[andrewwood]

On the conservative side, we have libertarians, socons, neocons,paleocons,and lots of other sorts of cons,who have many divergent but passionately held beliefs. I'm not even sure if their is any unifying core belief, but imho, it is better to have the power to govern and affect the outcome of social policy debate, than to be a shrill pure voice well in the background, to be absolutely right and absolutely irrelevant.

[papertyger]

...imho, it is better to have the power to govern and affect the outcome of social policy debate...

please demonstrate for me how the republicans have allowed the conservative wing to substantively affect the social policy debate.