All too often people assume that to be a conservative is to be Republican. Republicans were just whooped in the national election, at every level. Conservatives were not. There was not a conservative choice. John McCain is no conservative (and for those of you who love to equate the two, neither is the degenerate deficit spending W.). While the senator from Arizona tried to appeal to conservatives, most of us saw him for what he was all along, a liberal masquerading as a conservative in an attempt to "galvanize" the GOP base. Conservatives do not fight for open borders, amnesty for criminal aliens, and taxpayer funded bailouts. Nor do they fight against free speech, fair taxation, or the rights of individual states. McCain has, does, and will.
To me, true conservatism is simply "Constitutionalism". Unlike many on the left, I believe that the founders of the United States laid a path for what has become not only the greatest nation of today, but the greatest nation of all time. A leftist might like to expound on the shortcomings of the Constitution, such as not abolishing slavery or extending voting rights to women. However, the fact that these issues were corrected, through an amendment process intrinsic to it's survival, shows us that our patriotic forefathers knew that there was work yet to be done in the name of liberty. Conservatism is believing in the United States Constitution. It is believing that we are all free to govern ourselves. I believe in the rights of the individual states, and in the collective strength of the nation. I believe that a state should be free to govern itself, without the fear of the federal government withholding monies paid into by that state's residents.
My brand of conservatism is this; The federal government owes us very little, and as such we owe it very little. It owes us liberty by ensuring no states make laws that violate the Constitution. It owes us interstate transportation systems such as highways, railroads, and airports. It owes us protection in the form of a military. It owes us peace of mind in the form of reasonable regulation of financial markets and interstate/global commerce. It owes us a sense of our heritage and culture through national parks, museums, libraries, monuments, etc. While one could make a case for a few things that currently elude me, there is not a whole lot more that the federal government was intended to do.
Uncle Sam does not owe you a job, a house, an income, a clean needle, a marriage, or a sandwich. He simply owes you the right to attain these things yourself.
This is conservatism, this is freedom, this is liberty.