Agreed. IMHO, the ONLY thing that will change the direction of the country is if the electorate becomes more engaged. As you probably know, roughly half of eligible voters in the country don't even make the effort to vote. I submit MOST of them are conservative, even if they don't realize it. What would get them to the polls? Somehow getting the primary powers back to state and local governments would go a long way in making that happen I suspect.
To be sure, the TEA Party groups, if they are to remain a force, will have to resist the natural urge to splinter via single issue politics and continue to coalesce around the larger goal of reining in the federales.
Fiscal conservatism, if employed, will naturally result in social conservatism. We can’t expect to use the gov’t to dictate sexual behavior or even reproductive decisions, but if the gov’t is no longer a tool for liberals to bludgeon us with with decadence and death then their leverage disipates. Conservatism is the natural state, liberalism keeps decadence alive with our tax dollars. If we shrink gov’t, abhorent behavior no longer has a source of support in the public arena.