Thanks for the straw man, it burned merrily. One of your premises is incorrect: “the current approach of being a Darkcoin clone and nothing more”. A simple check of the codebase informs me that the coins differ by more than just the parameters, so you're wrong about that. You may have strong opinions about whether the difference is insubstantial or unimportant but describing it as “nothing more” is hyperbole masquerading as fact. You appear to have let your commitment to DRK distort your assessment (quite substantially, see below)
Dogecoin is a clone of Bells, that seems to have worked.
Cheers
Graham