re: Sooo... What's up with Cassidy?

The problem is that in order to get elected, the party espouses rhetoric embracing a popular philosophy of individual liberty, economic freedom, personal responsibility, and fiscal restraint. However, that rhetoric is contrary to their true desires, power. Limited government offers little opportunity for power and wealth concentration by a ruling class. So, the candidates the party tends to nominate espouse those freedom-loving principles when campaigning, but abandon those principles once in a position to enact them. The problem is not that the republican party is inaccurately defined by its detractors, who call republican nominees rinos, it's that the party misrepresents itself to its constituents in order to further its agenda that runs antithetical to that rhetoric.

The party is and should be the sole source of blame for this identity crises.