By Andrew K. Boyle

It's the beginning of election season , 2016. Never mind that the actual election is almost two years away, and that we are barely half a year removed from the last election. Thanks to an amalgamation of forces, all of them evil I assure, we are smack-dab in the middle of the increasingly and unrelentingly protracted election cycle of 2016.

In the never-ending story which is already the next confounded election, we have before us the promise of a Clinton vs a Bush. This time its different; you see in the two and a half decades since the last time these families squared off, inflation has asserted itself ominously. In 1992 a young lady-killer named Bill spent a scandalous $62 million to become the nation's most eligible bachelor also in possession of the nuclear football. Having hence become impoverished serfs, Bill's oddly forgiving wife today stands ready to raise a reported $2.5 billion for the chance to occupy and restore the dignity of the office her husband once used to pickup chicks. On the other side of the ticket, presumptive King Bush III is being hoisted up as a viable candidate largely on his prognosticated abilities to raise enough funds to compete with Hillary's $2.5 billion. Mind you this is post several rounds of campaign finance reform.

Granted, these numbers are insane. A rational person rightly struggles to put a $2.5 billion dollar spending allowance into perspective. We saw Mr. Bruster struggle to spend his millions and gained a perspective our elected officials could benefit from. One doesn't even have to believe strongly in an afterlife to declare someone spending $2.5 billion on themselves while promising to become a champion of everyday Americans, would be in a wildly unenviable position come judgement day. Easier still is the article condemning money in politics, or the Clintons -- if one was creative enough to construct a viable distinction between the two. An ambitious columnist may even write in defense of money in politics -- oh the nerve! Be they for or against, the American people read the opening paragraph of the money opus and quickly divert their energies to higher pursuits -- like staring into the depths of their left forearm hair.

You see, the American electorate may have been numbed by politics, but they have gone catatonic when confronting money in politics. We lack the ability to quantify in any usable way the trillions our political process spends in our name. While we can't comprehend the four trillion dollars spent in our name last year any more than we can estimate the sand on the beach, we also are severed from any meaningful relation to the dirty money used to elect the guys who pretend to be in control of the $4 trillion. We can't imagine $30,000 per plate dinners, nor the millions of dollars in kickbacks such sirloins procure. We are unresponsive to that which is entirely alien to us, thus money in politics is akin to zombie movies -- which are paradoxically popular in this moment in political history. No amount of money can shock our collective conscious -- save for zero.

Just when I had given up on the GOP, "Defund Them!" I shouted in vain to my twitter followers and Facebook friends, the Oklahoma GOP rides to the rescue. Randy Brogdon, the new chair of the Oklahoma Republican Party made a bold announcement, hitherto unknown in the world of politics -- we are out of money! Not the country, which undeniably is, but the Oklahoma GOP -- who obviously lack the same generous credit line as Uncle Sam.

"On my first day on the job, I found we were upside down on the balance sheet…Simply stated we had more bills to pay than money in the bank." Mr Brogdon announced via email. Despite holding most every statewide office and both houses of the legislature, the GOP is roughly $10,000 in debt. Incredible, they have overwhelmingly won elections while simultaneously managed to have Defunded themselves.

If you have long been a reader of this newspaper you will know that this author credits the GOP with having done nothing noble since roughly the Reconstruction era, but a blind squirrel finding his nuts on occasion, they have stumbled upon something here. This ocular challenged squirrel of a GOP has just accidentally found pure gold, if only they had the "acorns" to realize it.

What Mr Brogdon fails to understand is that the people of Oklahoma have absolutely no functional use for an Oklahoma GOP, just as the American people have no use for a national GOP. While elected and professional political types may claim the necessity of a GOP, in reality they are only themselves hampered by the existence of such a beast. It is that which binds them to interest groups and horrid blue suits, that which keeps Republicans on the margins of a culture which is undoubtedly conservative and paradoxically scornful of all persons with an R after their name. This disconnect drives voters away from the GOP, and drives the GOP into the tax-cut, abortion, national defense, Common

Core, corporate welfare, big spending, Bush, McCain, Romney, Norquist, Cheney, Palin suicide pact they currently pledge fidelity to. Big government be damned; Leviathan's son would look a lot like the GOP -- if he had a son.

Politics is always the last portion of our society to evolve with the rest of us. Today we are a society obsessed with authentic, organic and increasingly with free. We will pay a premium for food raised without pesticides and with ample love, but we also get our smart phones for free and sign petitions each month to "keep Facebook free." Every connection we make in life is now free and instant. We don't need travel agents to book our tickets, we pay our bills online, we call Uber for cab rides and contract increasing number of consumable goods from people we live by thanks to Al Gore's invention of the inter-web. There is a revolution of peer to peer lending going on, banks and their bail-outs be damned! The gate-keepers in every profession are being driven out by technology, and we are the better for it. We have an app, a video and/or a previously un-gettable personal connection driving every portion of our life -- our politics lag significantly behind this revolution.

The future of the GOP is a post-mortem, but the future of conservatism and libertarianism is quite bright -- assuming they can sever the connection from a dying host. The same information orgy which drives every other area of American life is fast taking over politics. Attack ads are becoming a dinosaur of a mean past in an age where politicians can speak directly to all Americans on Facebook, Twitter, You-Tube, Reddit, Instagram, Streaming Television Channels….you name it. There is no national GOP message, because there is no need of one. If you want a big tent, stop funding the guys who run horrible ads every decent politician has to defend or respond to. Let these guys stand on their own two feet, and raise their own money. In a place like Oklahoma where Democrats are not exactly crouching in wait for the next election cycle, Republicans aren't even taking much of a risk by allowing the GOP to fold -- no bailouts for elephants.

Spoiler alert, Mr. Brogdon doesn't agree with this line of thinking. After making his beautiful announcement of a fiscal bankruptcy befitting the moral bankruptcy of the GOP, he immediately asked for money. In a desk-colliding-with-head inducing plan, void of any originality, Brogdon extended an opportunity to become a "Minute Man" for $8.25 monthly. Be ye more Thurston Howell than Patrick Henry, Mr. Brogdon extended the opportunity to become a gold, silver or bronze member of the "Elephant Club" ($5,000-1,000 accordingly.) This is the world when George H.W. Bush tried in vain to sign up enough Elephants and Minute Men to compete with Slick Willie and his monster war-chest. Today, there are not enough Elephants to compete with Mrs Willie and her $2.5 billion -- fortunately the world of today doesn't have the tolerance for such extravagance. When seeking authenticity and organic-ness, $2.5 billion to make a rich former first lady an "average American" reeks of political GMO's. The GOP has the chance to join the culture in this revolution, or we can sign up more pachyderm-minute men.

Oklahoma is a place that makes sense. She doesn't do insane and suicidal things to stop global warming, global cooling, climate change, or climate chaos. The Sooner State also goes into a kerfuffle whenever yearly outlays require dipping into the rainy day fund to make the books square at the end of the year. You repealed Common Core. Small town values are unchanged by progress. Here is a chance to allow the simple goodness of the State to cut through that which is rightly despised in politics. A good number of elected representatives still write monthly in this paper. You go to Church with them and serve next to them at community functions. You don't need the GOP to tell you where Senator Inhofe stands on abortion or tax cuts, so don't let them. Treat the GOP like you do the yellow-pages someone inexplicably leaves in your mailbox -- laugh and then discard. They have already Defunded themselves, may it forever be thus.