David Frum’s National Post piece from last week talked about the problem the GOP has with college-educated voters, who went overwhelmingly for Obama last Tuesday

A generation ago, Republicans dominated among college graduates. In 1984 and 1988, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush won states like California, Pennsylvania and Connecticut – states that have been “blue” for a generation. (America’s least educated state, West Virginia, went for Michael Dukakis in 1988.)

Those days are long gone. Since 1988, Democrats have become more conservative on economics – and Republicans have become more conservative on social issues.

College-educated Americans have come to believe that their money is safe with Democrats – but that their values are under threat from Republicans. And there are more and more of these college-educated Americans all the time.

So the question for the GOP is: Will it pursue them? To do so will involve painful change, on issues ranging from the environment to abortion. And it will involve potentially even more painful changes of style and tone: toward a future that is less overtly religious, less negligent with policy, and less polarizing on social issues.

This is the great struggle ahead for the conservative movement.  Undoubtedly, the selection of Sarah Palin and the adoption of a kind of anti-intellectual ethos on the right this past election cost the GOP voters, particularly college-educated ones. Can the movement embrace a new policy-based intellectual energy that draws those voters back in, while keeping something of a focus on the traditional values that have been a backbone of the movement?  In other words, “less overtly religious, less negligent with policy?”