Unfortunately for us, I think the Republican Party has no intention of ever supporting conservative candidates and that's the lesson for us.
That's all true, and it forecasts a split.
But there's more, and that has to do with the very definition of "conservative".
A brief detour:
About seven years ago, I became chairman of a Christian school that had, unlike a lot of area Christian schools, been able to stay open and to even increase enrollment. My own background is, shall we say, eclectic, but I confess the trinitarian God, the virgin birth, the sufficiency of the sacrifice of the Lamb, the authority of scripture, etc, etc.
Well.
I soon learned that the world that was sufficiently self-identified as "Christian" to shell out $$ for their children's education held no common meaning of the adjective, and that, furthermore, there were many factions, sometimes consisting of only 20-30 people, who held that THEY were the only "Christians" and that everyone else, whose support, encouragement, money, and time were vitally needed to make the enterprise function would have to be put outside the camp, "or else". In all my years of attending many different kinds of churches, I had honestly never come across this before.
It became almost a parody of the famous "Who is a Jew" question. There are lots of opinions, but a workable definition seems to be "if they make you get in the boxcar going to Auschwitz, then, you are a Jew".
Apologies for the detour.
"Who is a conservative?" There are lots of us, about 40% of the voting population, if surveys are right.
Is there a definition? Not if you listen to our various factions. They are very good at narrowing the circle. They are excellent at figuring out that this one, or that one, is NOT a conservative. And, we do have our differences, about many things.
Here's a definition, and a prediction: You are a conservative if, when in your state or locality you have a chance of winning a GOPe figure describes you as an "extremist". You are a conservative if Karl Rove and the Bush family would prefer that a communist win rather than you. If you want to stay with the GOP, THAT'S your future..
Oh, the end of the Christian school story? I figured it out, make the splitters unwelcome, and it turned out that they were expendable, while the vast majority were happy to stay once the splitters were gone. A lesson, maybe, for the movement.
Tea Party in VA did bolo. They used party rules to hold a convention to select a candidate vs a primary. That pissed off the establishment because the convention shut them out. Caused bad feelings. Ironically Rove and company want to propose similar rules to shut out the Tea Party in future primaries. IMHO this internal GOP civil war may cost their ability to win POTUS in 2016 and 2020.