Buh-bye conservatism

Jonah Goldberg manages to write a column without any liberal-baiting in it, and - surprise! - the man actually seems to sort of know what he's talking about. The Universe never ceases to amaze me.

Goldberg brings up the possibility that maybe the Republican party's weak presidential field isn't about the candidates, it's about the weakness of conservatism itself. I couldn't agree more. While some still hold that George Allen would have made the perfect Republican candidate if he hadn't put his foot in his macaca, I'm certain that Allen would have similarly failed to catch fire. Because, after Bush, conservatives just don't believe in the rightness of their cause as strongly as they once did. And that's all to the good.

As to where conservatism has gone wrong, Goldberg has less to say. He correctly notes that conservatives - voters, not just politicians - have decisively rejected "small government." But he declines to note that faith in laissez-faire has been replaced with rent-seeking (i.e. trying to get the government to redistribute money from liberal taxpayers to well-connected conservative contractors). Conservatism has morphed from a flawed political philosophy into a deeply corrupt gang of power-seekers, all clinging together because there's nothing else to cling to. And deep down, Jonah Goldberg knows it.