The future is in finding actual conservatives. McCain was not a conservative and that could not energize the base. Bush was certainly not fiscally conservative or amazingly irresponsible. He didn’t veto any budgets or anything for that matter for years. People expect the government to spend it, like it was their own. That’s hard because everyone would spend the money on something different, that’s why we have representatives. But in all cases Republicans need to stand for fiscal responsibility. We need to fight for balanced budgets at every level of government.

Republicans need to continue to stand for military strength. No Republic can stand without military strength. The world will test Obama, because they believe he will be passive. All indications are that he will be. That said, Americans understand that their safety comes first and they expect their government to protect them. I believe Republicans will continue to hold an advantage on this issue moving into the mid-term elections. This includes securing our borders and coming up with a responsible way allow immigrants to come to this country and become citizens.

Social moderation, I believe will help the Republican Party. While I believe in traditional conservative values, I don’t believe it’s the place of the government to try to enforce those values and certainly not a Federal level. The party needs to take the focus off these issues, while staying to true to their values. That is a hard balance to achieve. Also traditional values are supported by Latinos as seen in the recent CA voting.

Energy Independence needs to be a focus of the future vision of the party. This is where McCain desperately failed to take advantage of a key issue that made him different from Liberals and the masses of people were on his side. Even with oil prices dropping energy is a key issue both for the economy and our security. We need to support more local drilling, more fuel choices, clean coal and nuclear – That all of the above approach. It can be done responsibly and has the support of the American people.

I think the Republican Party should champion extreme tax reform and the elimination of federal income tax. This is an issue I don’t expect the party to agree with me on. That said, the American people do not agree with the Republican tax plans. The Republican party’s tax plans are seen as favoring the Rich and hurting the poor. Certainly there is some PR work to do here, but elimination of Federal income tax would take this issue off the plate for Liberal to use as a welfare tool on a national level. I have other ideas on how we fairly collect them money but the Party can make some of its own as well.

Smaller federal government should be a key message. That’s a hard sell right now, because that means someone has to loose a program they love. Removing the federal income tax overhead would make big dent in federal spending. There are other areas where true cuts could take place. I think one of this is federal involvement in education. At a local level Republicans need to support education where ever we can, but I do not believe that the federal government can effect change in education from so far away from the classroom.

There are other issues that we can add to this, especially as key issues change. What is not mentioned here is socialized health care. I think Obama will work at this one and we will have to determine our position based on those outcomes. But if you think about small government, socialized medicine doesn’t fit in that picture. Other things like that usually fit in the buckets above.

So who do I like to represent the party? 

There seems to be a lot of support for Bobby Jindal these days. A couple of things I like about him are that he is actually conservative. He does not want to move more moderate to get elected. He supports being fiscally conservative. He also doesn’t support socialized medicine. These are good, and while I think he has reacted well to countering Liberal points of view, I’m not sure I see the vision in him that I would want to see in a President. That could change.

I’ve always like Newt. I’ve always said I would volunteer and support him if he made a run for it. It seems unlikely that it will. While he has the vision we need, I’m not sure he would be able to overcome the history he has in the political process already. That would mostly depend on his desire to fight and take that kind of risk and spend that kind of money. I’m not sure there is enough motivation for him to do that.

My favorite is Mitch Daniels, Governor of Indiana. He has balanced budgets in Indiana and put us in a good financial position. He has worked for job creation relentlessly. He has worked with Democratics effectively and found common ground on social issues with them while being relentless on policy, waste and fiscal issues. I think we really need to put some light on this great Governor on a national level.

Let me know how you think the GOP can come back.