Abandoning conservatism and offering minorities free stuff, amnesty, and open borders.
You are correct to a point. More goodies will buy votes. But, you have to give more attractive goodies than the opposition party AND you have to have at least as good a propaganda system. A chronic and fatal weakness of the GOP is the lack of a good propaganda system to compete with the NYT, HuffPo, LATimes, NBC, etc. Each one is small but collectively they spread a lot of propaganda and they send the kind of simple sound-bite sized messages that typical voters can grasp. Add to that the generation’s greatest propagandists such as M Moore plus the entertainment industry, then throw in mandatory tax on wages (union dues) paid into a propaganda organization (the union) and you can see that even freebies will not be enough to achieve political wins.
Without a propaganda system at least that good, you can give out lots of free goodies and have little effect—remember the Medicare prescription drug program? 1980’s amnesty? Tax rebates under Bush?