Money talks. As long as the right-wing billionaires keep writing the checks, expect the conservative bandwagon to keep rolling, whether anyone is listening or not. (And there are the smaller donors too.) It's possible that the conservative movement has put together enough of a parallel economy (see BMW Direct) that people will be able to live entirely encased in it, just as if they hadn't lost decisively in actual voting.

Liberal Republicans have not had power in their party for almost two decades...

and most of the remaining "liberals" (Olympia Snowe..and nobody else) are more liberal than Blue Dogs and Vichy Dems.

I guess Republicans could poach Blue
Dogs, but not even the Republicans are willing to trust them.

And Brook, the last time the Democrats were in this position was in 1994, and I do believe that even the densest of us have learned a few lessons from then...

also Movement Conservationism was on the rise in in 1994....but now it is on the wane, with no bench to speak of...and no young Republicans beyond the frat boys in brown shirts who aren't that much in vogue these days.

Kilgore isn't gloating, he is making a conservative assessment of Republican stages of denial, which don't look that they are going to be too insightful in the years to come.

There's both an error and a warning in this sentence: "That's a problem for some people on the Left (e.g., those who are convinced that Bush and Cheney will stage an "emergency" and launch a military coup to thwart Obama's inauguration) as well as the Right."

The error is that conservative media routinely repeat the conservative nuttiness about Obama (and now it's an article of faith that Al Franken/Mark Ritchie are stealing the Minnesota Senate recount) whereas liberal media are not insisting Bush will pull a surprise to stay in office. We've all wondered about it in our more depressed moments, but liberal media isn't repeating that suspicion as proven fact. If the liberals were losing their grip on reality like conservatives, I would expect the propaganda in media like TPM, or Mother Jones, or Air America, but it's not there. Yes, concerns get voiced that Bush might pull something, but those concerns are not regarded as fact.

However, let's be warned. Maybe we too could fall into unreality, if we cease to be the reality-based community without realizing it. We need to be as skeptical of people and positions we support as of those we oppose. That doesn't mean disbelieving, just be as willing to fact-check and debunk before we believe something. Liberals are about to have more opportunities for abuse of power scandals, and we need to watch our own.

The problem isn't just the strains between "movement conservatives" and reformers. Movement conservatism is itself a coalition of religious and cultural conservatives, mainly the Christian right, on the one hand, and small government, pro-business types on the other. This coalition may not hold together.

The Christian right is now very dangerous. They are a sort of American Taliban: an atavistic and reactionary rump of a dying, backward culture, who will increasingly see themselves as a culture under siege from a majority alliance of secularists and the moderately religious. As they lose members to more moderate Christian and evangelical groups, the remaining members will become ever more extreme and fanatical. I expect them to revert to their roots and become more explicitly racist, bigoted and universally xenophobic, as they burn bridges and indulge their rage. They bear watching.

There is something that I don't see often taken into account. The pain of cut taxes, reduce services is not often seen, because many of the services are provided at the local level, with federal mandates, but funded at the local level. Normally, the federal mandate brings some federal and state money too. But what they have been doing in the Bush years is keeping the mandate but cutting the federal money. The only resource that the local (city, county) government has is either to cut esencial services, or to increase local taxes. Increases in local taxes are more regressive, because they are mainly property taxes or taxes to consumption. So, in reality, the plot is very cynical, because the Bush people can claim the credit for cutting taxes, but the heat for cutting services is taken by the local government.

Dan K...as that remnant becomes more fanatical, angry, and self-righteous, I fear that it will become more violent as well. The language of the dittoheads and the Coulterites already points in that direction. But let us not call them terrorists...that is reserved for non-white non-Christians.

Movement conservatism is itself a coalition of religious and cultural conservatives, mainly the Christian right, on the one hand, and small government, pro-business types

I think the second half of that hides a dangerous mistake: the pro-business types are not actually in favor of small government. They're in favor of big government that funds their chosen causes (usually weapons systems and certain limited kinds of infrastructure) while intervening aggressively on behalf of business against workers and customers, even if they have to set up complex regulatory schemes (farm subsidies and farm labor-law exemptions, anyone?) in order to do so. Imagine how far Norquist would have gotten without his tax exemptions...

What people forget when they argue Idealogy and Party is the reality of relevance in the daily lives of the electorate. Obama and the Democratic New Coalitions have made the case that they can and will try to make government work....whether it works well or efficient or measured to a degree is a marginal call---but the reality is that the Conservative Movement going back to Reagan (and Goldwater or even the '30's and '40's) is that---

Government can't work. Reagan put it "government is the problem", Bush I put it with his thousand points of light bullcrap....thinking that the good nature of NGO's and charities can provide safety nets for society, when in reality they simply plugged holes that badly run government left not replaced it.

The is the basic premise of deregulation and the idea that the marketplaces' invisible hand works more efficiently.

The bottom line is the conservative mantra is "I don't want to pay for other people who are losers that I beat up to be a winner." The other premise is the idea of an invisible nobility class in the US, where even wanna be's like nobility servants have their own hierarchy but a least live astride the nobles.

The other wholesale mistake is the dynamic unknown how and where world society is going where inherent to the conservative mind is status quo and authority worship. First there is no static, status quo merely the speed or acceleration of change and two, authorities eventually become corrupt in holding on to their power as the purpose of existence. So Kilgore's notion that the traditionalists will rule is a status quo and authority dynamic.

What is the real kill shot for the Republicans is the fact that we are leaving the 20th Century world and American organization. Essentially Obama beat four US political institutions since WWII. He beat the Nixonian smear political campaign narrative. He beat the Deep South constituency block vote. He beat the need for a veteran on the ticket. And he beat the 230 year institution of being white, anglo-traditional religious.

This means to a coalition has formed that did not find the above political institutions pertinent. I personally know many rightwing entrenched Republicans in CO, WI, IN and GA. They hold to the mythology of what they are against or fear which are phantoms. They discount the reality that their Republican Party is actually big government, bad government and corrupt government, because what they loathe is the idea they are paying for someone else be it education, social services, medical or otherwise, but when you say hey, what is $700B bail out but corporate welfare and trickle down economics they discount it as anything.

But where is all this driving. What is actually in play economically, socially and politically is that the current organization is not functioning. Ultimately the growth of corporate state government through democratic/republic means compromised and gave away certain individual freedoms to the stability of the whole. That was even the semblance of what drove the creation of NATO and the UN while nations still remained sovereign but to a point. This has now grown to be ineffectual as the US itself launched the kind of war the UN was set up to stop with Iraq.

The economic markets now intertwined and unregulated coherently where now local communities have no control over managing their home ownership (private property) with the international divestiture markets that few understood except that they were essentially a Ponzi scheme, needs greater international regulatory control which will further nation-state sovereignty.

The biggest deal is global warming and all the connected pollution to Earth's systems is breaking down and will force organization on a global basis that will further force compromise of nation-state sovereignty for what is done in China or India or the US has a direct effect on the lives on the planet.

One can say this is true in infectious disease, chronic disease and other medical areas.

So for traditionalists, be they cultural, economic or political their day and worldview is coming to an end as a dominant force. No different than in the 1700's when the royalists were coming to the end or authority vested in the Church which was a partner to the ruling royalists as the world reorganizes itself finding pragmatic, although less than perfect structures, they are done.

They offer nothing to solving these disastrous problems as neither did King George or King Louis did not offer solutions to the problems in Europe or the Colonies.

Hagel is your bell weather when he has come to realize the Republican Party has become irrelevant to the every day lives. Let us face it, in reality I have heard since 2000 that Gay Marriage will destroy my heterosexual marriage...? What has really put pressures on my marriage is the inability to sustain a living that I had forged in the 80's and 90's. Each sector I have entered in this decade has fallen into serious financial woes and I am cut. That is the threat to my marriage, not two men or girls wanting to live openly.

I don't believe in the marketplace because I have seen how to manipulate marketplaces like this financial one that has exploded.

So for the Republicans....good riddens....find your place in history with the Tories, Royalists, Vatican, Thebians, et cetera.

The recent rush to conservative re-evaluation seems to bypass or excuse perhaps the most blatant transgressions of conservatism since and including Reagan, and that is that conservatism and Republicanism has become a code word for greed and self-interest. I'm not old enough to understand the roots of conservatives in the 60's and 50's and earlier, but I can't believe it was always about self-interest. The "greed is good" mentality as a leading motivator and ideal has, I think, come about fairly recently. And it has justified fear, divisiveness, and anything-goes politics. That has all been so obviously bad for everyone (besides the few who immediately benefit) that we all of us have not believed that someone hasn't appeared to call it out, rise above it, and begin sane government despite the yapping of the greed dogs.
It appears that someone who thinks that way, for the sane good and beyond individual greed as a motivator, that person might be getting their feet on the ground now and in charge. Thank god.

I wouldn't be so quick to mark and end of conservatism. Despite Mccain's horrible candidacy and the tumultuos times brought about in large part because of conservative ideology,he still managed to get 58 million votes out of 124 million. A rational person would not have expected him to receive more than a single vote (other thatn Lieberman's)

misdiagnosis can be fatal

right now the repuglitard party has rabies

and the repuglitard leaders think they got syphilis

penicillin ain't gonna cure what those guys got

It seems to me that the conservatives have taken over the national Republican Party and are now self-destructing. Ed's description of them as delusional fits with what I think I see.

How does the current national Republican situation compare to the condition of the California Republican Party after Pete Wilson ran for governor on a highly unpopular anti-immigrant message? They became a minority party in California after that and have not significantly recovered since as far as I can tell. {Arnie took the Governorship away from Daryl Issa, who was the "Hell! No!!" Governor-wannabe who had Gray recalled. Arnie is not part of that crowd.)

As a non Californian who knows little about Californian politics, it appears to me that what is left of the California Republican Party consists mostly of those who David Brooks calls the "Hell! No!!" crowd, who have power in California politics because the two-thirds vote to pass a budget permits them to prevent government from doing almost anything, but they cannot rise to the level of a state majority party because of their extremism.

The American forms of election permit only two competing major parties, and the California "Hell! No!!" party occupies the ecological niche of party number two in California, so that no viable second party can take root there to compete with the Democrats for the majority party.

Is that a template or analogy for the National Republican Party, with the Senate filibuster taking the place (weakly) of the California two-thirds vote rule for Budgets?

This is just a suspicion - speculation of mine, first the relationship of the parties in California and second whether that is an analogy for the national Republican Party, but I don't have the knowledge or sources to check it out. Any thoughts?

Hidden majorities and the idea that the country is more conservative than we think are totally Karl Rove-manufactured ideas. They've been repeated and repeated over and over until the media begins to state these things as fact, at which point they become "fact" and everyone believes them. They are not fact. They're false. And if there's one thing the left has not learned in all this time is that you fight fire with fire. The left should be repeating over and over that the country is center-left (and this can be proven with election results) and the conservative agenda has been repudiated. Repeat this over and over until the media reports it as fact -- which it is -- and then everyone will believe it. Because it's true.

Vanquish Karl Rove to the same place that Sarah Palin is vanquished to. Nowheresville. They're both toast.

I'm personally not so sure that the split within the Republican party can or should be defined as Liberal/Conservative. I think that the reality of how the divide can be classified is more like Libertarian/Nationalist. Now perhaps Libertarian might not be an entirely accurate description but I do think that the "Old Guard" will find far more in common with the Libertarians than they will with the Democrats or with this new Nationalist movement that has taken root within the party.

There's an obvious toxicity to this "New Guard" and there's a very specific demographic to which this is appealing for the long term. I believe that this "New Guard" will likely be the loudest and the flashiest (which unfortunately ensures that FOX News is not going anywhere anytime soon although it's viewership will continue to fall). But all in all I personally think that it takes a certain type of individual to remain content being filled with so much hate-driven ideology. It's simply too exhausting. I think that this "New Guard" over time will eventually wedge itself into irrelevance. Or at least I hope that is the case. Evolution at work.. :D

The idea of "Old Guard" Republicans lining up in the ranks of the Democrats seems extremely far fetched. There are simply too many fundamental differences between them, and too much history (and mythology). We could however see some minor thinning of their ranks as a few who truly are very close to that mythical "center" seek to participate more fully in Washington and who's constituents too are more moderate in their positions.

I, for one continue to encourage republicans/conservatives to believe that it is all the fault of the MSM. That they are victims of a liberal conspiracy and that they just need to be even more conservative and to purge the party of people like Buckley, Will, Parker, Powell and anyone else that has turned their back.

Hahahaha. Keep doing what you are doing and you will keep getting what you are getting.

Palin for 2012 is the best thing that Liberals could ever hope for. I fully support their effort to band together behind her!

We should all do the same. Marginalize them right out of existence.

Obama hasn't even gotten started yet. Wait til he gets going. What life without Bush and the Repubs might mean hasn't really grabbed hold of our consciousness. I can't say more now. I don't like to predict things until after they happen. I get amazing results that way.

Here's a great vid of Republicans lying to themselves vigorously over predictions of the impending economic collapse, including Laffer (Regan's chief economist);
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I0QN-FYkpw