Name a compelling "true" conservative candidate with wide appeal since 1988???
If many feel this way, then I would recommend the Conservatives form their own party. The RATS did, they just never changed their name from the Democrat to Social Democrat party.
The way to win elections now is to collaborate with the moderates which is now about 40% of the populace? Neither party can win without them. Perot went after them and Clinton won because it was done the opposite way.
Form a party, have a platform and send the message to the moderates. If we believe that our message is the right one, then they will come on board.
We are no longer Republicans and there are no longer Democrats. Only Conservatives, Liberals and Moderates.
Great Presidents have the ability to communicate and to inspire America. That is how Ronald Reagan transformed an America curled up in the fetal position after Jimmy Carter into to the future "Hyper-power" that America became and was up until two years or three years ago.
Bush has failed miserably as a communicator.
Lincoln's list of military disasters, one on the heels of the other, (First Bull Run, The Seven Days, Second Bull Run, Chancellorsville, Fredericksburg) literally fill entire history books. Yet, Lincoln had the leadership qualities to communicate to the nation why final victory must be achieved.
From Katrina to Iraq, Bush has allowed the Democrat Copperheads to falsely communicate to the nation that he has utterly failed and Bush has done very little to defend himself.
I live in an extremely liberal town on the Left Coast and, after Katrina, a liberal coworker started going off on how Bush had totally failed during Katrina. I calmly explained to her about storm surge phenomenon, about New Orleans being under sea level, about the levees being rated to withstand a Category 3 storm, about Katrina being predicted as a Category 5 storm, about the Southern Louisiana Evacuation Plan and how that plan was totally ignored by the Democrat Mayor of New Orleans and the Democrat Governor of Louisiana leaving tens of thousands of low income people stranded in a death trap as hundreds of buses stayed parked in neat rows instead of being used as the Evacuation Plan stated they should be used.
Three days later, my liberal coworker stated she had Googled the issue on the Internet, thanked me for the information, stated that I had opened up her eyes to the truth of the matter and stated that what those Democrats had dome was inexcusable. .
Communicating the truth about Katrina to the American public about Katrina was not my job.
It was the President's job.
However, George W. Bush has yet to do that communicating and it has being his failure to do so in regards to Katrina and in regards to the strategic disaster that an Iraq bug-out will bring that has now given us a Democrat Congress and a demoralized Home Front that may very well lose America a strategecally vital war that, by any historical standard, has already been won.
You may be "the President's best friend" but my Number One loyalty is not to Bush or to any President. My Number One loyalty is to America and Bush's pathetic job in using the Bully Pulpit to inspire and lead America as Lincoln and Reagan did has cost America dearly.
And you think GW Bush is a conservative?