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Reagan started us an excellent road to recovery on many fronts.

And Gingrinch with his young Turks made a good start on fiscal restraint and beating back the liberal hordes.

I think the prospects now, after the chastening of the GOP by the cynical voters of '06 who wanted back their pre-Bush GOP (at the very least) opens new prospects for conservatives.

We no longer have to tremble that even a Dim majority in Congress will result in gun control. And no one ten years ago could have predicted the great victories we've secured in CCW legislation at the state level. And the Second is now defended by many liberal voters who have decided they'd rather have a handgun if they need one. We even have a few Blue Dogs like Shuler and Tester who look like strong defenders of the Second though they haven't been put to the test yet. Our renewal of the Tiahrt amendment is expected to sail through, stymieing the Bloomberg/Brady Bunch agenda.
We have begun work on our border fence, enough that the Dims will almost be forced to complete it. And the states are themselves starting to move on the illegals issue, frightening the worthless Congress that they are becoming irrelevant on the issue.
The shamnesty fight was a sheer victory of Americans over their own government. Both parties were trembling in their boots at the people's bipartisan accord on that issue. For once, the people spoke and we made them listen and we as a people put the fear of the voter into the congresscritters and reminded them who they represent. We reminded them of what it was like for their careers in both parties when they let Carter shaft us on the Panama Canal, something that we made them all pay for for years to come.
The impotent Left continues to fume but remain powerless to force their party to do more than stage silly all-nighters in the Senate while their poll numbers drop to 13%, far worse than the GOP Congress of 2006 which at least held at 24% even with the war going badly and with Rumsfeld at the helm of the war effort.
The Court is giving signs on abortion of moving the issue back to the states and finally allowing its regulation, something Roe promised but which never happened in practice.

You could point to many more small but important examples. The movement back toward states' rights is a key to our future success. And there are signs the American people have reached the limits of their patience with these dark-of-night bipartisan stabs-in-the-back of issues they care about.

The momentum for conservatives is still with us. We merely suffer a crisis of leadership, a crisis of confidence. And a pack in Congress who'd rather listen to the president's ideas about shamnesties and such rather than listen to the voters. That's changing. We will manage to eject the Hagelmonster and possibly Goober Graham from the Senate in their primaries in the spring. We have many other opportunities this year to remind them who they work for.

I'd like to see the GOP house and senate return to the roots {pre-1996} That got them elected. There was a major power coup within the party around late 95 early 96 and it hasn't been the same since. Some of it involved Newt although Newt gave cause to be booted. It likely involved N.E. Republicans though the long held home of Liberal Republicans.

Two names stick out especially in my mind Bill Paxon and his wife Susan Malanori. Both were NY state congress critters. Susan was part of the 1996 Convention Charade remember? By that time the GOP was trying to sell us Liberal Lite in the Bob Dole Snake Oil Show? It happened that quick and is a lot of the reason the damage Clinton was doing went unchecked especially on such matters as military cutbacks. The GOP had a sitting majority for 6 of Clinton's 8 years in office.

In the senate side it was Lott who was brokering deals that never needed to be made and a much more political savvy person than me caught on to it early on. It was Lotts former friend Paul Weyrich who began saying there was a sell out underway. Again IIRC this also was before the 1996 elections. The GOP became everything we elected them not to be.

I think part of the problem was they mistakenly thought that since Democrats jumped the fence to help put the GOP in power that people wanted a Liberal GOP. No they went to the GOP because the DEM Party was too liberal. Most were what can best be described as Wallace Democrats which were Conservatives with no place left to go. A sizable other portion were the Joneses type Democrats who crossed the party to become Republicans because it was the thing to do at the time. They found refuge with the Rockefeller wing of the GOP and have remained there. That is mostly the Rudy for POTUS crowd. Thus the reason you hear some very liberal ideas coming from supposedly Republicans. That's just my take on it though.