“Slom says Hawaii will never have a healthy two-party system if elected Republicans refuse to fight for the principles they were elected to uphold.”

This is the heart of the matter: principles.  For 30 years the GOP has embraced policies that punish the majority of working Americans.  Trickle-down, tax-cutting, union-bashing, voodoo economics have led to the greatest wealth gap in a 100 years.  They propose deeply unpopular cuts  to the social insurance programs –Social Security and Medicare- that protect the middle class from penury.  They disguise the class warfare nature of their policies by focusing on wedge issues –e.g. race and sexual identity. They trash the environment for profit.  And they suppress votes and gerrymander.  This is all unprincipled.   The party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt could recover the populist mantle of progressivism on the environment, trust busting and civil rights.  Until it does, it is condemned to growing irrelevance.