Did anyone else notice how relieved Bush looked the day after election day? His press conference that day was about as good as he's been since he became president. The reason, I think, is that conservatives don't want to be in charge of the American government. They think government is evil and, when they're in charge of it, I agree.
It hasn't always been like this.
At the end of the 19th Century the Republican Party was the party of the Northeast. They were the party of prohibition and the abolition of slavery. They were the party of big business in the gilded age but that changed with the election of William McKinley as president and Teddy Roosevelt as vice-president in 1896. As the party's standard-bearers they brought a progressivism and concern for the middle class that hadn't been the hallmarks of Republicans before them. After McKinley's assassination Roosevelt brought anti-trust suits to the Courts and successfully broke up the Standard Oil and Northern Securities trust. Roosevelt believed in the power of government to help the citizens of the United States, a belief that faded in the 1920s under Harding, Coolidge and Hoover who again supported big business and opposed the League of Nations and internationalism.
After the stock market crash that was facilitated if not caused by Hoover's economic policies the party found itself watching from the sidelines of the 4 terms of FDR. Once again a progressive Roosevelt was leading the country, only this time from the Democratic party. The Republicans split between the northeast liberal faction (Rockefeller Republicans) and the southern and western conservative factions (Goldwater Republicans). This second group grew and morphed into the bizarre big tent of small-government, religious/moralist and big business supporters that finally fractured last Tuesday. One common believe they held, best exemplified by Grover Norquist's "drown it in the bathtub" quote, was that government was the enemy. In Iraq and in the wake of Katrina, America saw how deadly that belief can be.
The modern Republican party prefers the private sector to government and would like to privatize all functions from the post office to Social Security. Their main use of the levers of power they controlled was to loosen restrictions on big business whether through tax cuts or regulatory "reform". When it comes to the business of governing they just don't like it enough to do it well.
Maybe now they will return to the private sector where they belong and where they can flourish and leave governing to the people who appreciate its value. At least until they can find another Teddy Roosevelt.