Just a quick observation - there has been lately a lot of talk about how conservatives are better suited to tough political streetfighting and dirty tactics. I believe they start from a structural advantage: they see the world as a permanent vale of sin: humankind and its institutions are inherently corrupt for them. Your hands are already dirty and you only can be pragmatic in your actions and get what is possible and not what is perfect. So why not cynically manipulate morally corrupt masses and subvert in case deeply imperfect institutions? Not many things connect modern free market and/or fundamentalist conservatives to their past but this attitude does. Lord Salisbury would have preferred different ends but his idea of popular politics and necessary means is not far removed from Karl Rove's.
With liberals you start from the idea of perfectability and faith in progress and reason: in the betterment of humankind. Yes, most politicians and some activists will develope varying degrees of pragmatism but their very principles advocate against overt cynicism and manipulation. I am not at all sure that there is an easy way out this dilemma. Whatever we do, we simply can't sink to the level of Karl Rove and other right wing extremists without surrendering the positions we try to defend.