You can't take over the GOP without winning the nomination, and you can't win the nomination with the RNC stacked against conservatives. Not without taking them by surprise, like Ronald Reagan did.
That's not the way I remember it. The cleanup came the nomination and election of course, but much was done prior during the previous primary and afterward.
And, if I accept your premise, you still acknowledge Reagan did it. I don't remember that as a surprise but a multi-year struggle hand-to-hand.
My views here are based on my experience. I've seen and participated in radical change in the party on the local, regional, state and national level. These party positions in a great great many cases are the most insecure one could imagine. I've seen whole scale turnover in less than a week. Perhaps your experience is different, I'm certainly aware that could be the case.
As for a third party, I'm gonna repeat that if you can't do it within the GOP, you can't do it from scratch; anything you can do with a third party you can do easier and quicker within the GOP. All the tasks, tactics and strategy are the same and they're easier to do without having to do everything from scratch completely unknown.
I especially don't see how Obama's election changes anything on its own. He was elected last time too.
Thanks again for your reply.
That is the incorrect premise here. Perot could have done it, had he not turned out to be a whack job. He was in the lead in June, starting from scratch in March. Imagine a conservative Perot, someone with money, strong beliefs, charisma and character. He rides in on a wave of disgust with both parties' candidates. Yes, that person could win, and the way has been shown. Boy did that scare the hell out of the parties, too.
In Reagan's day, there were still some states that didn't have primaries, none of them were open, New Hampshire was conservative, Iowa was conservative, the Northeast states were not marxist, they were split between moderate Republicans and Democrats. The press was liberal but not yet part of the Democrat party. In 1972, Edmund Muskie had to drop out of the Democrat race because he cried. He lost his manhood rights that day. Today, Boehner, the Republican cries if he drops a hot dog. In 1980, there was genuine fear of the Soviet Union with a Carter in the White House. Now, we are the Soviet Union, and the commies are all capitalists.
In 1980, the press didn't mind Reagan because they thought Carter would beat him so easily. He was just so stupid. They know better now, so they made sure to kill off Palin before she could ever be in that position. Same kind of connection to the people.
Reagan had a seasoned group of the nation's best advisors around him. Michael Deaver, the guy who fixed CIA, Jean Kirkpatrick, William Clark, Weinberger, Ed Meese, many others. His kitchen cabinet from California days, people who would raise money and provide advice.
It would be exceedingly difficult to duplicate the help that Reagan had, and impossible to recreate the conditions that allowed him to break through to the nomination against the establishment.
FYI, I worked for a Republican Senator in the early 1980s and I got my sister a job at the RNC, where she worked for about 5 years. I know how it ran back then, and I have watched how it changed since then. The elites learned their lesson, and have not given any conservative a chance since.
If you keep accepting this need to reform from within, our next nominee will be Jeb. Then after that, it will be some other loser. I can't call them RINOs, because it turns out, THEY are the Republicans, not us. Then Christie in '20. Followed by that half-Mexican Bush in 2024. By 2028, we may as well be Mexico.