You need to go back to the elections of 1928 and 1932, and come forward from there. In 1928, the Republicans responded to Coolidge's disinterest in another term, by nominating a more liberal candidate--despite the New Deal smears later--Herbert Hoover. Although, late in life, Hoover in reaction to the Roosevelt excesses sounded more Conservative, he was basically a "Liberal," and indeed so described himself when he was appointed Food Czar during World War I by Woodrow Wilson.
After the Roosevelt triumph, and the great turn Left, when Roosevelt betrayed his own Conservative platform and brought known Socialists--as well as some outright Communists--into the Federal Government; the Republican Eastern Establishment pursued a "me too" but more moderately, sort of response. Thus you had the Dewey campaigns in 1940 and 1944, while midwestern Republican Conservatives gnashed their teeth. In 1952, it looked like the Conservatives would capture the nomination with Ohio's Senator Robert A. Taft, but the Eastern Liberals turned to General Eisenhower, and managed to narrowly beat back the challenge with a disasterous deal which put Earl Warren on the Supreme Court.
At first, the Eisenhower Administration seemed to be interested in reaching out to Conservatives, and even put Notre Dame Law School's very Conservative Dean Clarence Manion, on a special commission on intergovernmental relations, intended to study ways to make the Federal Government less intrusive into State matters. But Manion was soon fired for doing his job, at the same time the new Administration shot down the Bricker Amendment, which had been endorsed by two thirds of Congress, and which would have protected our Domestic institutions from any abuse of the Treaty power.
It was during the Eisenhower years that Barry Goldwater emerged, replacing Senator Taft, who died early in the Administration, as the Conservative spokesman among the grass-roots. It was the grass roots organizations--not the party regulars--which made Goldwater's rise possible. And by the time Kennedy was assassinated, Goldwater had pulled about equal to Kennedy in the polls. (That fact is over-looked today, in what followed. But it is a fact, and Conservatives were expecting to win in '64, when a combination of sympathy for the Administration, as a result of the assassination, and a deliberate sabotaging of the ticket by the Eastern Establishment of the Party, shot Godwater down.)
But in the grassroots uprising that won the nomination for Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan got his start. And it was a second wave of grass-roots stirring that won for Reagan in 1980.
The point is obvious. If you are not happy with the way the Republicans are drifting back under the "me too," but a little slower crowd, that ran the party into the ground throughout much of the 20th Century, the answer is in your own hands. Continue to speak out, and encourage others to do so also. We can achieve again, what we have achieved before.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site