Conservatives Increase 2/1 ratio over Self-Defined "Liberals"

The WSJ has a good summary of the ridiculous situation the libturds now find themselves in:

In late 2008 and early 2009, in the wake of Mr. Obama's meteoric ascent, the idea that conservatism would enjoy any sort of revival in the summer of 2009 would have seemed to demoralized conservatives too much to hope for. To leading lights on the left, it would have appeared absolutely outlandish.

In late October 2008, New Yorker staff writer George Packer reported "the complete collapse of the four-decade project that brought conservatism to power in America." Two weeks later, the day after Mr. Obama's election, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne proclaimed "the end of a conservative era" that had begun with the rise of Ronald Reagan.

And in February 2009, New York Times Book Review and Week in Review editor Sam Tanenhaus, writing in The New Republic, declared that "movement conservatism is exhausted and quite possibly dead."

Terminal serial clinical moron Tanenhaus even wrote a book a few months ago trumpeting the last days of conservatism, which went straight to the "remainder" bin after the Tea Party demonstrated that the statist elites guided by Packer, Dionne & their criminally negligent Demoncrat weren't going to pull off the second-story burglary of the US Constitution the O'Bomber/Pelosi/Reid RICO team was planning.

Messrs. Packer, Dionne and Tanenhaus underestimated what the conservative tradition rightly emphasizes, which is the high degree of unpredictability in human affairs. They also conflated the flagging fortunes of George W. Bush's Republican Party with conservatism's popular appeal. Most importantly, they failed to grasp the imperatives that flow from conservative principles in America, and the full range of tasks connected to preserving freedom.

Progressives like to believe that conservatism's task is exclusively negative—resisting the centralizing and expansionist tendency of democratic government. And that is a large part of the conservative mission. Progressives see nothing in this but hard-hearted indifference to inequality and misfortune, but that is a misreading.

What conservatism does is ask the question avoided by progressive promises: at what expense? In the aftermath of the global economic crisis of 2008, Western liberal democracies have been increasingly forced to come to grips with their propensity to live beyond their means.

It is always the task for conservatives to insist that money does not grow on trees, that government programs must be paid for, and that promising unaffordable benefits is reckless, unjust and a long-term threat to maintaining free institutions.

However, WSJ writer Berkowitz is more eloquent in pointing out the moral hazard, something Progressives and Libturds appear to believe doesn't exist, in cramming big centralized bureaucratic chaos onto a self-governing, self-regulating populace.

But conservatives also combat government expansion and centralization because it can undermine the virtues upon which a free society depends. Big government tends to crowd out self-government—producing sluggish, selfish and small-minded citizens, depriving individuals of opportunities to manage their private lives and discouraging them from cooperating with fellow citizens to govern their neighborhoods, towns, cities and states.

Living in a statist dirigiste autocracy of ENA grads named France, the numbing effect of crushing social conformism after centuries of diktats from Paris have convinced me that the USA should not become another France, nor a UK beset by ridiculous administrative ukases arresting those violating Politically Correct behavior, down to ejecting ten-year olds for not mixing with non-English-speaking Muslim students, thereby exhibiting bigotry. If the AFTA/NEA commissars have their way, the USA will follow the same path and a cultural version of busing will spread hip-hop crime among kids who are forced to mix with young dope pushers and weapons dealers. Thankfully, the ringleaders of the RICO scam on global warming, healthcare boondoogles, and a Keynesian stimulus package that is proving to be destroying rather than building the economy are so transparently repulsive, they make Janet Reno look attractive:

The credit for galvanizing ordinary people and placing individual freedom and limited government back on the national agenda principally belongs to President Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Their heedless pursuit of progressive transformation reinvigorated a moribund conservative spirit, just as in 1993 and 1994 the Clintons' overreaching on health care sparked a popular uprising resulting in a Republican takeover of Congress.

Gingrich sadly still considers himself electable in a national election, but some Mitt Romney or John Thune has got to assert the moral commanding heights along with the high ground of economic sanity without scaring independents silly. Otherwise, '12 will be a repeat of '96, when RINO Dole squandered the opportunity to decease the Beast Clinton.