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It starts with you.

How involved are you with the party locally? Do you attend precinct meetings? Do you work with your local party to recruit conservative candidates? Do you know who the power players are in your area?

Money is spent/allocated from the national party on numbers alone and understand that loyalty demands that barring scandal, they will always back the incumbent. If they don't support your candidate financially the local backers must do it. Despite what you hear out of the msm, money is not always the determiner of who wins. Also, as frustrating as it is, the majority will also win when it comes to candidates, so if someone other than your candidate wins, you may have to work on convincing folks of your philosophy first. That takes time, effort and diplomacy. Still, it is more efficient to work within the party structure (which is rife with internal politics as well, mind you) than outside of it.

If not involved there, that is where you start. Voting is the general election is the end of the process, not the beginning. If you want influence...you must play within the structure as it stands. If you don't want to be that involved, your biggest chance to influence things comes during the primary. After that, "messages" get very murky.

Yes I am though probably not as much as I could be. The Republican party here in Indiana is pretty conservative and for that I am grateful. I support local candidates financially and with my time, and my wife works the polls for the party. What is frustrating though has been watching the national party become so Dem-lite. I have stopped supporting the national party financially and have told them why both on the phone and by email. I have little belief that they care. I blame those at the top for that. Our President is not a conservative(campaign finance reform, No Child Left Behind & Amnesty are just a few of the issues that come to mind that he has either supported or not fought against) and that attitude filters down I am afraid. His handlers are also not conservatives, but rather big government power brokers who have sold way to many on this site on the idea that big government isn't the problem it is who controls the big government that is important.

I appreciate your thoughtful response, they are rare these days on FR. What was once a site where one could come and expect reasoned discussion on a variety of topics political and otherwise has become a partisan site where those that disagree with the Bush/party line are ridiculed and demeaned. That's too bad.