We win when we unapologetically run on economic and social conservative principles and as strong on defense war hawks that refuse to lose. See 1980, 1984, 1988, 1994-2004 in Congress, 2000 and 2004.

We lose when we water down our message with tax hikes and moderation. See 1992, 1996 and 2006 in Congress.

We win when the Dems are McGovern or perceived as such. See 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988 and 2004. Bill Clinton ran after the Cold War and distanced himself from the far left.

The Dems running for the '08 nomination are trying to see who is the most McGovern like.

The 2006 Year Six election was unique and is not translatable to an election of a new commander in chief in a time of war. Americans do not pick known defeatist appeasers. We picked a commander in chief in 2004 specifically on the issue of war and rejected the Vietnam loser when the issue was joined. In 2006 too many republicans were equivocal on the war and most Dems did not openly oppose victory.

So we need not fear Hillary or any Democrat.

Moreover, there is no evidence that social issues cost the republicans any seat.

Yet many republicans here at Redstate seem to want to return to pre-1980 mode when we lost elections. Many demand we settle for one of the Big Three and that we dare not even closely challenge their views on social issues nor insist upon promises to win our votes.

Hear Investors Business Daily editorialize:

The Presidency: As the race for the White House begins, a sad but inescapable fact emerges: None of the candidates with a serious chance firmly believes in the principles of either Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush.

Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani may have gained national esteem gallantly coordinating the city's response to the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, not to mention comforting the families of thousands of victims. But can a full-fledged supporter of abortion rights and homosexual unions win the Republican Party's nomination without a self-destructive bloodbath?

Will GOP primary voters in the Midwest and the South really pull the lever for a twice-divorced Brooklynite gun-control supporter who dutifully marched in the Big Apple's gay pride parade each year, and who seems to have an odd penchant for attending televised events dressed in drag?

What's more, as columnist Joseph Farah noted last week, Giuliani in 1996 remarked to the New York Post that "Most of (Bill) Clinton's policies are very similar to most of mine."

Giuliani's positions as mayor have indeed been liberal on an array of issues, from amnesty and other leniencies for illegal aliens to opposition to both the Defense of Marriage Act and to banning partial-birth abortion.

Giuliani, who currently leads Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton 48%-43% among U.S. voters, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released last week, has also refused to sign the Americans for Tax Reform's anti-tax increase pledge.

The GOP 2008 presidential candidates who have signed ATR's promise to "oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rates" include former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, Rep. Duncan Hunter of California, and former Virginia Gov. James Gilmore.

But all, even Romney, are viewed as long shots against GOP front-runners Giuliani and Sen. John McCain of Arizona. According to Quinnipiac, "Mitt Romney is nowhere, actually losing to (Democratic Sen. Barack) Obama and (former Democratic Sen. John) Edwards in red states, where voters probably just don't know the former Massachusetts governor."

McCain, of course, voted against Bush's tax cuts during his first term, and in 2000 ran against Bush with what was mocked as a meager "Clinton Lite" tax-cut plan. And in spite of McCain's much-touted opposition to pork barrel spending "earmarks," the Cato Institute's Michael Tanner notes in his new book "Leviathan on the Right" that McCain "has shown a disturbing predilection for elevating every personal pet peeve — from steroids in baseball to airplane service quality — to a federal issue."

As Tanner observes, McCain, Romney, Brownback, and even former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who also is considering running, "all support different variations of big-government conservatism."

For the Republican Party, this is shaping up as an alarming reversal, with disastrous implications.

Viewed in historical context, the nomination and election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 transformed America's political landscape. Reagan was the only president of the 20th century elected as the leader of a political movement.

Control of the GOP had finally been wrenched from its northeastern "dime-store Democrat" wing by conservatives who were intellectually committed to challenging rather than containing Soviet expansionism, lowering taxes, cutting government and fighting the erosion of traditional moral values.

Reagan, and now Bush, may have fallen short in some of these areas of policy, especially taming big government. But again and again they both boldly succeeded in going against the political grain in Washington — and were both handily re-elected.

Reagan dug us out of a near-depression with income-tax cuts that in 1980 were considered as economically foolish as they were politically impossible. Then he won the Cold War.

Bush has remarkably protected the homeland from attack for more than five years, and he's the first president to face reality on the disaster that awaits the country if we refuse to use private investment to reform entitlement programs such as Social Security.

The challenges ahead require a president who believes deeply in those principles. Right now, that candidate is nowhere in sight.

But let's look at Reagan's Secret Formula:

I'm about to commit speechwriter sacrilege and reveal the secret formula to all of Ronald Reagan’s most powerful speeches.

But first, let’s address the elephant in the room: conservatives’ lugubrious mood heading into the 2008 presidential election. Ask yourself this question: which Republican delivered the last speech you watched or read that surged with spine tingling, foot-stomping excitement while crackling with core conservative values?

No, I mean other than Ronald Reagan.

Was it John McCain, Mitt Romney, or Rudy Giuliani? Probably not. And that’s the point.

Conservatives’ current gloom is, in part, a symptom of a perceived “eloquence gap” among the top Republican presidential contenders. Moreover, it is a sign that somewhere amid the Donkey Party’s 2006 congressional stampede, Republican rhetoric got knocked off-key and is in desperate need of tuning.

Looking across history’s arc of great Republican speeches, one finds that they all contain three key themes—three communicative “pillars”—that when combined create powerful and enduring messages that transcend time.

Read it all at Townhall.

The conservative message is a winner. It wasn't heard in 2006. If it had been heard louder in 2004, Bush would have won 3-4 more states at least.

There has been some sentiment expressed that maybe young voters will vote in larger numbers and that this means the GOP should soft pedal the social issues. Yet, wasn't it Reagan that especially appealed to youth?

Right now, Romney and Hunter best fit the bill. Rudy will never completely fit the bill, but he could make himself acceptable with some rhetorical changes and promises to conservatives not to advance a liberal social agenda, and appoint judges that will uphold the free speech rights of the faithful and uphold the right of the people to govern themselves in their states and not have judges make up federal rights to kill developing lives in the womb.

What must not happen is for social conservatives to dummy up at the behest of Chicken Little Republicans that fear Hillary or any other McGovernite.

Mike Gamecock DeVine @ The Charlotte Observer
"One man with courage makes a majority." - Andrew Jackson
The HinzSight Report
Race 4 2008
The Minority Report