[OldPossum]

In my mind the Republican Party is already dead. They’ve had more than enough chances. I won’t give a dime or a vote to their candidates again.

[Brandybux]

"In my mind the Republican Party is already dead. "

As an actual opposition party, yes. It's been that way (dead, I mean) for a couple of election cycles. Indeed, it was dead during all eight years of the Bush presidency.

So, what are conservatives gonna do?

Seems to me that political conservatism isn't so much dead as it's infantile. It's never coalesced into a political institution with sufficient discipline and coherence to make a case to the voters.

Here's the only hope for political conservatism that I can see now:

• Dems get their way -- taxes, spending, defense department wiped out, socialism implemented ala Europe's model
• There is a financial crash of proportions as to make the Great Depression look like a business cyle boom
• Accompanying the fiscal crash is a descent into civil chaos similar to what we see in Greece right now
• Finally (and this is the dicey part), the body politic (such as the ability to have elections that are actually respected) survives, and the whole nasty mess gets blamed on the "progressives" while everyone -- virtually everyone -- knows that the political and fiscal conservatives were always correct
• Political/fiscal/social conservatism gets another chance to rebuild out of the ashes

The scenario above doesn't have to be so dramatic and severe as I've sketched it to give conservatives some traction. Most importantly, such a scenario might forge a coherence among conservatives that allows them to be politically effective where heretofore they have never been able to pull that off.

If this doesn't work out that way, who knows what the next several generations are going to experience. I don't think anyone can forecast that.