CAN THIS PARTY BE SAVED?

Republicans in Washington did not abandon their principles lightly.
When they embraced "compassionate conservatism," when they started
spending like Democrats, most of them didn't claim to suddenly love
big government.

No, they were just being practical. The party's strategists explained
that the small-government mantra didn't cut it with voters anymore.
Forget eliminating the Department of Education -- double its budget
and expand its power. Stop complaining about middle-class
entitlements -- create a new one for prescription drugs. Instead of
obsessing about government waste, bring home the bacon.

But as long as we're being practical, what do Republicans have to
show for their largess? Passing the drug benefit and the No Child
Left Behind Act gave them a slight boost in the polls on those
issues, but not for long. When voters this year were asked in a New
York Times/CBS News Poll which party they trusted to handle education
and prescription drugs, the Republicans scored even worse than they
did before those bills had been passed.

Meanwhile, they've developed a new problem: holding the party
together. As Ryan Sager argues in his new book, "The Elephant in the
Room," the G.O.P. is sacrificing its future by breaking up the
coalition that brought it to power.

A half-century ago, during the Republicans' days in the wilderness, a
National Review columnist named Frank Meyer championed a strategy
that came to be known as fusionism. He appealed to traditionalist
conservatives to work with libertarians. It wasn't an easy sell. The
traditionalists wanted to rescue America from decadence, while the
libertarians just wanted be left alone to pursue their own happiness
- -- which often sounded to the traditionalists like decadence.

Meyer acknowledged the fears that libertarianism could lead to
"anarchy and nihilism," but he also saw the dangers of
traditionalists' schemes for moral regeneration.

"If the state is endowed with the power to enforce virtue," he wrote,
"the men who hold that power will enforce their own concepts as
virtuous." The path to both freedom and virtue was the fusionist
compromise: smaller government.

The coalition started with Barry Goldwater but persevered to elect
Ronald Reagan and take over Congress. But then Republicans' faith in
small government waned, partly because they discovered the perks of
incumbency, and partly because they were outmaneuvered by Bill
Clinton, who took their ideas (welfare reform, a balanced budget) and
embarrassed them during the government shutdown of 1995.

The shutdown didn't permanently traumatize the public. In poll after
poll since then, respondents have preferred smaller government and
fewer services. But the experience scared Republicans so much that
they became big-government conservatives.

Soccer moms were promised social programs; the religious right got
moral rhetoric and cash for faith-based initiatives. Meyer's warnings
about enforcing virtue were forgotten, along with the traditional
Republican preference for states' rights. It became a federal
responsibility to preach sexual abstinence to teenagers and stop
states from legalizing euthanasia, medical marijuana and, worst of
all, gay marriage.

Big-government conservatism has helped bring some votes to the
G.O.P., particularly in the South. But as Sager writes: "It's not as
if the Republican Party could do much better in the South at this
point; it's not really the ideal region to which to pander."

The practical panderer should look West -- not to the Coast, which is
reliably blue, but to the purple states in the interior. Sager notes
that a swing of just 70,000 votes in Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico
would have cost Bush the last election, and that he lost ground in
the Southwest between 2000 and 2004.

The interior West is growing quickly, thanks to refugees from
California seeking affordable housing. These Westerners have been
voting Republican in presidential elections, but have also gone for
Democratic governors. They tend to be economic conservatives and
cultural liberals. They've legalized medical marijuana in Nevada,
Colorado and Montana. They're more tolerant of homosexuality than
Southerners are, and less likely to be religious.

They're suspicious of moralists and of any command from Washington,
whether it's a gun-control law or an educational mandate. In Colorado
and Utah, they've exempted themselves from No Child Left Behind.

They're small-government conservatives who would have felt at home in
the old fusionist G.O.P. But now they're up for grabs, just like the
party's principles.