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The question is how one defines victory and whether that definition is broader than simply hoping for the election of people with R's next to their name regardless of what, if anything, they actually do in office. I agree that a lot of young conservatives are too cavalier about the consequences of unified Democratic government, especially at a time when the Democratic Party is more homogeneously liberal than it has ever been. I'm from Massachusetts -- I know one-party liberal Democratic rule and Republican minorities very well. It is a political development best avoided. But it is undeniable that conservatives have won by losing before: the Goldwater debacle of 1964, Gerald Ford's loss being followed by Ronald Reagan's victory, and George H.W. Bush's defeat being followed by 1994.

Should conservatives have accepted Rockefeller Republicanism and tried to move it in the right direction? Some influential conservatives at the time, like James Burnham, thought so. And the answer was by no means as clear then as it seems in retrospect: the 1964 LBJ landslide took out a lot of congressional Republicans, paving the way for disastrous Great Society liberalism. At least some of these Republicans might have survived with Nelson Rockefeller at the top of the ticket. The GOP recovered somewhat in 1966, electing one Ronald Reagan governor of California, and liberalism went totally mad in 1968.

Conservatives and Republicans would profit from a certain amount of house cleaning. The challenge is to avoid throwing the baby out with the bathwater. That and to avoid mixing metaphors.