Voters: The party's over

Charles Hurt - Inside Washington

WASHINGTON -- Voters desperate for an alternative to both parties in Washington got another dose of good news in this week's primaries.

In Florida and, it appears, also in Alaska, Republican voters once again sent a chilling message to their own party leadership in Washington.

No, they cannot stomach the untethered liberalism of Democrats in Washington any longer. But nor can they stand the GOP recklessness we saw the last time the "conservative" party was in power.

That Republican Party of yore and the Donkeys of present are enough to send shudders through any sensible person who cares about the future of this country.

Both are enough to make sick anyone who in tough times has set austere priorities, dispatched with luxuries, and scrounged to save up enough to send their children to college.

The sacrifices and tough decisions that have dominated the lives of most Americans these last few years have been completely absent here in the city of free money -- regardless of who is in charge.

That is because both parties are playing a fearsome game of fiscal chicken -- with your money, of course.

Democrats believe that if they saddle taxpayers with enough obligations to provide enough free stuff to enough people, the country will riot if anyone ever tries to rein in the wild spending.

Republicans, meanwhile, believe that bankrupting the country with unpaid-for wars and tax cuts will force the government to collapse and become smaller.

Both tactics are as deplorable as they are dishonest.

Fed up, Republican voters are not done cleaning house.

In Florida, conservative insider Bill McCollum got beaten for the Republican nomination for governor by a conservative party outsider promising to shake things up with his own money.

In Alaska, sitting GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski is on the ropes, narrowly trailing Joe Miller, a conservative ally of Sarah Palin.

Sweet justice for a woman who first "earned" her seat the old-fashioned Republican way -- her daddy handed it to her.

Okay, so maybe Palin scares us all a little bit. This is understandable.

She is less than sophisticated when it comes to answering tough geopolitical questions we expect our leaders to know all about.

She talks a little too much in public about her intimacy with powerful rifles and the bloody chore of field-dressing a moose.

And it is a little worrisome that one of the most appealing things about Sarah Palin is the people who hate her.

But it is those people -- in both parties -- who are the very authors of the fat, corrupt, bureaucratic disaster that has become our federal government.

We have all certainly supported political figures for worse reasons.

churt@nypost.com