Bill: Why bother being a Republican?

Bill de Blasio has a message for New York City Republicans: Leave!

After attending a church service in Brooklyn Sunday, the Democratic mayoral candidate suggested Republicans don’t care about the city and criticized his GOP challenger for sticking with the party.

“I don’t understand, in this day and age, how someone could continue to be a Republican and say that they want to help New York City move forward,” de Blasio said of Joe Lhota outside Concord Bap tist Church in BedfordStuyvesant.

“Republicans like him should have long ago fought back against negative trends in their party. He should have considered leaving the Republican Party.”

Last week, it was de Blasio who sounded like a Republican when he declared himself a “fiscal conservative” at a breakfast for business leaders. He soon backpedaled, and now calls himself a “fiscally responsible progressive.”

GOPers called him fiscally unfit.

“Being told you’re working against the interests of New York City by Bill de Blasio is like being called ugly by a toad,” said state Republican Party spokesman David Laska, who attacked de Blasio’s plan to raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for universal preK — a program that would cost less than 1 percent of the city budget.

“If he can’t come up with that money without raising taxes, he is unfit to manage a Starbucks, let alone New York City,” Laska said.

Meanwhile, Lhota — who said he can find the money without raising income taxes — attacked his rival’s education plan, ripping the notion that de Blasio wants to improve opportunities for students as the Dem cripples charter schools. De Blasio wants to charge rent to charters, which serve a large population of minority students.

“Charter schools are working and we should be expanding school choice for parents, not limiting it,” Lhota said.