The death of conservatism, or a rebirth?

The right survived the 60's okay - they'll be fine.

There seems to be an unspoken agreement between fiscal conservatives and the christian religious right in my opinion - because if they split in two, would they have enough votes to beat the dems?

and what about fiscal conservatives who believe the world is less than 10,000 years old? Who do they vote for.

Nah, the two sides of the repubiican coin will throw jabs at each other and maybe have the odd disagreement r falling out - but no matter how much they disagree, they disagree with those damn godless lefties that much more.

The right changed dramatically comig out of the sixties. It will change dramatically coming out of this.

I predict a McCain loss will further radicalize the Republican party, at least in the short term (until the next election). The loss will be explained away as having made a mistake for nominating a candidate that wasn't a "true conservative".

As for the religious right, I don't know. What I do suspect is that an Obama presidency has a good potential of getting more moderate religious groups or constituencies to feel free to note be hostage to the Republican party and be more acceptable of Democrats.

I'm an athiest, pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, I despise the Patriot Act, etc.

In other words, I'm extremely conservative.

99% of folks who call themselves "conservative" these days are anything but. I do indeed hope that the Republicans (not conservatives) failures over the past 20 years come to a dramatic halt after they lose this election.

Theyre giving actual conservatives like me a bad name.

They need to become more moderate. This shifting to Jesus is only going to scare more independents away. I consider myself to be socially liberal, fiscally conservative. I wouldn't mind voting for a Republican if they had one who actually made me believe he was capable of handling the job. Not someone who's damn near senile (McCain) or flat-out incompetent (Bush, Palin).

Christopher Buckley is more libertarian than conservative, at least on social matters, so I'm not sure he really counts.

I see some conservatives so dismayed with Palin's inexperience (and incompetence) that they're voting Obama/Biden simply for the balanced competence and ability to inspire, despite the different philosophy. Instead of a crappy, uninspired driver taking them to Wal-Mart, they'll go for the great, confident driver taking them to Whole Foods, even though they're not fond of Whole Foods (but at least they'll get by until they can get to Wal-Mart).

As to whether conservatism will change, I'd say that strongly depends on the outcome of the next few years, assuming Obama wins the election. If we manage to recover or even make progress I can see a split among conservatives, with a goodly portion becoming more moderate. If things don't go well, modern conservatism will be strengthened because progressive ideas will have "failed".

I don't know if you read this thread, Nordling, but it had some similar discussion.

edit: I just noticed you posted in it. Well, anyway.

I think El Cap is the closest here. I think you'll see the claws come out and the worst aspects of the GOP put into effect for the next two years if Obama wins. If, by the time the mid terms come around and they cannot regain control, THEN they will rethink their values and start retooling themselves to appeal to the independent thinkers again.

Is that anything like...

I think it'll happen anyway. Average people are *finally* starting to react to Republican hate-mongering negatively. If the Democrats win across the board--not just Obama, but overwhelmingly in the senate and congress, the way they're projected to--then the Republicans will be effectively marginalized, and if they keep up the hatemongering they're going to be seen more and more as fringey extremists. Granted, that kind of attitude woked for them during the Clinton years, but they still held congress and could back up their wingnuttery with actual power. If it's just a bunch of maniacs raging impotently for four years, or eight, while the democrats do even a reasonably good job steering the country in a more sane direction, they're going to marginalize themselves.

Now, there's always the worrisome possibility of a repeat of Clinton's first term, where the previous guy left an economic mess and the democrat didn't clean it up fast enough, so the legislative branch went conservative and became a weight around his neck. But personally I don't see it being that bad, even with two years of complete bile from the right. It usually takes a lot to budge incumbents, and the Dems are going to have a lot of those in 1994.

The only way the objectivist/fundamentalist coalition that has been powering the right for decades holds together is if some Reagan II appears to unite them again. But the thing is, the right has bought into their own bullshit. That's what's so hilarious about Palin--she represents what the right honestly thought were Obama's best qualities, but with a right-wing viewpoint. They'd fooled themselves into thinking it was all about "celebrity" and "charisma" and a trendy "historic" candidate. They've been holding their base together for so long with Orwellian gibberish that they don't know how to deprogram themselves. Conservatives who see through the bafflegab mostly are just abandoning the party rather than trying to fix it. Once the election's over the smart conservatives will start to try and rebuild, but I don't think they can keep the moderate religious types who are getting pissed off at having been used. And the crazy fundies are an albatross around their neck right now. Best case scenario, the moderates go left, the crazies retreat to their compounds and swear vengeance against both parties, and the fiscal conservatives and libertarians rebuild from the ground up--which will probably take more than one Obama term, unless something really dramatic happens in the next four years.

I hope conservatism becomes unpopular. At its crux is an idea of "tradition" not rooted in reality. When I hear their candidates speaking of "A time when...", I wonder which century they're referring to. The Republicans create a myth around themselves and america that entangles most of the country. If you are in any way "out there in the world", I can't see how you could vote conservative. The conservative party in canada basically piggybacks onto what the republicans say to provoke inadequacy in the voting populace about canada's weak military and such. It's poisonous.

It'll probably just reinvent itself.
I read in some liberal rag (either New Yorker or Slate.com) that the party has lost most of their intellectuals. The blame for that is placed on the GOP strategy of attacking "elitism" and pandering to the FoxNews demographic. Palin is pretty much the epitome of this trend.

Can she see God from her house?

seriously though, hope there's a ChrisTantra video too.

"Conservatism" was always a loose coalition of very different strains of thought. William F Buckley really created the modern Conservative movement by combining fiscal and social conservatives with rabid anti-communists. National Review was a meeting place for a lot of Conservative thinkiers (some of whom later moved away from the movement, like Gary Wills) and practical polticians like Reagan. That coalition broke apart after the fall of Sovet Russia.

It was really in the 90's that you saw the intellectuals (like Buckley, Burhnam etc) replaced by people like Limbaugh, who are essentially propagandists. Hell even Newt Gingrigh is out of place in the GOP now.

The War on Terror promised to create a new coalition, but there simply is no one out there with the intellectual or politcal chops to make it happen.

The GOP may become just like the Democrats when they don't have a strong leader: trying to market themselves to the center by dressing up the same old slogans.

I think this is a disasterous development in the US. Everyone bitching about the two party system just essentially lost one party.

I'd like some of the Euro-Chewers chime in: my impression is that the most Leftward politcians in the US are still much more Rightwing than their European counterparts.