New polling brings good news and bad news for beleaguered Republicans yearning for a comeback in the Age of Obama.

The encouraging message suggests that Americans strongly prefer conservative policies and values to the liberal approaches preached by the president. On the other hand, the same polls indicate that the two revival strategies most commonly discussed by the GOP will both lead to political dead ends. Neither a shift to more moderate positions nor an emphasis on rousing, uncompromising, us-vs.-them right wing rhetoric will bring Republicans back to power in Washington D.C. The only workable strategy for long-term GOP gains requires a combination of conservative substance and more moderate tone.

First, the good news for endangered elephants: a recent Gallup Poll (August 14) shows that in nearly all 50 states more people identify themselves as conservative than liberal. As the Gallup organization concluded (based on a total of 160,000 interviews with U.S. adults during the first half of 2009): “Conservatives outnumber liberals by statistically significant margins in 47 out of the 50 states, with the two groups statistically tied in Hawaii, Vermont and Massachusetts.” Even in Massachusetts, the most liberal state in the union according to the polling, only 29% associated themselves with the label worn so proudly by their late Senator Ted Kennedy. By contrast, in the most conservative states (Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Utah, South Carolina) more than 45% defined themselves as “very conservative” or “conservative.”

Nationwide, the preference for the conservative brand persists, even in the midst of Democratic triumphs at the ballot box. In the election of 2008, with Barack Obama winning a convincing margin of nearly 7% of the popular vote, exit polling actually showed a landslide victory of 12% for self-identified conservatives over liberals who showed up to vote (34% to 22%). If anything, the ideological rightward tilt has intensified since the election, with steadily increasing numbers for those Americans who describe themselves as “pro life” or opponents of “big government” and deficit spending. In this context, it’s no surprise that the most “progressive” elements of President Obama’s health care reform have run into stubborn and mounting opposition.

Obviously, the clearly expressed ideological preferences of the American public offer powerful opportunities to battered Republicans to recoup their losses and restore their fortunes but the bad news from the pollsters invalidates the two most frequently mentioned strategies for achieving that renewal.

First, there’s no evidence at all that it would help the GOP to moderate its positions on issues or in any way turn away from the conservative label, as suggested by numerous moderate Republican leaders (former Governor Christie Todd Whitman of New Jersey, Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine, and Senator Arlen Spector of Pennsylvania –before he switched to the Democrats) . The numbers show, in fact, that conservatism remains vastly more popular than Republicanism. As Gallup reports: “While voters in all 50 states are, to some degree, more conservative than liberal (with the conservative advantage ranging from 1 to 34 points), Gallup’s 2009 party ID results indicate that Democrats have significant party ID advantages in 30 states and Republicans in only 4.” Three crucial swing states (Ohio, Indiana and North Carolina--all carried by Barack Obama) highlight the problem for the GOP. In all three states, conservatives decisively outnumber liberals (by margins of 21, 21 and 20%, respectively) while Democrats clearly outnumber Republicans (by 14, 10 and 12%). To renew the party in these must-win GOP states and around the country, the Republicans need to identify themselves more clearly with conservative positions and values, not less so.

This recognition leads to the other commonly expressed formula for reviving the Republican Party: a new emphasis on tough-minded, unwavering, hyper-partisan, take-no-prisoners affirmations of the party’s unequivocal right wing orientation. According to nearly all my talk radio colleagues (led, as always, by the great Rush Limbaugh), this sort of full-throated call to arms would mobilize the party’s base and bring victory by appealing to the nation’s permanent conservative majority.

Unfortunately, that much-heralded majority doesn’t exist – not even in the most reliably conservative states. According to Gallup’s 50 state survey, Alabama and Mississippi – the two states with the highest percentage of self-described conservatives – still show conservative identification just under 50%. In other words, even in the most right-leaning states in the union, even assuming the impossible goal of persuading every single conservative to vote Republican, the GOP would still need some moderate support to win.

Nationwide, the importance of moderates is even more apparent: yes, conservatives greatly outnumbered liberals in the election of 2008, but the number of self-described “moderates” dwarfed both the other groups (44% , compared to 34% and 22%). Moderates predominated even more conspicuously during the Bush re-election triumph of 2004 (comprising 45% of all voters). Commentators who suggest that John McCain lost in 2008 because conservatives stayed home should confront the actual numbers: 34% of voters called themselves “conservative” in both the Bush victory of 2004 and the McCain loss of 2008. Since the percentage of eligible voters who turned out remained virtually identical in the two elections (despite the discredited myth of a huge surge in participation to support Obama) there is no evidence whatever that dispirited conservatives stayed home. Continued...