If you see ten troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you.

— President Calvin Coolidge

For five years I have consistently maintained that Mitt Romney could not be elected President of the United States. The only thing that changed was Barack Obama’s terrible debate performance and I made the unfortunate mistake of going with the herd toward “he can win now.” A year ago — to be precise, November 8th of last year — I wrote that Mitt Romney would be the nominee, conservatism would die, and Barack Obama would win. Regrettably, I told you so.

As I wrote would happen, Mitt Romney tried to blur lines with Barack Obama. He did not defend social conservatism, but let those attacks go unanswered. He did not articulate strong fiscal conservatism and he never repudiated Romneycare, thereby failing to make any credible attacks on Obamacare.

Conservatives and conservative institutions who embraced him early on are now scrambling to make excuses. They were so invested in a failure they cannot bring themselves to admit Mitt Romney and his campaign were failures. They were, to Republicans, what green energy is to Barack Obama.

Because these conservatives cannot accept that they were wrong, they must conclude that conservatism itself is somehow broken.

The darndest thing is I’m listening to all this handwringing and most of it is coming from a lot of people who’ve never really been conservative or supported conservatism. These people hated our ideas and values when we were winning and now choose this opportunity to sell us out the way they’ve always wanted. The conservative herd is headed off a cliff led by a consultant class that would otherwise now be swimming in pools full of dollar bills like Scrooge McDuck.

These people would have us believe that we must make fundamental changes to draw in new voters. We must exile social conservatives to bring in young people and single women. We must exile fiscal conservatives to bring in hispanic and black voters. With whatever is left from having exiled both, these geniuses would have us believe the Democrats in whose camp these groups already find themselves will just sit back and let it happen.

The Republican Party will never out Democrat the Democrats. Conservatives will never out liberal Liberals. We should not try.

I believe conservatism is the correct solution to our problems. I believe the Republican Party has a better chance of advancing conservatism than the Democrats. I believe many Republicans and conservatives embraced a failed, flawed messenger and now, instead of admitting their mistake, would fundamentally transform the Republican Party and the conservative movement into something it isn’t so they do not have to admit they were wrong all along. I believe that many of our present party leaders have no desire to advance any public policy other than that which they think is best poll tested to keep them in power and advance their career, regardless of the soundness of the policy or the intellectual underpinnings of idea.

No thanks.

At RedState, our front page contributors will continue to be pro-life. Our conservatism is not negotiable with the ebbs and flows of electoral politics.

We will continue to fight the left, but we will also continue to clean up the right.

Our Republican leaders in Congress are intent now on caving on virtually every issue. Karl Rove is signaling he will play in primaries to fight against conservatives. Even some conservatives think we should give up the fight against Obamacare, set up state healthcare exchanges, and succumb.

I have no intention of giving up the fight. I have no intention of succumbing. More bluntly, I have no intention of standing athwart history yielding to the Republicans who got us to this point and you shouldn’t either.