As the once-dominant Republicans in Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico take a break from licking their week-old wounds, they’re beginning to strategize whether to march left or right in their bid to reclaim lost power.

Republicans who believe the country is swinging left think the party needs to steer away from cultural wedge issues while at the same time reaching out to groups like Latinos who trend heavily toward the Democrats.

Sean Tonner, a political consultant who ran former Colorado Gov. Bill Owens‘ 2002 gubernatorial campaign told the Denver Post that the party needs to move away from the “God, guns and gays” litmus test on social issues.

“There is a group of people who want to have every candidate take a saliva test and be proven the purest of the pure,” said Sean Duffy, a former aide to Owens, who believes the former governor was sometimes marginalized in the party for being insufficiently conservative.

“If Republicans are going to survive we need to figure out a way to recruit and run candidates who are going to attract Democratic voters,” Nevada state Sen. Warren Hardy said in the Las Vegas Sun. “Nevada has gone in the last two to four years from center-right to center-left and it’s not going back.”

Greg Payne, a former New Mexico state representative, compared the Democrats’ win in 2008 to Republicans’ victory in 1980.

“The Democrats came back with Mondale in ’84, an ultra-liberal, and got shellacked. If the GOP makes similar moves and becomes even more far-right, we could be facing a similar fate in 2012,” Payne told the New Mexico Independent.

But others blame outside factors — an unpopular administration, the financial crisis, an insufficiently conservative candidate — for the Republican defeat. For them, Republicans don’t need a new script, just a new cast.

“This election was about Republicans running a more moderate Republican at the top of the ticket. The idea was that this would allow us to reach out to moderate Democrats and independents,” wrote New Mexico state Rep. Dan Foley in an opinion piece for the New Mexico Independent. “Now is not the time to move leftward. We did that and it didn’t work.”

“The Republican Party is a great coalition between social conservatives and fiscal conservatives. If you leave either of those out of the equation, the party will not prosper and the country will not prosper,” former U.S. Sen. Bill Armstrong told the Denver Post.

“There is no excuse for a state that has been traditionally this red to end up with more independent voters than GOP voters,” Luke Shilts, president of the Colorado Young Republicans, told Fort Collins Now. Shilts attributes the state swinging blue to the Democratic Party’s strategizing and campaigning advantage this cycle, not ideology. “We’re being outspent, outmustered, outvolunteered,” he said.

No matter how the party shakes out, Republicans take some comfort in the fact that with Democrats in power, the blame for any failures now lies at their feet. And that can only be good for Republicans in 2010 and 2012. Of course, what they don’t admit so freely, is that Dems will also get credit for any successes.