Before the day is done, I'll make my way down to the Orange County Board of Elections and become an unaffiliated voter. That will bring to a close my 34 years as a Republican. Like Ronald Reagan when he left the Democratic Party, I'm not abandoning the Republican ideals of self-reliance, fiscal responsibility and limited government. It's the party has abandoned those principles and waved goodbye to me.

I'm a political pragmatist. I rarely believe what politicians say. I pay attention to what they do. Like many Americans, I vote my pocketbook. Politicians mainly do one thing well: spending our tax money. When candidates detail all the good things they're going to do, they're really describing how much they're going to cost.

When it comes to being a fiscal burden to the American taxpayer, there is no greater drain than Republicans.

Under the credit-card economics of today's GOP, the debt we're passing down to our children and grandchildren grows by about $1 billion a day. They talk big about controlling government spending, but they rarely do it. It was a Republican-controlled Congress that raised the national debt ceiling last month to $9 trillion, so it could bust another budget.

Behind the fiscally conservative rhetoric are big-spender actions like those of North Carolina Republican Rep. Virginia Foxx. She often rails against wasteful federal spending on things not mandated by the Constitution. Yet she used an earmark to channel $250,000 to the poster-project of pork, the Sparta Teapot Museum.

Yes, Virginia has discovered there really is a Santa Claus, and his name is Uncle Sam.

Republicans can no longer claim there's a fiscal difference between themselves and Democrats except for one -- Republicans cost us more.

Irresponsible Republican spending isn't new. It's the unsettling tenor of the illegal immigration debate that made me look hard at my party and ask: Who are these guys?

Too many Republicans have rejected the thinking of the gold standards of American conservative and free market thought -- the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute and The Wall Street Journal editorial page. These voices advocate for comprehensive immigration reform, which includes tight border security. But because strong guest-worker programs are part of their solutions, some Republicans have derided them as country club amnesty apologists.

Republicans, who once stood for global trade and the economic freedom and empowerment provided by free enterprise, have turned into neo-isolationist protectionists that Pat Buchanan would embrace.

Some people who used to oppose the minimum wage in favor of allowing the market to determine the value of a job, now champion the right of the U.S. worker to clean toilets and slit chickens and be paid a so-called living wage based on social justice, not economics.

My GOP friends, who once praised small businesses for their ability to generate jobs, now describe their need for affordable low-skill labor as exploitative.

Farewell Ronald Reagan. Hello Ted Kennedy.

Of course economics must take a back seat to national security and law and order. Many Republicans tell me a guest-worker program is unacceptable because it rewards people who've broken the law. But that's only half the story. Respect for the law also requires enforcement. It's hypocritical to blame the ills of illegal immigration solely on the immigrant. Some of that blame resides in the mirror.

For nearly two decades, North Carolina and much of the nation turned its back on border-state citizens who pleaded for help with illegal immigration and for better border enforcement. The scope and complexity of the problem we now face is a direct result of that neglect.

Unfortunately, Republicans who scream about the need to waste billions on a border fence have created a false public policy choice -- either guest-worker program or enforcement. The truth is we need both, and I doubt Republicans or Democrats have the courage to deliver a comprehensive, long-term commitment.

That's another reason I'm becoming an unaffiliated voter. Political independence is the best course for the emerging Hispanic vote. We can lend our considerable support to the party and candidates who offer realistic solutions to America's most pressing problems instead of red meat to their base.

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