The Conservative Bankruptcy

Harold Meyerson has a great column in The Washington Post today about the McCain phenomenon and what it means for conservatives. His conclusion, the conservative agenda is out of gas.

With his preemptive war and seemingly permanent occupation in Iraq, and his attempt to privatize Social Security, George W. Bush pushed American conservatism past the point where the American people were willing to go -- pushed them, in fact, to the point where they recoiled at the conservative project. And with that, American conservatism shuddered to a halt. In the 2005-06 congressional session, Republicans still controlled both houses of Congress, yet they introduced no major legislation.

This exhaustion of conservatism has been apparent all along in the Republican presidential contest, where the chief point of agreement among the leading candidates has been to make permanent both the Bush tax cuts for the rich and our occupation of Iraq. The conservative agenda has been winnowed down to supporting what remains of Bushism. That's not only a losing formula for November, it also means that intellectually, conservatism is running on empty.

So true. Conservatives are out of ideas and out of candidates. James Carville said it the other day on Meet The Press. The Republican base was Jesus freaks, nutty supply siders, and conservative talk show hosts. None of those people are getting their way in McCain and that basically exposes that they are not as important to the Republican party as they have told us for years.

You can't have a permanent revolution. Russia taught us that.

This is a transformative race.