Karl,

You’re home free, legally. No indictment in the Plame case. Just a chance to become the post-Bush GOP guru, which has been your aim all along.

How do you get there? You probably don’t want advice from some newspaper columnist. You produced two presidential triumphs. I didn’t.

But you’re like the guy marketing Coke or Pepsi. If you don’t re-examine your assumptions, the market will pass you by.

As a student of history, you know Democrats ran out of fizz after running the country for 28 years between 1932 and 1968. But do you understand that Republicans face similar danger? They’ve run the White House for 26 of the last 38 years, and the GOP could fizz out, unless it finds new formulas.

You’ve understood this on immigration and Social Security, opening up the party to Hispanics and young voters.

Still, your strategy appears to rely on appealing to conservatives and getting them to vote. The “base” matters, but you could run out of conservatives. Don’t forget that others might vote Republican, if invited.

What I’m arguing for is a base-plus strategy. Here are some elements:

1. Don’t cede the environment to Democrats.

John Green of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life can provide you data that show evangelicals of every stripe worry about the environment. Surely you noticed when high-profile evangelicals held a to-do recently about global warming. If you think of these potential voters only in terms of, say, abortion, you could lose some of them.

They aren’t the only ones rethinking the environment, either. Business leaders in Texas worry about pollution in their towns. They aren’t tree huggers. The administration just set aside a huge ocean refuge near Hawaii. Find other opportunities to embrace ecology.

2. Give deficit fighters the same weight as tax cutters.

In naming Henry Paulson treasury secretary, you all have a deficit hawk in the inner sanctum. That’s great. Give him as much credence as you would a tax cutter like Grover Norquist.

Of course, tax cuts and deficit reduction could collide, and you will have to choose.

I know, you’ll argue all day long in favor of cutting taxes. But I also know that you don’t want to give another Ross Perot an opening to run against a Republican because the deficit swelled out of sight. Remember your history.

3. Worry about governing as much as winning elections.

You got the blame for the president’s failure to engineer a Social Security overhaul, but you were right to push him to take it on. It’s about the country’s future.

But you’re never going to succeed at governing if you think only about winning elections with 51 percent of the vote. Winning that way, with mostly loyal Republicans, can turn self-defeating.

For one thing, you start chewing each other up, which is what’s happening. Republicans control the White House and Congress, but there’s little to show for it (see stalled immigration debate).

And you’ll never entice many Democrats your way with rhetoric like “We’re right, and they’re wrong.” That was your 2004 line, and you still seem in love with it. Just last week, you said the Democrats were basically wimps on the war.

4. Think 10 years out, not just tomorrow.

You’ll argue that the voter I envision doesn’t exist in large enough numbers, the way “base” voters do. But go back to the administration’s immigration approach. It recognizes that Republicans can’t simply wall off Hispanics.

Fantastic. Find more opportunities to broaden the GOP, like rethinking how you handle gay marriage. Not only do many families have gay relatives, gay and lesbian voters often are prosperous, which makes them natural Republicans. They’ll never swing your way if you turn them into devils.

My point is, think anew. You’re smart enough to do that, but are you willing to critique yourself? The party’s future may depend upon it, now that you’ve been given new life.