In which David Brooks drops the f-bomb

Nothing like conservatives arguing about conservatism.

Sullivan thinks it's a pragmatic set of guiding principles, not a collection of policies or remedies.  Levin approvingly quotes Burke that it's a preference for 'reform' over 'change'--where 'reform' is basically defined as change that's appropriate.  Douthat agrees with Sullivan about the principles but points out that those principles don't necessarily lead directly to agreement on, um, needed policies or remedies.  All are responding to George Packer's article  "The Fall of Conservatism."

Nobody really remarks that Packer's article isn't actually about the fall of either big- or little-c conservatism--it's about the fall of the Republican party.  He details the collapse of the three-legged stool coalition (the hawks, the market fetishists, and the Jesus freaks) and quotes a lot of terrified Republican strategists on the state of the party's brand.  (Levin: "The conservative idea factory is not producing as it did." David Brooks: "Republican senators know they're fucked . . . there's a hunger for new policy ideas.")  But there's little indication either from the article or from anywhere else that conservatism itself is fading--only that the Republican party has been hobbled by disasters such as Iraq and Katrina, and that voters are sick of Bushian incompetence.  Voters don't want to vote out the ideology of Goldwater and Reagan, they want to vote out the clowns who brought us Brownie, Gonzalez, Rumsfeld, Rice, Harriet Miers, and four-dollar gasoline.  McCain is plenty conservative; the right hates him because he's not Republican enough.  If he wins in November, it will be because he manages to distance himself from the party's failures, not the ideology's.

Conservatism itself--however defined--remains a powerful idea.  It's just that its connection to one party is disintegrating as voting groups shift.  Whatever 'conservatism' means, it never mapped perfectly onto the hodgepodge of interests represented by the party of Karl Rove: what coherent political philosophy could unite the homophobes and the warmongers, the government-slashers and the corporate welfare queens?  Rove solved that program by messaging directly to the factions and ignoring the contradictions, which is why nobody is happy.

Quibbling over semantics is grudgingly permitted under The October Protocol.