Here's the recipe, which nobody (thus far) has mixed up:

• Pronounce and live under two simple First Principles:  Each individual owns their own body and property rights are to be respected. From these two principles all else flows. We outlawed slavery 150 years ago and declared it an unsupportable and barbaric practice.  From this first principle all others must flow.  While drugs (whether currently legal or not) are bad for you, it's your body.  While certain sexual practices are dangerous, it's your body.  While eating until you weigh 500lbs is very bad for you, it's your body.  While choosing to not spend anything protecting against medical disaster by spending all your money and not buying insurance is probably unwise, it's your body.  Decrying something as unhealthy or a bad idea does not give you the right to enforce your view at gunpoint via the law. 
  
  
• Talk economy.  Everyone votes their wallet once they get to the polls.  The rest sounds good for sound bites, but it won't get the ticket punched.  Jobs, jobs, jobs and income, income, income.  This means cutting the crap with nations that intentionally exploit effective labor slavery and environmental destruction as their means of "competition."  Against that we must respond with tariffs that are linked explicitly to that behavior.
  
  
• Be honest.  The entitlement promises made cannot be kept.  Force the other guy to defend his claim that they can.  There's only one thing worse than being told that you're not going to get your Medicare (which is true, incidentally) - that's being told you will, and then finding out that it's a lie.  This is a trivial numbers problem and it does not require any more understanding than third-grade (literally) arithmetic.  Yes, the electorate is generally illiterate in these matters, but they do know how to add and subtract.
  
  
• Stop bull****ting around the energy debate.  Every candidate says they will enact an "energy policy."  Nobody ever says what it is.  Let's put specifics to that: Thorium-based reactor technology, which we know how to build, and Fischer-Tropsch conversion.  This is a path that I am absolutely convinced can replace all of our foreign petroleum and coal-fired powerplant consumption.  We can do it now, we can do it today, we can make it happen.  Make the other guy come up with hard numbers against this proposal.  He can't.  For the guy who will try to run "Natural Gas", bring a chart of Natural Gas prices over the last ten years - they've tripled from today's price twice during that time.  Shove that in his face and ask the public whether they want to take the RISK of tripling of their energy costs.  That'll play well against the gas price oscillations of late.
  
  
• Get us out of foreign wars. We can't do it until we solve the energy problem.  We can do it with the above step, and we can use the defense department savings to build the Thorium and Fischer-Tropsch plants.  Make the other guy tell you how he's going to pull in our horns while at the same time keeping access to foreign petroleum.   He can't.
  
  
• Stop the deficit spending.  Tell the truth.  We must clear the debt overhang.  Bring examples from everyday life - the person who loses their job and uses their credit card to pretend they haven't.  Get people thinking on this - it will take a while, but it will sink in.
  
  
• DEMAND and PROMISE that all the fraudsters will go to prison.  Every one of them.  Those who took a mortgage that was paid off by these crazy financial instruments - the bank doesn't have a loss.  Therefore, they can't foreclose.  Make clear you will force these institutions to provide a full accounting and prove their alleged loss.  Those who bought these things and have empty boxes?  They're owed compensation by the banks and the officers of the firms that ripped everyone off will be imprisoned.  You want to poll 90% in Jefferson County Alabama and countless other places just like it?  Start talking tough where these people have gotten reamed by blatantly unlawful activity - and mean it.  Once elected, do it.
  
  
• Stop protecting illegal immigrants.  They do not vote.  This is a no-brainer.  For those who counter "but your strawberries will go up 50 cents/quart!" the correct counter-argument is "yeah, and your hospital bill will go down $20,000."  Right now Jose who shoots himself with a nailgun forces you to pay for his treatment, not to mention schooling his kids.  This must end.  We have 9% unemployment and 10+ million illegal immigrants in this country.  Send every one of them home and our employment problem is solved!  If you go back to first principles then you must recognize that the resources of this nation belong to the citizens of America.  An illegal alien is in fact stealing those resources simply by being here.  This is not to decry lawful immigration - our nation is one comprised of a rich heritage of immigrants and nearly all of us at some point came here from foreign lands.  But our forefathers did so legally and in accordance with the law.  We were invited to both contribute and share - we did not come to take and rape.
  
  
• Solve the medical problem.  Medical care should not bankrupt anyone.  At the same time we cannot provide everyone in this country with two replacement hips and a quadruple bypass on the public's dime.  It can't happen - we don't have the money.  End protection of drug and device territory by nation and stop forcing the US consumer to pay two, three, five, even ten times what the same drug or device costs in Canada.  Remove all anti-trust exemptions.  Drug and device companies who break the law with kickbacks, bribes or other illegal acts must be prosecuted and their executives imprisoned.  End the "lawsuit lottery" - we call it practicing medicine for a reason.  Gross negligence (e.g. cutting off the wrong arm, practicing medicine while drunk or operating on the wrong eye) should be able to be sued over, but the line must stop there.  At the same time we must decouple insurance and employment.  The easiest way is as I outlined two years ago: Force public and level pricing and force "insurers" to accept everyone in a given region on the same terms irrespective of employment.  That is, if I wish to pay cash I will pay the same amount the insurance company pays, and if I wish to buy into GM's insurance I can - whether I work for them or not.
  
  
• Repeal EMTALA.  It's a choice to not carry health coverage. That choice comes with consequences.  Nobody has a right to make the (perfectly-legitimate) choice to take their chances on a catastrophic medical event and then force someone else to pay for it if it happens.  We are all mortal and we are not infants; we're adults and for those who are children, they have parents who get to make this choice for them. With the other fixes in place medical care will be affordable anyway.
  
  
• Get the hell out of American's bedrooms and homes.  I don't support the "Defense of Marriage Act" and you shouldn't either.  Instead support the removal of marital or partnership status everywhere as a matter of Federal Law.  If you wish to get married go see a Priest.  States should be free to recognize filed contracts for partnerships in life - it's a business decision at that level, after all - and be limited only to enforcement of their terms.  Where that hasn't happened adjudication of what a "marriage" means is a Sacramental matter and properly is and should be between the celebrants and their faith.  The Establishment Clause explicitly prohibits recognition or favoritism for or against any particular religious path and its tenets.  With the government out of it Churches will be free to set whatever contractual framework for marriage they deem appropriate under the tenets of their faith.  We may be a Christian nation (and we certainly are in the majority opinion) but under current law and practice neither Christian faiths or any others are free to practice their religion when it comes to these matters.  This interference is blatantly unconstitutional.  You'll get every seriously-religious person, irrespective of their religion, to vote for you if you take this position.

If you want to win an election you have to appeal to that which virtually everyone can agree.  If you lead from First Principles:

• Everyone owns their own body, has a right to choose what happens to it, and is responsible for what happens to it.
  
  
• The government's first and only rational function is to deter the initiation of force or fraud against others.

and you test your expressed positions against these two principles, virtually every other position you then take falls into place.

If we can't get serious candidates to run on these positions and put them in office then I hope your bunker is well-stocked.  You're gonna need it.