What is lacking in the GOP: Clear and defined policies

...that a unified approach must necessarily be arrived at.

I would like to see more openness to variation to allow for regional differences.

A good post. 

The reason the Republican party as a whole cannot seem to enunciate clearly defined objectives and policies is because there are considerable splits on a lot of the issues.

On immigration, you have a huge split between the law and order crowd and the "they're all God's children, plus they provide cheap labor and take care of a lot of those backbreaking messy jobs" faction.  You can't have a clearly defined message when there is a split like this.  McCain had to avoid the issue all together and settle for losing voters on both sides.

On the economic crisis and bailout, most Republicans have a knee-jerk reaction (and rightly so) against both direct government involvement in markets and spending $700 billion, but I agree with some of the fiscal conservatives who realized that the financial markets were in danger of complete collapse and could have triggered a major recession and emergency measures had to be taken promptly, and it was either vote for what Boehner called a "crap-sandwich" or let the economy nosedive.  There was a legitimate split in views on the bailout that prevented the party from having a united message, and many in Congress lost their seats by doing what they thought was right for the country given the situation and voting for it.

On the War on drugs, many would agree that the costs and side effects of the war are greater than the benefits.  Many others would disagree.  You will never win an election as a Republican pushing for legalization of drugs.  Maybe you can by pushing for some common sense easing of policies that are not really working.  You would have to tread lightly and would risk alienating more voters than you attract.  That's just the political reality.

In response to some of your other points, I doubt there are many states that would outlaw abortion entirely, but the entire conversation is irrelevant until we can get at least 1 more conservative Supreme Court justice, which is very highly unlikely now for at least 4 years (and probably many more if Obama replaces a couple of the older liberal justices with younger liberal justices), to overturn the horrendous judicial decision called Roe v. Wade that fabricates out of thin air that there is a Constitutional right to abortion in the words of the 14th Amendment (No State shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law ...), even though no one thought to make this case when the 14th Amendment was ratified.

I don't know how exactly you think the GOP is trying to "legislate bedroom affairs".  Can you provide any examples?

Good Christian values will only remain American values to the extent that we defend Christian values.

On Iraq, the plan has been crystal-clear for a long time.  Maintain security as we hand over responsibilities to the Iraqi's.  The reasons for going in?  How about we knew he has WMD in the past, that he had gotten close to going nuclear before, that he was defying every UN resolution to contain him, the sanctions regime was breaking down in an oil for food scandal, every government in the world thought he had stockpiles of WMD, and we know today that he had all his infrastructure in place ready to reconstitute his weapons programs once the heat was off.  We had underestimated the progress of his nuclear weapons program before, he was acting very suspiciously, and would not allow adequate inspections so we could verify the status of his programs.  All it would take if he developed a nuclear weapon is a tag-team with a terrorist group and his intense hatred of the U.S. for the possiblity of a mushroom cloud in a U.S. city.  Obviously, that is worst case scenario, but the possibility could not be ignored.  The reasons to stay now?  If you are worried about Al-Qaeda hiding in some caves in the edge of Pakistan, how about them having free reign and control of a portion of Iraq?  How about abandoning Iraq to be devoured by its neighbors?  How about an increase in violence leading to a civil war and escalating conflict engulfing the whole region?  How about the black eye that would give to America, the lack of trust anyone would have of us in the future to act responsibly and keep our word, the encouragement to our enemies that if you stick it out long enough America will eventually lose the will to fight?

In regards to Republican message on Iraq, I think Republicans are running scared from the beating they took 2005-2007.  They are not quite ready to claim victory yet.  And they may not see the arguments I laid out above as helping them politically.  It would just remind people about the war.

Lastly, I think that Replicans do explain where they are on policies and why they voted certain ways.  It is not covered by the media.  Back in 2006, in the run-up to the election, Nancy Pelosi would hold a press conference almost every day, and it would make headlines and news shows almost every day.  House Republicans tried doing the same thing, and you barely heard about it.  The Republicans have got to come up with a more effective plan for breaking through the media fog.