flat rejection of the idea that the government should play any role in offering social protections. Many Libertarians embraced Trump and there is a reason for it – as Ayn Rand pointed out, Libertarianism is devoid of any principled thought and consists only of negating principles.

Responding to a question about the Libertarian Party of the United States in 1976, Rand said: The trouble with the world today is philosophical: only the right philosophy can save us. But this party plagiarizes some of my ideas, mixes them with the exact opposite—with religionists, anarchists and every intellectual misfit and scum they can find—and call themselves libertarians and run for office.^[19]

As nuts as this might sound, all conservatives need to consider switching affiliation to Democrat if they want to best influence public policy. There is nothing in the Democratic platform that repudiates the core tenets of conservatism – the only push/pull between the liberal faction and the centrist faction is the degree to which government should actively pursure righting past wrongs and transforming itself from where it was to where it’s going. Nowhere in the Democratic Platform is the Democratic Party designated as progressive or liberal – the word “liberal” isn’t anywhere in the document. There is nothing about the Democratic Party that requires it to remain on the left side of the political spectrum. Indeed, the Democratic Party was the hardline conservative party during the Civil War period through to the FDR years, when the respective ideologies switched between the parties.

What I’m saying is that the association between the Democratic Party and hard-left liberalism is not a feature inherent to the party, but rather is a construct foisted upon it by trasient leadership and contemporary circumstance. This is precisely why the Democratic Party needs conservative voices within it – to maintain the equilibrium of progress and tradition, to make arguments in favor of each, and to restrain the impulses of the most fervent voices coming from either side. It needs to once again become the party of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, with modern sophistication.

The GOP is no longer an American party, committed to the Constitution and working for the American public. It is a racket, loyal to the boss, grabbing the public by the balls, fleecing true believers, possibly infiltrated and controlled by foreign adversaries, and ready to go down with the ship. If the Democratic Party had more voices within it like those of Steve Schmidt, it would flatten out the way it should and perhaps we can move back toward a period of sanity.

Conservatives need to abandon the GOP. Let it die.