You completely miss my point (probaby because you don't want to hear it). Conservative ideals are not irrelevant, but conservatism is rapidly becoming irrelevant as a political force because of the lack of a viable leader to embody conservative principles, and without that leader, conservatism will lose every national election for the foreseeable future. You can hug your guns and promote the pro-life position all you want, but if conservatism continues on a path where it is diametrically opposed to pragmatic politics, you will lose, and lose badly. You'll become irrelevant.
Your apparent inability to even comprehend what I'm talking about shows how critical the situation is becoming.
You completely miss my point Oh, I didn't miss it. I completely disagreed with it, for the reasons stated.
The GOP lost the Reagan Dems in 2006 because they stopped acting like Reagan Republicans. You will not get them back with a "pragmatic" run further to the Rockefeller wing.