It's come to the point, defcon, where it's best to just ignore the idiocy.
To begin with, we have a seriously unbalanced individual (P) who insists that he should have the right to own a flame thrower, just because he wants to, with the disingenuous caveat of "but that doesn't mean I'd ever use it". He defends this lunacy by pointing to the constitution (2nd Amendment) and ignores the fact that firearms regulations were enacted by legally constituted legislatures, with the consent of the governed, (which sounds an awful lot like constitutional-Republican democracy to me!). He feels that laws that he does not agree with can be disobeyed according to his whims. He then follows up by suggesting that anyone who disagrees with him is suffering from a mental disorder stemming from their irrational fear of weapons (he calls it hoplophobia. I'll check the DSM IV at my leisure to see if this really exists).
As for ReaganMan, a poll taken RIGHT HERE of other "conservatives" can be safely pooh-poohed because "it doesn't mean anything two years out". Yet, two years out, he rails against the possibility of Rudy getting any sort of consideration. On the one hand, speculation (i.e. a poll) means nothing, and on the other (speculation about a candidacy) means everything. Hypocracy, apparently, is something other people engage in. His real problem is that someone had the audacity to put "Guiliani" and "Conservative" in the same sentence, without grasping the context in which it was done.
As to whoever said I was "on a roll until the last two paragraphs", I merely speak the truth. If you can disprove the fact that this is the republican, not conservative, party, please do so. If you can prove that a small,lunatic fringe, is the core of this party, then please do so. If you can show a Congressional victory in the last six years that bolstered a conservative point of view or premise (and a pure one, at that; "Compassionate Conservatism" is a slogan, not a political movement), then please do so. From where I sit, the highlights of the conservative movement in the last six years seem to be limited to two nominations on a Supreme Court which has not done a thing since, the bigegst restrictions on political speech in American history, and passing a resolution in the middle of the night which ultimately failed to save a poor woman from having her feeding tube removed.
Show me a victory in the last six years that has seriously entrenched and advanced any conservative value which will not be reversed by any future democratic administration, and I'll be more than happy to agree with you that, perhaps, conservatism is not dead. However, it looks pretty much like it got buried right along with the Gipper (Requiesat in Pacem).