"Conservatism is stupid without conservative principals/ideology."
"Conservatism" is stupider when it plugs its ears and closes its eyes.
So what States is "Conservatism" going to flip? We already have the "Conservative" States locked up. We don't even know if a Conservative like Cruz would do better or worse than Romney if he were swapped in to 2012. And things have only gotten worse each and every day since then. In four years the population adds 10 million people plus an allegedly 3 million Illegal Aliens. The current electoral distribution ...
2012
Dumbo == 332 ... 65,915,796 ( 51.1% )
Romney = 206 ... 60,933,500 ( 47.2% )
This is what everybody should be looking at, particularly all the Trump haters. Gaze upon that map and tell us what purple states any of the 16 other candidates are going to flip: MI, PA, WI, IN, IA, OH, FL, NC. Also consider CO, VA, NM, NV. Those twelve are the ballgame. And I am having a hard time seeing how any of those other guys can touch more than one or two of them.
NOTE: Romney only managed to flip TWO of them: IN and NC for 26 electoral votes. The rest of the electoral difference McCain 173 versus Romney 206 came from redistricting from the 2010 census where "blue" states mostly lost electoral votes and "red" states mostly gained.
We are in serious dire straits. Those of you that think election night is a coin flip like 1988 have missed the news that 2.5 million people get added each year and the new voters are breaking against us. The only possible way to win this thing is to reach into the (D)ummycrats and pull out at least 5% of their votes. There is no evidence that says we have enough to do it alone.
Contrary to what Rush says, this is NOT a "Conservative" country anymore, not at the Presidential level anyway. In Presidential elections it is a media-driven, mega-financed, selfish country, with the sheeple voting "pocketbook issues", not ideology. At the Congressional, State and Local levels it breaks out Conservative in many places.
And before you make another mistake, NO, Reagan did not win because he was a Conservative. He won against Carter with just 50.8% of the vote on promises of Jobs, fixing the economy, the military, and restoring the American dream. And he did it so well that he won again in 1984 with 58.8% of the vote, massively stealing huge numbers of (D)emocrats.
And then the (R)epublicrat (R)INOs flushed it all down the toilet.