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Conservatives have too much invested in the GOP to throw it all away. It is, after all, the party of Goldwater, Reagan and Thompson. When things looked darkest for the party, Barry Goldwater in his day and Fred Thompson 44 years later never considered - not for even a brief moment - turning away from it. Nor did Ronald Reagan, who went one step further. On February 6, 1977, he spoke to conservatives gathered for the 4th Annual CPAC Convention and not only rejected the notion of abandoning the Grand Old Party, but shared his vision of a New Republican Party:

What will be the political vehicle by which the majority can assert its rights?

I have to say I cannot agree with some of my friends -- perhaps including some of you here tonight -- who have answered that question by saying this nation needs a new political party.

I respect that view and I know that those who have reached it have done so after long hours of study. But I believe that political success of the principles we believe in can best be achieved in the Republican Party. I believe the Republican Party can hold and should provide the political mechanism through which the goals of the majority of Americans can be achieved. For one thing, the biggest single grouping of conservatives is to be found in that party. It makes more sense to build on that grouping than to break it up and start over. Rather than a third party, we can have a new first party made up of people who share our principles. I have said before that if a formal change in name proves desirable, then so be it. But tonight, for purpose of discussion, I’m going to refer to it simply as the New Republican Party...

Our party must be the party of the individual. It must not sell out the individual to cater to the group. No greater challenge faces our society today than ensuring that each one of us can maintain his dignity and his identity in an increasingly complex, centralized society.

Extreme taxation, excessive controls, oppressive government competition with business, galloping inflation, frustrated minorities and forgotten Americans are not the products of free enterprise. They are the residue of centralized bureaucracy, of government by a self-anointed elite.

Our party must be based on the kind of leadership that grows and takes its strength from the people. Any organization is in actuality only the lengthened shadow of its members. A political party is a mechanical structure created to further a cause. The cause, not the mechanism, brings and holds the members together. And our cause must be to rediscover, reassert and reapply America’s spiritual heritage to our national affairs.

Then with God’s help we shall indeed be as a city upon a hill with the eyes of all people upon us.

Conservatives are understandably disgusted with how moderates have let the GOP drift far off the course that Reagan charted for it. Some have opined that the Republican Party has outlived its usefulness and that it's time to start that new party. They are only half right. We have seen numerous third parties formed, but none have had much of an impact in the modern era, with the exception of Ross Perot's venture into political pary building. And we all know how that turned out.
The trouble with third parties is infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure. It takes a lot of time and treasure to build a third party, and you end up with an infrastructure which is still inferior to that of the GOP. Winning a national election with a third party is just a pipe dream, and even winning any significant number of state and local offices through a third party is an extremely difficult proposition.
What is needed is a third party which is structurally independent of the Republican Party, yet still operationally connected to it - a third party which isn't really a third party. Such a political animal exists. It is the Conservative Party of New York State - CPNYS.

CPNYS was born in 1962 when Empire State conservatives became fed up with the liberalism of New York's Republican Party, controlled as it was by the Nelson Rockefeller wing of the GOP. National Review's William F. Buckley and his brother James were both Conservative Party candidates, with Bill running unsuccessfully for mayor of New York City in 1965 and James winning election to the U.S. Senate in 1970.

CPNYS endorses Republican candidates for office, but only those candidates it deems to be sufficiently conservative. The Conservative Party witholds its support for GOP candidates it believes to be too liberal, as it consistently did whenever Rudy Giuliani ran for public office. In this way, CPNYS has a considerable influence over the Republican Party in New York State. Consider this: No Republican has won statewide office in New York without Conservative Party support in the last 33 years.

Now that's a track record many conservative organizations would love to be able to boast of. And there's no shortage of such organizations which try to exert a conservative influence over the GOP. But none has been able to match the success of the Conservative Party of New York State.

Now imagine, if you will, a functional Conservative Party in each of the other 49 states with the New York party as the model for the others...

http://reaganconservativejournal.blogspot.com/2008/01/why-save-gop.html