If segments of the Republican party abandon conservatives they will do it at their peril. Not because conservatives will turn their collective backs on what is left of the Republican Party - though they will - but because their moderate/liberal policies will be their ruin.
You speak of these constituent parts as though they were sports team competing against each other and what decides the outcome is the skill level and athletic abilities of the players. Maybe that is true during elections. But when it comes to actually running the country the McCains, the Clintons, the Obamas, even the Bushs, will fail.
So let the ignorant masses make yet another mistake i.e. Carter, Ford, et al. Conservative principles will out again. Hopefully for a more sustained period of time. This one was too short.
In this article I did. I have my political opinions, but right now I'm still trying to figure out the landscape. I didn't want to make value judgments here. I'm still struggling with what comes next if it's Hillary and McCain. I said I wouldn't vote for McCain, but several Supreme Court vacancies are coming up. I think most of them will be from the liberal wing, as a couple have been waiting out Bush, but they'll still be huge. McCain will most likely go more liberal than I like, but Hillary picked Bill's appointment and we got Ruth Ginsberg. There's also the war with the terrorists. I'm convinced most of this could have been averted if it hadn't been for Carter and Clinton I. When candidates govern as limited government fiscally responsible conservatives the general public is happy with them because things go well in the country. Reagan was almost an anomaly in actually governing this way, though, because few people, once elected, are willing to reduce government power.