No one could trust the GOP the last few go-rounds.
Conservatives were not satisfied and liberals were certainly appalled, though they may have been regardless.
I had certainly heard from more conservatives (not just libertarians) the accusation that Bush is a leftist, among other things, than from liberals that Obama is not genuine in many of their concerns.
Ultimately the GOP incompetence and lack of focus on their core principles that got them elected came front and center in a time in which even the politically disinterested people of the country were suffering enough to do something about it.
What credible argument did the GOP have that it offered better proposals than Obama? They initiated very similar ones and were therefore beaten on territory that should naturally belong to the left. It will be a lesson for some time that the GOP is directly responsible for the expansion of government that has occured under President Obama.
They set most of the dangerous precedents that make this kind of unlimited government a bipartisan idea in Washington.
You reap what you sow. If you set up a government big enough to give you everything you want (which is not just a statement about economic affairs), it is big enough to take everything you have. Big government is convenient when you wish to benefit from state power, but a terrible thing when you are on the outside of it.
If George W. Bush had been able to keep Republicans united on what they said they actually believed, and what they were expected to do when they were elected in 2000, we might still have a Republican government today.
Their traditions are not controversial with most Americans, it is their performance and the ulterior motives of their leadership and figureheads.
It is all the better that we do not have that kind of government until the proper lessons are learned about what should be expected of the right of center party in this country.