I basically tend to agree with what Old Regular posted in his posts on this thread.
For the most part, it seems to me that during the primary election season, the conservative and/or libertarian wing(s) of the GOP will play to those voters who are willing to at least take the time to vote.
However, as the GOP has experienced over the past several decades, as time draws nearer to the general election in the fall, these conservative and/or liberation candidates tend to face either the outright disrespect of its "Liberal Establishment 'King Makers'" or their overt and ill-advised desire to "throw these candidates 'under the bus.'"
Ever since the early 1900's it seems that this has been the fate of most of the GOP conservative and/or libertarian 'Standard Bearers.'"
The only exception to this that I can recall might be that of the accession of Calvin Coolidge to the Presidency in 1923--and that was only because the weak-kneed and quite sickly incumbent, Warren G. Harding died in office.
Coolidge's successor, Herbert C. Hoover [served as POTUS from 1929 - 1933] was a bit more conservative than his Democrat opponent Al Smith, but not very much.
Hoover never completely divorced himself from the utopian and ill-advised concept of a one-world government where people could depend on their national government(s) to help them "lift themselves up by their 'bootstraps.'"
The 1929 stock market crash and the successive "Great Depression" were the principal factors that led to Hoover's 1932 election defeat.
His successor to the Presidency, Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt [who himself was for many years an employee of a New York bank!] for the most part, merely a pawn in the hands of the group of American and European bankers.
His "Great Deal" programs that were "ramrodden" through Congress did very little to relieve the average American worker's bleak economic situation; in fact, it may have actually hurt many members of our nation's workforce.
Some of them were just about to arise out of their financial misery (in large part brought on by the removal of our nation's gold-based banking standard and the rather illegal and outright unconstitutional confiscation of much our nation's individuals' "Gold Certificates.), when the 1937 "Great Slump" practically devastated these poor souls' financial situation.
During that period of time, the GOP promoted a series of "me-too" Presidential candidates such as Al Landon, Wendell Wilkie, and Thomas Dewey. For the most part, all three of them adhered to the very same liberal ideals that were made popular by the very left-leaning works of John Kenneth Galbraith [1908-2006].
Even after Truman managed to squeak by with a narrow election victory in 1948--due primarily by an otherwise very divided Democrat Party--the GOP "Establishment" still favored Gen. Eisenhower over the more conservative Robert Taft ,Jr. [Taft was the son of President Robert Taft {served as POTUS from 1906-1917} and, during the 1920's ,was our nation's Supreme Court Chief Justice.].
Eisenhower tried to pursue a more politically moderate stance in both domestic and foreign policy issues than that of his 1952 and 1956 Presidential rival, Democrat Adlai Stevenson--but not by very much.
The 1960 POTUS race saw GOP Richard Nixon go down in defeat (by a very narrow margin) in many states. Nixon's policies were, for the most part, much the same as Eisenhower's were.
In 1964 the Democrats won by a considerable margin in both the POTUS race and in both houses in Congress. Much of that was because Lyndon Johnson played to the voters' sympathies over the loss of JFK by assassination--something that hadn't happened to a sitting President in 62 years.
Moreover, in 1964 most of the GOP "Establishment" distanced themselves from the national Goldwater-Miller ticket. In many states, the "Establishment" failed to support their candidacy with much-needed financial and personnel support.
In 1968, Nixon achieved a narrow victory over Democrat Hubert Humphrey because: [1] The Democrats were again divided; and [2] Most of the nation was tired of LJB's "no-win" war policies that he implemented in the various military conflicts in South East Asia.
During his 1968 campaign, Nixon claimed to have developed a so-called "Secret Policy" to finally end the Vietnam Conflict. Whatever that mysterious policy might have been (if, in fact, there every actually was one in the first place!), he never seemed to be able to successfully put it into practice.
When Nixon resigned in August, 1974, he was replaced by Gerald Ford. While Ford tried his best to put a stop to the galloping increase in our nation's rate of monetary inflation (due primarily to Nixon's poorly-advised system of wage- and price-controls that were placed on just about every form of economic goods and/or services), he was never very successful at it.
Then, too, Americans in general were tired of the seemingly never-ending series of armed conflicts that were never resolved--even after more than 20 years of our nation's involvement.
Ford, and his running-mate Governor Nelson Rockefeller, never overcame the sense of (as President Carter once called it) "malaise," that the US economy felt, due mostly to very high interest rates on consumer and business loans and a corresponding low rate of savings by our nation's wage earners (thus creating a sort of "Catch-22" situation that made it nearly impossible for our financial institutions to even make loans in the first place!).
In 1980, Ronald Reagan won in a landslide, and even help the GOP recover a slim majority in the US Senate (something that hadn't happened for over 25 years!).
But it took over two whole years for our economy to regain a more optimistic outlook, and, in many cases, what jobs were created were not the high-paying ones that we had long hoped for.
In 1984 and 1988, George H.W. Bush served as President, but he was much more of an "Internationalist" than he first admitted to being. (Remember the "New-World Order" he announced had been formed just prior to the "First Gulf War" in 1990?)
Bill Clinton won the Presidency in 1992 primarily due to both the downturn in the economy and (in the eyes of most conservative and/or libertarian voters) a "gnawing distrust" of "Bush Senior."
The GOP miserably failed in the Presidential elections of 1996 and 2008 because, for the voting populace as a whole, we never got very excited over the haphazard and rather poorly coordinated campaigns of Robert Dole or John McCain.
Our current "Dictator-In-Chief" tried to present a more optimistic alternative with his notions of "Hope and Change." Although he did manage to win in both 2008 and 2012, we really haven't seen much hope as a result of his very socialist policies, which, IMHO, only leaves us poor folks with an increasing desire for real change!!
Whether or not we manage to reverse the tide of "Gloom and Doom" here in America, only time will tell.
For my part, I certainly hope that real change will come about sooner rather than later!!
I'm quite sure that most of us out here in "BB Land" would agree with me on that!!
