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Here’s one suggestion that I’ve floated:

When all the smoke clears, if Hunter doesn’t get the nomination, I have one more suggestion for all of us remaining conservative freepers. It would make sense for us to have an idealogy score, a set of questions with rankings of how important the issue is and how strongly a freeper agrees/disagrees with it. We could all put these results on our home pages, so that when another freeper is debating with us (or us with them) we could just go to their home page, check their score on that issue & others, and realize “Ohhh, this is a Ron Paul supporter” or “ohh, this guy is a small l libertarian” or “ohh, this guy is a Big F FISCAL Conservative and a small l social liberal.”

With the way the term "conservative" has been bandied about of late, that might be a good idea.

Issues, (remember issues, anyone?), which are important to me:

Abortion, and the sanctity of life in general. (yet I can be for capital punishment without batting an eyelash).

Border Security--build the fence already!

Constitutional bounds: put the Fedgov back inside them.

Defense: Finish the WOT. Keep the military strong, secure the borders.

Education: Vouchers, accountability. Energy policy could fit here, too. Something grounded in the laws of physics and based on our solar system would be nice, instead of mandating mercuric light bulbs. Unfortunately, many of the problems are linked to an unrealistic view of another E, the Environment.

Firearms: Keep yer gun grabbing mitts off. In fact repeal some of that useless crap they call Gun Control.

Gun Control: See firearms.

Health Care: I have seen the mess the BIA has made of 'Indian Health', and can (unfortunately) imagine the horror show our health care would become if the Government ran it. No way.

Internet: The modern version of the soapbox in the town square. Keep the government out of it--and no taxes. Some would put Income tax here, and I'd go for a flat tax with cut-offs and caps. Some like the "fair tax" but I'm not convinced. YMMV.

Judiciary: It is the job of Congress to legislate, not the judges. The Bench can toss a law out, and that is plenty.

Kevmo, there is more, I am sure, But you get the general drift. Without shoehorning issues into a format, I am sure we could come up with something for every letter of the alphabet, and then some. But of late, many who call themselves conservatives treat the label as if it were just that. It isn't, it goes to the core beliefs of the bearer, and whether people like it or not, it represents a fixed set of beliefs.

It makes no more sense to try to drag that set of beliefs to the left and call them 'conservative' than it does to haul truckloads of sand away from the coast, pile them in a line and call it a beach.

All the hyphenations neo- so- paleo- etc., do is fractionate the believers into subsets, subsets which heartily pick and choose what they want to believe as is convenient for them, and then say they are 'conservative', too. Enough of this, and the Democrats will be claiming the title of 'conservative', and some of them more rightfully than the fractionated hypehnated groups.

Now, I know it isn't representative of the entire population by a longshot, but the poll on FR here shows about half of the respondents would vote for anyone with an 'R' after their name for POTUS. Nice to have the votes, but if they aren't that picky, then let us have a Conservative, for once, as a candidate.

Why? because it doesn't matter how pretty or slick they are, to Conservatives, the issues matter. There are some things we just won't vote for, and if there is nothing to vote against (I.E. no difference between the candidates on the issues) we just might go fishing.