(V)oters to think of the Tories as the party of society while Labor is the party of the state. They want the country to see the Tories as the party of decentralized organic networks and the Laborites as the party of top-down mechanistic control.

As such, the Conservative Party has spent a lot of time thinking about how government should connect with citizens. Basically, everything should be smaller, decentralized and interactive. They want a greater variety of schools, with local and parental control. They want to reverse the trend toward big central hospitals. Health care, Cameron says, is as much about regular long-term care as major surgery, and patients should have the power to construct relationships with caretakers, pharmacists and local facilities.

Cameron also believes government should help social entrepreneurs scale up their activities without burdening them with excessive oversight.

This focus means that Conservatives talk not only about war and G.D.P., but also the softer stuff. There’s been more emphasis on environmental issues, civility, assimilation and the moral climate. Cameron has spent an enormous amount of time talking about marriage, families and children.

While some of this, on the surface, may look a little unrecognizable to conservatives, beneath you find individual choice, localized government, free markets, and safe and stable communities, but without the social zealotry and economic Darwinism that often makes voters flinch at the idea of supporting conservative candidates.

If the GOP wants to challenge the soft paternalism offered by the Democrats, the British conservative experience may well offer points worth considering. As polling suggests voters are increasingly turned off by the "tough party for tough times" image that is often associated with contemporary American conservatives, a softer and more nuanced message may help lure them back into the GOP column before they become, as voters did for a half-century following the Great Depression, lost to the Democrats for two more generations.