there are four factions in the conservative movement.
free market business conservatives
libertarians
social conservatives (evangelicals)
american hegemony (neocons)
there is some overlap, but mostly they have differing and sometimes incompatible goals. independently, none of them are big enough to win an election.
free market conservatives have lost face with the current Wall Street meltdown. In fact this is the third time that deregulation has had catastrophic results: deregulation of the banking industry lead to the the savings and loan debacle; deregulation of the energy industry lead to Enron; deregulation of the stock market lead to the current problems (which is not because of mortgages, but credit default swaps, which was suppose to be a type of insurance on the mortgages, but really was a pyramid scheme. credit default swaps were possible only because of recent deregulation.)
Bush drove away the libertarians, with the suspension of habeus corpus, phone wiretaps, and torture.
the neocons destroyed themselves with the Iraq war.
that leaves the evangelicals in firm control of the Republican party. Sarah Palin is now their standard bearer. They cannot win a national election on their own.
