When House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan was asked why his latest budget repeals the 2010 federal health-care -- despite the results of last year's presidential election -- the former Republican vice-presidential running mate gave this answer.

"So just because the election didn't go our way," he told National Review," that means we're supposed to change our principles?"

But on the eve of the three-day Conference Political Action Conference (CPAC) that begins on Thursday in the DC area and that will hear from countless Republican politicians, Ryan's answer raises this follow-up question:

What principles -- beyond opposing President Obama's agenda?

Is the GOP a free-market party, or one that's willing to federally bail out the banks if the country is on the brink of another Great Depression?

Is it a party that believes in strong national defense, or is it willing to wage a nearly 13-hour filibuster to highlight how drones could infringe on civil liberties?

Is the GOP a party that stresses deficit reduction and balanced budgets above all else, or is it one willing to support unpaid-for wars and unpaid-for new entitlements?

Is it a party that favors comprehensive immigration reform, or that opposes it?

Does the GOP oppose tax increases, or will it vote for raising rates on the wealthiest Americans?

And is it a party that opposes gay marriage, or one that's becoming more accepting of it?

Yes, the GOP believes in lower taxes and less government. But as Politico's Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman write, many of the tensions above will be on display at CPAC as the party -- after its second-straight presidential loss -- finds itself in the midst of an "identity crisis."

"The pillars of the conservative era ushered in by Reagan — a muscular defense, traditional cultural values and devotion to free markets – are being questioned by leading Republicans, and what could take the place of the Gipper’s trinity is now being openly debated in a fashion more reminiscent of the famously fractious Democrats of yore."

Ryan, who speaks at CPAC on Friday, embodies many of these very tensions. He warns of deficits and debt, but supported the Iraq war, the Bush tax cuts, and the Medicare prescription-drug benefit. He believes in the free market, but voted for the Troubled Assets Relief Program (or TARP). And he now supports comprehensive immigration reform (and maybe even a path to citizenship), but was on a presidential ticket opposing it.

Of course, it's only natural for a party outside the White House to experience an identity crisis. After all, there's no one true leader to unify the different constituencies. And the one unifying force is opposing the president in power -- and that's true whether a Democrat or Republican sits in the Oval Office.

Indeed, after their second-straight presidential loss in 2004, Democrats faced a similar identity crisis. Should it strenuously oppose the Iraq war, or support it? Push for universal health care, or ignore it? Disagree with the Bush-era tax cuts, or call for them to expire?

Yet by the time the Democratic race for president began, the top candidates -- Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, Bill Richardson -- were unified on all the big issues. They opposed the Iraq war; they supported universal health care; they were against the Bush tax cuts. That's why the Democratic primary was fought over the margins (like whether there should be a mandate for health insurance).

And for Republicans, that's the story to watch over the next couple of years. It's one thing for the party to experience an identity crisis in 2013 and 2014. It's another thing -- as Obama prepares to exit office -- to experience that in 2015 and 2016. 

During his presidential bids in 2008 and 2012, former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) was an easy target for establishment Republicans to ridicule.

Many laughed at his demands to "end" the Federal Reserve and reinstitute the gold standard. At debates, they sometimes booed his non-interventionist views on foreign policy and national security. And he never won a single nominating contest during those two presidential runs, though he did rack up delegates in 2012.

But Paul -- and his son, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) -- could be the ones laughing now.

Indeed, Rand Paul's marathon filibuster on Wednesday against President Obama's pick to head the CIA -- joined by other GOP senators (including conservative stars like Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, as well as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell) -- was the latest evidence that the Pauls might have had a larger imprint on today's Republican Party than its last two presidential nominees.

Consider the libertarianism in the Tea Party, the calls to cut spending, the growing suspicion of the Federal Reserve, and some growing skepticism about the use of force.

That sounds much more like Ron Paul than John McCain or Mitt Romney. And son Rand is already being viewed as a potential 2016 presidential candidate.

But it also doesn't mean that all Republicans have jumped on board. On Thursday, McCain and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) took to the Senate floor to denounce Rand Paul's criticism of the Obama administration's drone program -- the issue at the heart of his filibuster.

"If Mr. Paul wants to be taken seriously, he needs to do more than pull political stunts that fire up impressionable libertarian kids in their college dorms," McCain said, quoting the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page.

"To somehow allege or infer that the president of the United States is going to kill somebody like Jane Fonda or someone who disagrees with the policies is a stretch of imagination, which is frankly ridiculous," McCain added.

But that even this drone debate is taking place inside the GOP -- and that Cruz and Rubio joined Paul's filibuster -- shows the growing influence that the Pauls have had on the GOP and conservatism.

With the automatic across-the-board spending cuts set to begin on Friday, Americans are split over whether President Barack Obama is emphasizing unifying the country or taking a partisan approach, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

But by nearly a 3-to-1 margin, respondents conclude that the Republican Party is emphasizing partisanship more than unity.

In the poll, 48 percent say Obama is pursuing a path to unify the country in a bipartisan way, while 43 percent say he's taking a partisan approach that doesn't unify the country.

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By comparison, 64 percent say the Republican Party is taking a partisan approach, versus 22 percent who say it's focused on unity.

As for the Democratic Party, a plurality of respondents -- by a 49 percent to 37 percent margin -- think it is emphasizing partisanship more than unity.

The full NBC/WSJ poll -- which was conducted Feb. 21-24 of 1,000 adults, and which has a margin of error of plus-minus 3.1 percentage points -- comes out beginning at 6:30 pm ET.

Is there a sea change afoot among the conservative intelligentsia?

As the Republican Party wrestles with how to reinvent itself to appeal more broadly to an increasingly diverse electorate after its two-straight presidential losses, a handful of conservative thinkers are calling upon the GOP to cast off some of its most well-worn proposals and elements of the party’s identity.

These intellectual leaders are arguing that the GOP must embraces changes in policy. That’s significantly different than what the official organs of the Republican Party have said, which is that the party needn’t change its core policies and positions so much as frame them in a way that’s more appealing to more voters.

Take, for example, a post on Monday by Jim Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute, who argued that Republicans should abandon their pursuit of a flat tax, a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution or the gold standard – three ideas that have long found advocates on the right.

“Today, the top marginal tax rate is 40 percent, and inflation is 2 percent. Health-care spending and the debt have both risen by nearly 80 percent as a share of output. The average American is 37 years old,” wrote Pethokoukis on National Review Online. “Economics and demography require a reworking of the conservative policy portfolio. But center-right politicians in Washington keep offering same-old, same-old stale solutions.”

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That’s a sentiment similar to the one voiced by Ramesh Ponnuru on National Review in an op-ed Sunday for the New York Times. Republicans, Ponnuru wrote, should be more willing to move beyond the policy prescriptions offered three decades ago by President Ronald Reagan.

"They slavishly adhere to the economic program that Reagan developed to meet the challenges of the late 1970s and early 1980s, ignoring the fact that he largely overcame those challenges, and now we have new ones," wrote Ponnuru.

Michael Gerson and Peter Wehner, both veterans of the most recent Bush administration, argued in a new piece for Commentary magazine that the GOP should learn from the centrist examples of President Bill Clinton, and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose election signaled a new era for the UK’s Labour Party. They argued that Republicans’ sweeping victories in the 2010 midterm elections were an “aberration” rather than a catalyzing moment for the GOP.

Gerson and Wehner prescribed a four-step process for the GOP: Republicans, they wrote, must first renew their focus “on the economic concerns of working-and middle-class Americans;” second, “welcome rising immigrant groups;” third, “express and demonstrate a commitment to the common good;” fourth, “engage vital social issues forthrightly but in a manner that is aspirational rather than alienating;” and fifth, “harness their policy views to the findings of science.”

They wrote that many of the existing Republican presidential frontrunners in 2016 are equipped to deliver that message.

But: “Their challenge is both to refine and relaunch the Republican message, to propose policies that symbolize values and cultural understanding, to reconnect with a middle America that looks different than it once did, and to confront old attitudes, not from time to time, but every day.”

Washington is bracing for a fight in 2013 over immigration reform, a battle that could improve upon -- or threaten to exacerbate -- Republicans’ standing among Latino voters.

 White House and Democratic leaders have begun signaling that they might pursue the type of comprehensive immigration reform deal that has eluded President Barack Obama during his first term in office.

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Their renewed push coincides with a fresh round of soul-searching among Republicans after Hispanic and Latino voters, who made up 10 percent of the electorate, broke for Obama over GOP nominee Mitt Romney by a 44-point margin.

An immigration reform debate next year in Congress could offer Republicans an opportunity to improve upon their 2012 performance, or further push Latino voters into the “firmly Democratic” category.

David Mcnew / Getty Images

A sign points to a polling place inside El Mercado de Los Angeles, a Mexico-style marketplace in the heavily Latino East L.A. area, on Tuesday.

Wider battle
Undergirding this inflection point for Republicans is a broader battle for the soul of the Republican Party. It pits the GOP's conservative wing, which speaks vocally against immigration reform, against leaders who urge the party to adapt for the sake of future electability.

“Republicans should approach it as the party of Reagan and Bush -- the party that has historically been pro-immigration,” said Grover Norquist, the anti-tax activist who is also spearheading an effort to sway fellow Republicans toward embracing immigration reform.

“We’re up against a president who introduced nothing legislatively. The idea that Obama and Democrats are good on this is all optics and no reality,” he said.

The party is a far cry from the days of George W. Bush's presidency, when he urged Congress to pass an immigration reform bill that offered undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship.

Republican leaders like Arizona Sen. John McCain were vocal proponents of those sorts of reforms, but the party has drifted rightward since conservatives balked at Bush’s 2007 immigration push -- and it has bled Latino voters ever since.

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“The best thing about Republicans losing is that it will likely force them to cut an immigration deal,” said former Bush aide Mark McKinnon.

McCain, one of the party’s centrist figures on immigration, cut an ad during his 2010 re-election campaign urging the government to “build the danged fence” -- that is, a fence sealing the border between the United States and Mexico.

Republican senators who had supported the DREAM Act -- a piece of legislation offering a pathway to citizenship for children brought to the U.S. illegally -- withdrew their support and voted against the proposal in the last lame-duck Congress, fearing the backlash of the Tea Party at its apex of power.

Republican Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer spearheaded one of the most far-reaching immigration laws in the country, which allowed law enforcement officials to ask anyone whom they suspected of illegally being in the United States for proof of their residence.

The party’s shift was even more vividly illustrated during the 2012 Republican presidential primary. In that race, Mitt Romney positioned himself to the right of his opponents, going so far as to characterize his policy as favoring “self-deportation” by making life in the United States so difficult for undocumented immigrants that they would voluntarily choose to leave.

“Should I win a second term, a big reason I will win a second term is because the Republican nominee and the Republican Party have so alienated the fastest-growing demographic group in the country, the Latino community,” Obama told the editors of the Des Moines Register in October, adding that it would facilitate a “deep interest” in the GOP to get immigration reform done.

Complete coverage on NBCPolitics.com

Added David Axelrod, the senior adviser to the president’s campaign, two days after the election: “I think the Republican Party has some soul-searching to do after this election, and all you have to do is look at the nature of our coalition.”

The political timing for Democrats is ripe, and they have sent every signal in the aftermath of the election that they intend to seize the moment.

Vice President Joe Biden told reporters on Wednesday that he was “very optimistic” about the prospects for immigration reform because the election had served as a “wake-up call” for his GOP colleagues.

Gearing up for vote
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Wednesday as well that the Senate should expect to vote on immigration reform this year.

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“The only thing we need to get immigration reform done is a few Republican votes,” he said at a post-election press conference. “It’s high on my list, and we’re going to have a few votes on it.”

Mark Wilson / Getty Images

Latinos and immigrants rallied in front of the White House on Thursday, calling on President Obama to fulfill his promise of passing comprehensive immigration reform.

Democrats’ biggest ally in gathering Republican support, might be the specter of further Republican marginalization among Latinos.

“As a 14-year elected Republican official, I have to say that I'm very concerned about the Republican Party -- not that I didn't see it coming,” Republican Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff said on a conference call Thursday to address immigration.

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He called on his fellow Republicans to reject the “extreme right,” and move forward with some kind of immigration reform.

Norquist said he believes Republicans in Congress can be swayed toward immigration reform -- and even seize the initiative on it -- within a year.

“We need our Paul Ryan on the subject,” he said, “the person who understands this issue better than anyone else, and walk colleagues through, step-by-step.”

More election coverage from NBCNews.com:

• Victorious Obama 'more determined' in face of challenges
• Now that he's won, six splitting headaches waiting for Obama
• Democrats retain control of Senate with series of hard-fought wins
• One big winner in Tuesday's vote: health reform
• Romney's English cousin sad he lost, sort of
• Rape remarks sink two Republican Senate hopefuls
• In costliest-ever Senate race, Warren beats Brown for Mass. seat
• Maine's Harley-riding King vowed to 'shake up' D.C.
• Republicans easily maintain control of House
• Colorado, Washington approve recreational marijuana use
• Wisconsin's Baldwin becomes 1st openly gay senator
• Pence in as governor of Indiana; Hassan wins in N.H.
• World welcomes Obama's 2nd term - but many challenges loom
• Majority of voters see American on wrong track
• Top 10 foreign policy issues facing Obama

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