The Republican Party that trusted its fortunes to its conservative base last year and paid the price in loss of the White House and Congress is now being pressured by its true believers to dig itself into an even deeper hole.

A group of 11 Republican National Committee members who hope to revive the party by shouting "socialism" against President Obama's domestic agenda, and by opposing his foreign policies, wants to impose a 10-point "purity test" for awarding campaign money and endorsements to Republican candidates for office next year.

Their resolution notes that their ideological hero, Ronald Reagan, believed the party "should welcome those with diverse views" and that "someone who agreed with him eight out of 10 times was his friend, not his opponent." Therefore, it says, any candidate who disagrees with three or more of their 10 points is not their friend and should be denied party help.

The demand for purity on a range of conservative litmus-test issues, from support of a large troop surge in Afghanistan to anti-abortion and anti-immigration policies, is to be placed before the Republican National Committee in January at its annual winter meeting in Hawai'i. Other points include commitment to smaller government and national debt, lower taxes, "market-based" health care and energy reform, opposition to same-sex marriage and gun-control legislation.

"Republican faithfulness to its conservative principles and public policies and Republican solidarity in opposition to Obama's socialist agenda," the resolution says, "is necessary to preserve the security of our country, our economic and political freedoms and our way of life."

The chief sponsor, Indiana National Committeeman James Bopp Jr., says his 10 co-sponsors on the committee are enough to bring the resolution to the floor at the Hawai'i meeting, but he expects to have more by then.

The effort obviously hopes to capitalize on the dissatisfaction in the country over President Obama's domestic and foreign policies, seen in the vocal Tea Party protests over the summer and fanned by conservative commentators on cable TV and elsewhere.

It's a direct prod at the party's national chairman, Michael Steele, who has paid uneven lip service to the big-tent theory of political success through expanding that narrowing base. The party's first African-American chairman has proved to be no magnet among black voters or other minorities.

The purists, often frustrated even under President George W. Bush, hope that Obama's ambitious "change" agenda, highlighted by his fight for health care reform, will fuel their argument that he is embarking on, as they put it, a government-run economy.

They wail that "socialized medicine" will take medical decisions out of the hands of doctors and place them in those of bureaucrats. In so doing, they ignore the fact that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are all government-financed and managed programs that have kept private medical practice thriving, as well as being a lifeline to millions of elderly Americans.

They cite the Obama stimulus package to pull Wall Street and the nation's financial system from the brink of total collapse as no more than the first steps of a government takeover of the banking and auto industries, though the effort clearly has been to keep them afloat so far.

In a sense, the resolution amounts to preaching to the choir, inasmuch as the GOP has become near-monolithic in its own agenda, with deviation rare except on a few issues like abortion rights. And the likelihood seems slim that many Republican candidates will be off the conservative reservation on three or more of the litmus tests.

But as the party's public voice increasingly comes from true believers like Sarah Palin and commentators of the Rush Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck ilk, any big-tent aspirations by Steele look far-fetched.

Unless an appealing party moderate somehow emerges as a serious presidential candidate between now and 2012 as a rallying point for like-minded Republicans, circling the wagons with this sort of purity test will only reinforce the GOP's minority status.