[RedElement]

Since when do I need to ask anyone for forgiveness for being conservative?

Given the tens of millions dead in the last 125 yrs from leftist ideas, they should be asking us for forgiveness.

[Captain Peter Blood]

She didn't say Conservatives, she said Republicans. Very Big difference.
Conservatism in the Republican party is more recent than an ongoing philosophy of the mainstream Republican Party.
The Republican Party for most of it's existence going back to it's roots as a Alexander Hamilton creation,then as the Whig Party. It's always been one for Big Central Government.
The Conservative movement starting with William F. Buckley, Jr. and The National Review magazine in the 1950’s resulting in the election of Ronald Reagan was, in my opinion, the high point of Conservatism in the Republican Party.
Witness the lousy candidates since Reagan, all of them Liberal Republicans.
Conservatives never will gain control of the Republican Party, it's a pipe dream.
We are the minority there and always will be.
That in a nutshell is the reason for a new Third Party, one of and for Conservatism.