Gallup: 59% of Republicans want GOP to become more conservative

Amen.

As usual, terminology and ideology are too loose here.  One can be a conservative in all ideological tendencies, from deformed class values to deformed bureaucratic outlooks.  To "conserve" means to conserve whatever political tendency exists.  Therefore, there is an orthodoxy in all political tendencies.

Even the Stalinists "conserved" their orthodoxy, and sometimes those opposing bureaucratic despotism were called "left" while the Stalinists were called "conservatives"     There is a connection between class hierarchies and ideologies and bureaucratic hierarchies, but often mislabeled here and by class ideologues as between "Communism" vs Capitalism.   However, both deformed hierachies are themselves the outcome of dominating subordinating class relations and therefore they are conserving the status quo, class relations.

Ditto for Liberalism, it originally had a social, revolutionary context, in the Enlightenment, but once class relations and Capitalism deformed social nationalism for class nationalism, the social liberals became class liberals, class appeasers with incremental change that never fundamentally challanged the class structure.

One of the reasons Conservatives became identified with the status quo, is that the whole history through today, under LATE CAPITALISM, corporate fascism, identified will all forms of class rule against social change.  Therefore they in effect became reactionaries, fascists, under corporate state rule, defenders of Capital, slavery, unpaid labor, at the expense of a social majority.

Therefore when Conservatives want to go even further to the right, they in effect want to become even more reactionary, conserving Class despotism to its utter disaster, which today has imploded imperial American Empire and global capitalism.  This kind of reactionary, fascist ideology, has already lost democratically, and so the only way it can mover to the furthest extreme is to become a full fledged fascist, corporate police state, i.e. dictatorship, and that can only mean revolution against this despotism.  It was crushed militarily in NAZI GERMANY, corporate fascism, but America always had all the elements within its crippled class democracy, like apartheid, racism, and corporate elites willing to overthrow democracy, as they American top families tried to do in the 1930's before General Butler exposed this class coup.

It would mean regrouping the PALIN-MCCAIN REACTIONARIES, RACISTS, into an alliance with corporate thugs who would destroy whatever democratic shreds are left.  That would put America on the road to full blown fascist dictatorship and Empire.  However, that cannot happen as they have run out of Capital, money to finance this militarism, and so national fascism is already too parochial, when global capitalists have found a way to steal around the world, without national loyalties.

Waynester You have to factor in Palin. What would McCain have done had he had somebody other than the embodiment of the Southern Evangelical as his running mate? IMHO you would have flipped 7-15% of the popular vote. McCain would have won.

I disagree. More of the base would have stayed home without her.

If that's true then the GOP doesn't have a hope to hang their hat on. Because the base isn't enough to get anything done anymore.

I hate to go back to Reagan but he did get indies and Democrats without watering down conservatism. It was just well articulated and artfully presented. Bobby Jindal is probably the best hope for the future, he is very good at selling conservatism as something that works.

John McCain could have gotten a whole lot more independents and Democrats if he'd run as the real Maverick. You know, the guy who ran against Bush in 2000, and spoke of the "agents of intolerance." But he didn't. Instead he flipped on several issues, and chose the Palin.

I'm not sure he could have won either way, but he could have at least reached out, and started to build a new coalition for 2012 or 2016. Now, it seems to me, the GOP has there vehicle stuck in the mud, wheels spinning. But whatever, not like I care.

Waynester, Jindal is a great Conservative. He's smart, articulate, non-white (i.e. represents diversity), etc. Palin, on the other hand, is a cancer, as David Brooks put it. I think the entire country would be better off without her on the national stage. Good luck to you, if you're looking to Jindal.

Very well said.

As opposed to left wing demogoguery and pandering to the pitifully undereducated that they themselves have helped engender with their control of education for the past 50+ years?

It would do well to remember the gutless Democrats who with the exact same information voted for the Iraq war resolution only to go wobbly at the first sign of reticence in the general population. Bunch of GD cowards as far as I'm concerned. If we had followed their feckless prescriptions we would have left a genocide and civil war in our wake instead of a functioning democratic government in Iraq as we speak. Some even took virtually every opportunity to denigrate our fighting men and women as war criminals and cold blooded murderers. Screw the lot of them.

Save for the "commited socialist" comment, i entirely agree with you. The Republican party is no more a group of greedy rich white guys, than the Democratic party is a bunch of welfare draining lazy socialists. I don't know too many people from either party that agree with every issue of their respective party platform.

If/When the party gets some real leadership, what direction would you like to see them go? What would you like to see them do differently?