Republican stalwart Muth says for him the party is over

Thursday, April 26, 2007 | 7:01 a.m.

Chuck Muth has been a Republican since the days of Reagan the Great, since the days of Gordon Gekko and the Laffer curve.

But one of the leading voices of Nevada conservative activists is finished. As of this week, he's no longer a registered Republican.

Muth has a finely honed instinct for smash-mouth politics and no fear of criticizing members of his now former party, which he does regularly on his Web site , chuckmuth.com.

Muth said in an interview that the party has lost its way, deviated from its core principles of small government and low taxes.

"I'm not leaving the Republican Party . It left me a long time ago," he said, echoing President Ronald Reagan, who once said the same when he left the Democratic Party, or as Muth might derisively call it, the "Democrat Party."

Muth, a protege of Washington, D.C ., conservative activist Grover Norquist, is organizing a national conservative conference for this fall in Reno. Muth said he has always been a conservative first, a Republican second.

His frustrations began, he said, when Republicans took control of Congress in 1994 and immediately set aside their principles in favor of retaining power through pork-barrel spending and special favors .

Then there were the social issues, which were a turn off, so to speak. On gay marriage, he said: "It's not a federal issue. The push in Congress against it has driven me bonkers ."

Under the Bush administration, the situation has worsened, he said.

President Bush and Republicans in Congress pushed the federal government into the schools in the form of the No Child Left Behind Act, while creating an expensive prescription drug entitlement for seniors.

Locally, Republicans such as Assembly Minority Leader Garn Mabey, R-Las Vegas, and Sen. Dennis Nolan, R-Las Vegas, who have expressed willingness to raise taxes for transportation, really get under his skin, he said.

What's so galling, he said, is that "I get labeled a bad Republican, and they're the good Republicans?"

Have they ever read Barry Goldwater's "Conscience of a Conservative?" Have they even heard of it?

"I live and breathe 'Conscience of a Conservative,' " Muth said, adding: "Barry Goldwater is spinning in his grave."