Your case is a valid one for the nation as a whole. But you're forgetting, California isn't typical of the nation. The only way to make conservativism palatable for California voters is to win multiple local elections and govern conservatively in that capacity over the years. As some moderate-to-liberal voters discover that conservatives don't have horns & fangs, they gradually become more open to their ideas.
The California public isn't anywhere near that point yet.
CF: See Amerigomag's #173 for the real answer. Also, succes will be achieved by hard work among people of modest means and hard-core morality, door-to-door, one on one in the places where the GOP is usually too, ummmm, refined to go. Money and commercials by limp elitists does not do what hard-core organizing does. Ground war of the modest folk beats the air war of the affluent airheded and lazy any time it is really tried. Purge the party of Muffy and Skipper and the polo club/ yacht club trust fund babies and go socially conservative and you may discover that most Californians are not hot tub denizens (especially with the cost of energy under libs) or even social behavior exotic flora and fauna.