Now you’re getting to the real question. Do we agree on enough common principles to have a coherent platform, or are we all pulling in separate directions? Personally, I want to take the party (I’m not saying take it back, because I don’t think we ever really had it) for the principles of gradually paring the federal government back to abiding by the Constitutional strictures that were supposed to limit it, of reducing government’s intrusion into the personal lives of the citizens, and of being responsive to the views of the people (within the limits of constitutionality). I call this “traditional American values” rather than conservative, libertarian, or any other ideologically-loaded terms.
Do away with them all?