Actually, since the 1930s this country has been liberal, with an ever-growing Washington (continuing the accomplished-fact sequence toward a de facto unitary nation rather than the federal republic designed by the Constitution), and Reagan and Bush only braked this trend.

What we're seeing now with the Democrats is either brutal cynical exploitation of the current state of affairs and misreading of the public (or testing it to its limits) with the idiotic rushing to gross overreach we've been treated to so far (the global-warming-lunacy climate nonsense; the “stimulus” that is as dysfunctional or more so than the GOP has been; the health care idiocy, complete with “crisis” [sic] lies and hysteria; rushing in a _truly_ childish way to be stupid and self-destructive) or truly vacuous conceit.

The Democrats are the problem, and have been so since the ill-conceived “stimulus” with ever greater threats to the public and to the economy to date.

As for the _real_ problems with the GOP and US conservatism, the GOP is simply dysfunctional as well as infighting and facing demographic problems (traditional network media audiences are greater in size and scope than professed Republicans nowadays), and conservatism needs to present itself as a positive and attractive alternative, even if that is in the sense of relief and reform compared to the Dem disasters. And of course nothing the GOP or conservatives wish to argue will ever be presented honestly by the liberal media, once more giving the GOP a “stacked deck” or “tilted playing field” (which only the sick deny).