Nobody said that. But since you bring it up, it is the current plan that will put us in the political wilderness for 40 years. We can't out-socilist the socialists. The "we're slightly less sociailist than the socialists" platform is not a winner.
For 40 years the GOP was run by guys like nixon (price controls, welfare) and liberals in the congress like Bob Michael and Bob Dole. It was Reagan, followed up by the strong conservative platform in 1994 that brought about the GOP rise to power. Now, you would seem to suggest that it is socialism-lite that the GOP needs to do if it doesn't want to be in the political wilderness. I don't buy it. If you were alive at the time, I'll bet you voted for Ford in the '76 primary and Bush in the 80 primary because "Reagan can't win, he's too conservative".
let's not fool ourselves, this "anger" is coming from the social conservatives. sure, there is some dis-satisfaction over government spending, earmarks, etc. but that is not the main emphasis of the "anger" that all these articles are describing - the socons don't want to lose their veto power over the Republican party, that's the bottom line. and it doesn't matter to them that their votes alone cannot win elections, they still expect the party to be litmus test pure to them, or they will splinter off.