Conservatism on the Rocks
George Packer’s current piece in the New Yorker offers a nice account of the apparent decline of the conservative movement and how it got to this point. Lots of plausible explanations are offered: the movement is a victim of its own success, and once it had achieved its primary goals the movement ran out of ideological steam; the movement was always more interested in building an electoral majority and less so in the actual job of governing; the movement defined itself too much in terms of what it was against and not enough in terms of what it was for; the movement’s underlying disdain of government was never really shared by a majority of Americans; etc. Whatever the reasons, the consensus seems to be that conservatives are in for a rough ride in the short term and in need of some kind of shakeup in the longer term - either a back-to-basics return to fundamentals approach or some kind of reformation.
