Conservatives today are in essentially the same position that the radical Left was in back in the Sixties. Then, every institution in American society -- the "Establishment" in Sixties jargon -- was socially and temperamentally conservative. The radicals found themselves with nowhere to go but the streets. Today's "Establishment" is uniformly leftist, and conservatives are as unwelcome in the halls of power today as the radical Left was 45 years ago. In order to move forward, conservatives are going to need to do what the Left did in 1968: begin in the streets, capture a political party and convert it to its agenda, and follow up in the courts when they lose elections.
Even more important, conservatives are going to have to learn to exploit national crises to advance their agenda. And surely these crises are coming -- the national debt, currency valuation, inflation, Iranian nuclear weapons, illegal immigration, a day of reckoning in Afghanistan, and so on.
Voters will demand alternatives to Leftist policies when these crises appear. If the Republicans do not present conservative alternatives, Conservatives will have to form a party of their own.
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