This is going to be short.  It is not going to be sweet.  It is by, for and to principled, politically active conservatives.  You know who you are.  It is for those who are hurt, confused and angry over a Republican Party that is without leadership, without ideas, without backbone, without principle (desperation is not a principle).  You know who you are.

The Republican Party, it appears, currently doesn’t know who or what it is.  Some of its principals (not to be confused with principles) believe they must listen and learn to lead.  But true leaders start by tirelessly articulating a courageous and consistent vision based on sound principle and integrity, and the followers take care of themselves.  We are way beyond the potential of Group Hugs to fix a party that lost its way and is now buying bad maps from the wrong people.

Those wrong people, as helpful to those who are listening to them as Bernie Madoff was to those who invested with him, are selling fraud to the Republican political class, which sold its own share of fraud way beyond the tipping point.

Republicans who professed to be conservatives for the sole purpose of holding public office betrayed conservative principles and got kicked to the curb, which got blamed on conservatism by all but conservatives, the death of conservatism being desired by all but conservatives.  Then the wrong people began selling liberalism as the sure-fire solution to regaining national Republican political power.

Since the single-minded quest for personal political power is a greater motivation than principle to  many of the political class, enough of them are being seduced to reduce the Republican Party to, as pollster Scott Rasmussen so succinctly puts it, “irrelevance.”  That would mean irrelevant to the conservative constituency on which the party depends and thus irrelevant to realistic discussions of regaining political power.

The political concept of “big tent” is different from the circus concept of “big tent,” although the latter seems to be currently dominant, albeit with an overabundance of overfilled clown cars, high wire acts gone missing.

Big tents require big, strong poles (not big polls), and the Republican Party has been, mostly, turning out wisp-in-the-wind saplings.  Forget Ronald Reagan?  How can we when there’s only this bunch for comparison?

Make no mistake about it.  Conservatives – and Republicans – are going to trample the national wilderness for a while, at least until the 2010 midterm elections.  Republican politicians face a far worse fate if they do not quickly recognize that the political wilderness is just like nature’s own:  It either builds you or kills you.

Politically active conservatives have but a simple message to be delivered to Republican politicians:  You’re either the party of principled conservatism or you’re something else.  We’re not interested in something else.  You can either keep listening to the wrong people, or you can quickly count us – in or out.