For there to be a viable conservative party, they have to quit taking a hard-line on some (but not all) of the following issues:
Energy (there current policy doesn't even really make that much sense as it goes against there strong national defense attitude)
Environment (why is the environment a partisan issue?)
Abortion
Gay marriage
Health Care (completely dropped the ball on this one - McCain didn't even try to fight Obama on this issue)
Approach to war on terror (I'm sorry, but even if Dick Cheney is right, he still hurts Republicans. Guy has a 19% approval rating)
Religion in politics (don't really see this going away, but worth listing)
Taxes (don't see this changing either, but worth listing)
Military spending (current stance goes against fiscally conservative principles)
Relationships with minorities (minorities currently trust the Republican Party about as much as they trust the police)
Purity in the party (another big one - big parties and "pure" parties usually don't mix. The Green Party may be very pure, but when is the last time it won any national elections?)
Really, some of the Republican Party's stances on those issues don't even qualify as "conservative," so I don't think changing some of them will do any injury to Republican principles. But I don't think anyone would say that the strategy the party has had in the past years is politically viable.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
